Page 37 of Villainous Intent

The civilians were purged from our midst and the real networking began: territorial claims, black market deals, and dominance displays that occasionally left someone’s brains painted on the floor. It helped dictate the hierarchy for the entire four-month cycle of the Season.

Except it wasn’t the Opener making me antsy, it was Havoc.

To claim my fake date, I would personally encounter Havoc, the man himself, after all these years.

“Approaching final descent vector,” Number Three announced.

I rolled my shoulders.

I wondered what the League stylists had dressed Annie in tonight. Would she be in something skimpy and modern? Or perhaps classic elegance, hair swept up to expose that vulnerable neck I’d fantasized sinking my teeth into?

The loading ramp descended with a hiss, revealing the private landing pad atop the Tower. I didn’t even make it to the bottom before a blur of white and blue slammed into me. The impact was tectonic. One second, the air before the ramp was empty, the next I was pinned against the hull of my own aircraft with a forearm crushing my windpipe.

“Well, hello to you too,” I choked out.

Havoc’s face was inches from mine. The cameras loved his blue eyes, but they never captured the terrifying reality of them up close. Blue energy crackled around his irises, raw and unstable.

My vision swam at the edges as he pressed against my throat harder.

It was fucking magnificent.

The chaos energy radiating off him licked at me with a heat that made the sensors in my suit scream warnings. He was a natural disaster wrapped in the skin of a man.

“Listen carefully, Cipher,” he growled. “Annie might think this arrangement is necessary. But I know what you are. You hurt her, you touch her without her explicit permission, and I will unmake you.”

He pressed harder and my trachea creaked. “They won’t find anything of you to bury.”

My brain was firing on all cylinders, analyzing the pressure, the angle, the uncontrolled power. I could break his grip. I had the strength. But I preferred the thrill of letting him think he had me.

I forced a smile. “I promise I won’t do anything she doesn’t beg me for.”

Havoc’s eyes narrowed as the blue energy around him flared. He slammed me harder against the hull, the metal buckling slightly behind my head.

I wheezed, delighted. The probability of Annie requesting physical contact was high. The probability of Havoc murdering me for pointing that out was rapidly approaching one hundred percent.

“You will keep her fucking safe,” he hissed. “I know what happens after midnight. I helped make the unwritten rules.” His eyes burned with a memory of violence I could only guess at. “The lights go out. The predators come out to feed. Annie isn’t built for that filth. She thinks she’s fearless, but she hasn’t seen what the League does when they think no one is watching.”

He was right. The Opener was a meat market where the currency was fear and flesh. Exactly where I thrived.

“She’s with me,” I rasped, letting the humor bleed out of my voice. “Which means anyone who looks at her wrong ends up on a slab. I don’t share.”

I leaned into his grip, testing the limits.

“And I certainly don’t let my property get damaged by the rabble.”

The pressure on my neck turned agonizing.

“She’s not property.”

“Tonight she is,” I countered, staring straight into that crackling blue fire. “It’s the only way she survives.”

“Havoc, let him go.”

I couldn’t see Annie, but her voice cut through the testosterone-fueled standoff.

“I need him functional. I can’t blend in at the Opener if my escort is choking on his own blood. Drop him.”

The pressure on my throat increased one last time, a warning shot, before he released me. “This isn’t over.”