Something flickered behind his eyes. Not pity—she would have hit him for pity. Something else. Understanding, maybe, though that seemed impossible from someone who’d never known hunger.

  “Sit,” he said.

  “I don’t take orders from—”

  “Just fucking sit, Shadera.” It was softer this time, tired, but still a command. He pulled a crystal glass from a cabinet, set it on the island between them. Then he retrieved the vodka, pouring two fingers into the glass. “Civilized people use glasses.”

  “Good thing I’m not civilized then.” But she took the glass anyway, the crystal cool against her palm as she sank onto the stool. She took a sip, watching him as he moved to the refrigerator.

  He pulled out ingredients with an efficiency that spoke of familiarity—vegetables she recognized and some she didn’t, another package of meat, bottles and jars of things that might have been spices or sauces. Each movement was relaxed, economical.

  Shadera watched, suspicion warring with curiosity as he arranged the ingredients on the counter. “What are you doing?”

  “Cooking,” he answered without looking at her.

  “You?” She couldn’t keep the disbelief from her voice. “The Executioner knows how to cook?”

  “The Executioner has a name,” he replied, pushing the vegetables into the sink and turning on the water. “And yes, I cook.”

  The admission surprised her. She took another sip of vodka, let it burn away the questions that wanted to follow. He reached for something on the counter—a small tablet—and pressed a button. Music filled the kitchen, nothing like the thundering bass from the clubs in the Boundary. This was something instrumental, complex, a blend of sound that seemed to wrap around the space.

  Then he rolled up his sleeves

  The movement shouldn’t have caught her attention, but the vodka made her notice things she usually wouldn’t. The fabric folded back to reveal forearms that were… She took another drink. They were just arms. Nothing special about the subtle flex of muscle under skin as he reached for a knife.

  The domesticity of the scene was so at odds with everything she knew about him that for a second she wondered if she was dreaming as he began to cut the vegetables.

  The knife moved through the items with ease, reducing them to uniform pieces. He had surgeon’s hands, she thought hazily. Killer’s hands. She’d seen those hands sign death warrants, had imagined them covered in blood. But watching them work now, she could almost forget what they had done. How many necks they’d snapped. How many triggers they’d pulled. Now they were almost gentle, careful, creating instead of destroying.

  She found herself watching his fingers—long and elegant, yet powerful—as they guided the blade.

  “Where did you learn to cook?” The question slipped out before she could stop it.

  He paused, knife hovering above a red pepper. “My mother taught me the basics. The rest I learned on my own. I find it… cathartic.”

  “Your mother?” The concept seemed absurd—the Executioner as a child, standing at his mother’s side, learning something as ordinary as cooking.

  “Contrary to what you may believe, I wasn’t born with a gun in my hand.” There was a hint of something like amusement in his voice. “I had a childhood. Of sorts.”

  She didn’t answer, instead took another slow sip from her glass as she watched him, the alcohol softening the edges of her perception. Her eyes traced the line of his jaw below the mask, the way it flexed as he concentrated.

  The muscles in his back moved beneath his shirt as he worked, and she found herself tracking the movement with unconscious interest. His movements were graceful, controlled, a body trained for violence. He was built like a fighter—not bulky, but carved from consistent training. She wondered what kind of training produced a body like that. What kind of pain he’d endured to earn those muscles.

  A traitorous part of her mind whispered that he was beautiful, in the way that dangerous things often are—a predator in motion, a storm rolling in, a blade catching the light. She crushed the thought immediately.

  Sure, he was objectively attractive, if you liked the tall, brooding, homicidal type. Which she didn’t. Obviously.

  This was the man who executed citizens for petty crimes. The man who stood on that platform day after day, ending lives with no emotion. The embodiment of everything she’d spent her life fighting against.

  And yet, she couldn’t look away from his hands.

  The smell that began filling the kitchen was nothing like her failed attempt. Rich and heavy, layers of flavor she couldn’t identify. Her stomach cramped.

  “What are you making?” she asked, needing something to redirect her thoughts.

  “Pasta,” he answered, scraping the chopped vegetables into a pan. “Simple but filling. And hard to burn,” he added, the ghost of mockery in his tone.

  She should have been offended, should have snapped back with something caustic. Instead, she found herself watching as he added seasoning and adjusted the heat with a confidence she envied.

  Her mind drifted to more questions, wondering about the life he lived that she didn’t know. He’d been gone all day. After threatening her this morning, after wrapping his hands around her throat, he’d disappeared.

  Shadera lifted her fingers to her neck at the memory, the skin where he had touched tingling.

  “Where were you today?” Another question fleeing her lips without permission.

  He didn’t look up from the pan. “Does it matter?”

  “You threatened to kill me this morning.” She took another sip from the crystal glass. “Then left me locked in here.”

  “I needed space.” Simple, honest.

  “From me?”

  “From the temptation to follow through on the threat.”

  The admission should have frightened her, knowing what he was capable of. Instead, she found herself appreciating the honesty. No pretense, no games. Just truth.

  Silence fell between them again as she studied his profile. It was a shame, really. A shame that such a pretty face belonged to someone she had to kill. A shame that those beautiful, strong hands had so much blood on them. A shame that—

  No. She pulled her thoughts back sharply. The vodka was trying to make him into something human. He was the Executioner. That was all he was.

  An hour had passed in strange suspension, the only sounds the sizzle of the pan and the classical music playing softly over the speakers. Shadera had switched from vodka to water at some point—when, she couldn’t quite remember—but the alcohol still swam through her blood, making everything soft and dangerous.

  Callum emerged from the study like he’d been born from shadows, quiet despite his size. “We’re invisible,” he announced, satisfaction threading through his voice.

  A small smile crept onto Shadera’s lips. Something about him reminded her of Jameson, how he could sneak into any place with complete silence, his effortless charm and confidence.

  Without hesitation, Greyson reached up and pulled off his mask.

  The casualness of it stopped Shadera’s breath. The way he just removed it, like taking off a coat, setting it on the counter with no more thought than that. His dark hair was slightly mussed from the mask’s pressure, and he ran a hand through it absently, making it worse.

  “You have a death wish,” she snapped, as Callum smirked in her direction.

  Greyson ignored her, turning to Callum. “Completely clean?”

  “Clean as we can make it.” Callum moved into the kitchen, helping himself to a glass from the cabinet like he lived here. “Left all the devices in place, of course—moving them would raise suspicion. But I’ve created a loop. As far as anyone monitoring knows, you’re both having a riveting evening of silence in separate rooms.”

  “How?” Shadera asked, professional curiosity piquing. “Heart surveillance systems run interference recognition algorithms that detect synthetic loops.”

  Both men turned to look at her, surprise evident in their straightening postures.

  “Murderous and curious, I like that,” Callum quipped, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “I’ve got a signal interceptor in the study now. It catches their feed, splices it to be on a believable loop then feeds it back to them. So technically, nothing is synthetic. It’s all their footage, just—adjusted. They only see what I want them to see.”

  “But the audio signatures would show the splice pattern.” She leaned forward. “Unless you’re using a randomizer to vary the ambient noise when you feed it back through their surveillance.”

  Callum blinked at her as Greyson’s mouth dropped slightly open.

  “Exactly.” Callum sounded delighted. “I’ve got it cycling through over twelve thousand different background variations. Enough that pattern recognition software won’t flag it.”

  “What about thermal imaging? The new Heart surveillance systems usually have heat detection.”

  “You know your shit,” Callum replied, moving closer with genuine interest. “Thermal spoofing projectors. Three of them now floating around in the ventilation system, calibrated to project heat signatures that match your normal patterns. Took me about thirty minutes to map your typical movement patterns from the last day’s footage.”

  “Smart.” She found herself almost impressed. “But what about voice? They’re expecting conversation—”

  “Ah, that’s the beautiful part.” Callum pulled out a small device from his pocket. “Voice synthesis. I pulled your voices from the recordings, fed it through an AI processor. Now I can make you say anything.”

  He pressed a button, and Shadera heard her own voice say, “I’m going to bed. Stay away from me.”

  Then Greyson’s, “Gladly.”

  The accuracy was unsettling. Perfect pitch, perfect tone.

  “How the hell,” Greyson interjected, looking between them, “do you know surveillance technology this well but can’t operate a stove?”

  Shadera’s jaw tightened as she forced away the small smile forming from his bewildered tone. “Survival in the Boundary requires different skills than your pampered existence, little heir.”

  “Learning to disrupt Heart security systems is survival?” His tone had shifted to genuinely curious.

  If he understood what was truly happening in his city, he would realize what a stupid fucking question that was.

  “When infiltrating Heart facilities for medical supplies, for food? Yes,” she snapped, annoyance flaring. “The people dying of infection don’t care how I get the antibiotics.”

  Silence stretched between them. Callum looked back and forth, then clapped his hands once. “Well, this has been illuminating. But I have places to be, people to threaten, credits to collect, the usual evening activities.”

  He moved toward Greyson, pulling him into one of those masculine embraces that involved more back slapping than actual hugging. “Try not to kill each other,” he said, loud enough for her to hear. Then he whispered something against his ear, something she couldn’t quite catch.

  Greyson nodded once, his expression unreadable as Shadera’s suspicions piqued.

  Callum turned to her, offering a slight bow that somehow managed to be both mocking and respectful. “Well, killer, welcome to the Heart.” He paused at the entryway, glancing back. “You know, Greyson is more than what you see on those screens. Much more.”

  Before she could respond, he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him.

  Greyson returned to the stove, plating whatever he’d been cooking with the same focus he probably used to clean his weapons. Two plates, arranged with an attention to detail that seemed excessive for food.

  Shadera drifted to the window, drawn by the lights below. The Heart sprawled beneath them, glowing like circuitry that spilled over the rings. Beautiful and cold. From this direction, you couldn’t see the execution platform. Couldn’t see the blood that never quite washed clean from the stones.

  “The city is almost beautiful from up here,” she said, not really talking to him. “When you can’t see the suffering.”

  “Almost.” His voice came from directly behind her, closer than she’d expected. She could see his reflection in the glass, watching her instead of the view. “Beautiful things are often built on ugly foundations.”

  She paused, staring at him through the glass, desperately trying not to overanalyze his words. She turned to face him, finding him less than an arm’s length away. “Speaking from experience?”

  “No,” he answered quietly, quickly. “There’s nothing beautiful in my world.”

  The words hit Shadera with a force she wasn’t prepared for. It was sad, really, all this luxury, all this wealth and stability, and still he found no joy in it. Shadera knew better, had seen with her own eyes that beauty could be found in every corner if you looked for it. Even when the world was burning.

  He held out one of the plates. “Eat.”

  She didn’t argue.

  The food was perfect. Of course it was. Everything he did, he seemed to do to perfection. She ate standing by the window, aware of him moving through the space, cleaning up the messes until the kitchen looked as if it had never been touched. It felt domestic, strange.

  “I could show you,” he said suddenly.

  She looked up from the plate. “What?”

  “The Heart. Tomorrow, before the dinner. I can show you what it looks like in the light.”

  Suspicion flared immediately. “Why would you do that?”

  He met her eyes then from across the low-lit room, the intensity of them cutting through her drunken haze still clouding the edges of her thoughts. “Because we need to sell this arrangement. You need to look comfortable in my world, like you belong here. And because…” He paused, his throat working. “Because I have people I care about who are in danger if we fail at this.”

  The honesty of it caught her off guard. “Callum,” she stated. “It was him in the drone footage with your sister, wasn’t it? I recognized the mask he wore tonight from what your father showed us.”

  He didn’t answer, only nodded once.

  She thought of Jameson as her eyes turned back to the window, of the drones that had hunted him, of what Maximus might do to him if she stepped wrong. They were from two very different worlds but both trapped inside the same nightmare. Both performing for an audience that would destroy everything they cared about if they missed a single line.

  Shadera closed her eyes, pulling in a deep breath through her nose and letting it slowly exhale through her lips as she let the situation sink in, truly sink in. She hadn’t let herself see past the idea of killing him until now, hadn’t let herself accept that she was, in fact, a prisoner here until she could concoct a plan that wouldn’t get the people she loved killed.

  She wanted him dead. Needed him dead. But Jameson, the people in the Boundary, they didn’t deserve to die because she couldn’t look past revenge. She wouldn’t let anyone else die on her path to vengeance.

  Slowly her eyes peeled open and she strode toward the island, crossing the living space into the soft light of the kitchen. She set her plate down on the counter and turned toward Greyson. Her fingers found the marble edge and she hoisted herself up onto its surface.

  She didn’t meet his eyes, but let her gaze fall to the dried blood on her leg where the glass had cut her, to her bare thighs visible from underneath the oversized shirt, to her hands folded in her lap. To the numbers tattooed across her fingers. 9758.

  “So,” she started after a few minutes of silence as Greyson leaned against the back of the couch, arms folding over his chest. “You want to kill me.”

  Greyson nodded, answering though it wasn’t a question. “Yes.”

  “And I’m going to kill you.” His head tilted at her words, a smirk forming as if to say ‘debatable’ as she continued. “But if we kill each other, everyone else dies.”

  “That seems to be the predicament.”

  Shadera blew out a breath.

  “I’ll let you parade me around the Heart and sit at your father’s dinner table. I’ll play the part in public, for now. But the moment I see my way out, the moment I can safely leave here and the opportunity presents itself to kill you—I won’t hesitate to take it.”

  She finally dragged her gaze from her hands to find his eyes already on her. They weren’t hard, they weren’t full of hate, but understanding, recognition. Respect almost.

  “As long as you know I’ll do the same,” Greyson answered. His right hand slid over his chest, then wrapped around the left side of his neck as he stretched it, his fingers brushing over the cut of his jaw.

  Shadera’s eyes followed the movement, watching as his thumb grazed the edge of his bottom lip. Heat burned over her skin, settling at the base of her spine.

  “What’s it like?” he asked, snapping her out of her sudden trance.

  She shook her head, clearing her throat. “What’s what like?”

  “Living in the Boundary?”

  She stilled, anger replacing whatever heat was just pumping through her veins. “You want a poverty tour? Poor little heir wants to know how the other half lives?”

  “I want to understand—”

  “No,” she snapped, cutting him off. “You want absolution. You want me to tell you it’s not that bad, that people manage, that there’s some kind of dignity in the suffering. So you can sleep at night in your silk sheets thinking you’re one of the good ones because you cared to ask.”

  His eyes narrowed. “That’s not—”

  “It’s exactly that.” She dropped from the counter, the remnants of vodka flaring back to life in her stomach as she grabbed the edge to stabilize herself. “You want to know what it’s like? It’s watching children fight over scraps. It’s choosing between medicine and food. It’s watching your family be shot on billboards for falling in love with someone in the Cardinal. It’s selling yourself in whatever way keeps you alive one more day. It’s—”