Greyson’s shoes made no sound on the inlaid floors, an empty man among ghosts. He paused at the archway to the dining room, and took a breath, steadying himself before entering the room then taking his seat.

  If the Entertainment District was all veiled violence and artifice, this room was naked power—set like a trap, designed to draw blood with nothing but a glance.

  The table stretched forever, a plank of mahogany so polished it reflected the candelabra’s flames in a perfect mirror image. At its head, sat the gold-leafed throne, reserved for Maximus Serel. President and patriarch.

  Four places were set. One for Greyson, one for his father, and one for Elara, the mother who’d built the city’s mask tradition into ironclad law. Outside of these walls, she was a force to be reckoned with. She was cutting and lethal. But here, in this house, she was as trapped as the rest of them.

  A fourth chair—Lira’s—stood at a carefully measured distance, closer to Maximus but always out of arm’s length.

  The housekeepers moved like smoke, seen only in the periphery, never acknowledged by name. Each place setting was calibrated to perfection. Folded napkin, obsidian edged plate, water goblet filled to the meniscus. There was no music, only the sizzle of wax and the faint scratch of preparations flowing from the kitchens.

  Elara arrived first, her mask a shimmer of white gold, delicate as frost. Her hand swept lovingly across Greyson’s shoulder as she rounded the table and sat. She met his eyes behind her mask and held his gaze.

  “You look tired, my dear,” she said, voice hushed. “Rough night?”

  Greyson considered lying. “You could say that.”

  She reached for her water glass but didn’t drink. “You should take better care of yourself. Your Vow will be in four days. You’ll want to look your best.”

  He nearly smiled at her transactional tone. “Always the diplomat.”

  Elara’s eyes flicked to the entrance. “It helps. Sometimes.”

  Lira slipped in next, her mask a brutal geometry of rose gold angles. She wore her hair up, every long, dark strand lacquered into place. She didn’t greet her mother, nor her brother. She simply slid into her chair, arranged her napkin, and waited.

  Maximus entered last.

  He wore no mask, but his face was more formidable than any metal. The lines had deepened since Greyson was a boy, the jaw a little sharper, the eyes colder. He surveyed the table, assessed the seating, and sat without ceremony.

  The meal was served in three silent courses. First, a soup as black as the city at midnight. Then, a slab of meat so rare it bled onto the plate. Last, a citrus tartlet.

  They ate in silence. It wasn’t an awkward silence—there was nothing tentative about it—but a deliberate suppression, the kind that dared you to fill it and risk being devoured.

  Greyson was the one who broke it.

  “Father,” he said, careful to keep his tone neutral, “I wanted to ask about Brooker.”

  His brother’s name landed on the table like a hammer. Elara’s hand trembled, just once, before she set her spoon down. Lira’s jaw clenched, so subtly only someone who’d known her from birth would notice.

  Maximus didn’t look up from his plate. “What about him?”

  “Where are you in your search for the Daggermouth that killed him?” Greyson forced himself to look at his father.

  For a second, Maximus’s eyes flickered—something unsettling, lethal. Then he set his fork down, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and leaned back in the chair.

  “I thought I told you to drop this.”

  Greyson did not drop it.

  He would never drop it, not until all of the Daggermouths were wiped from New Found Haven.

  He ignored his father’s statement. “I heard from a Veyra captain that—”

  Maximus cut him off. “What you heard is irrelevant. He was murdered, and I will not risk more of my men to satisfy you with a name.”

  Elara tried to intervene, her voice brittle. “This is not the place—”

  “I did not tell you, you could speak,” Maximus snapped. He turned back to Greyson, eyes dark as pitch. “When I tell you to drop something, you drop it.”

  Greyson’s fists clenched around his knife, his muscles pulling tight in an effort not to jam the utensil into his father’s jugular at the disrespect he showed his mother. At the disrespect he showed Brooker’s memory.

  “He did everything you ever asked of him. He killed hundreds of people day after day in the plaza on your orders. People you hunted down over minor infractions to your law. And yet you refuse to look for the Daggermouth scum that murdered him,” Greyson spat, knowing immediately he should’ve kept his mouth shut.

  Maximus smiled, lips thin as a blade. “Your brother was a greater man than you will ever be, you do not need to remind me of that. He was the son I wish had lived. To insult me, to question my loyalty to him, is treason.” Slowly, Maximus leaned forward. “The elite are not immune from the violence of the rings. The job of Executioner will make you enemies. Brooker knew that, and still he did it without hesitation. He died for the Heart, and that is what I will honor. I will not give our enemies the upper hand by making emotional decisions.”

  Lira spoke up, her words flat and dangerous. “His death wasn’t an honor.”

  Maximus’s hand curled around the stem of his goblet, knuckles whitening. “Please, speak plainly, Lira.”

  She met his gaze, mask to face. “His death was a sign of weakness. A sign that the Daggermouths can get to us. And your hesitation to retaliate only gives them more power.”

  The silence that followed was so pure, so total, it threatened to fracture the room.

  Elara recovered first, smoothing her napkin with trembling fingers, daring to speak again without permission. “We’re all tired,” she said, voice a shade above a whisper. “Let’s not fight tonight.”

  The back of Maximus’s hand struck the side of her face faster than anyone could stop it, knocking her out of her chair and onto the floor with a whimper of pain.

  Greyson shot from his chair with a snarl as Lira gasped beside him.

  “Sit. Down,” Maximus growled, raising a single pointed finger at Greyson.

  Greyson hesitated, every instinct screaming to pull his gun from its holster and put a bullet into the back of his father’s head. His fingers splayed on the tabletop, breaths rough through his mask.

  The decorum of the room demanded submission, but every knot in Greyson’s body flexed against it.

  He forced himself to sit, knowing that would be the only way to protect his mother from another blow. Maximus held his gaze for a long, balanced moment, then turned away.

  Maximus’s voice trembled not with regret, but with rage. “This family is not a democracy. You will mourn your brother however I tell you to mourn. And you will never again question my choices.”

  The words slashed through Greyson, and he felt the sudden, irrational urge to laugh. To laugh at the irony of it all, the cruelty that rotted the inside of this family while the outside looked polished and pristine.

  Instead, he forced his jaw tighter, grinding the fury down to a stone he could swallow and watched as his mother straightened her mask. She struggled to her knees, steadying herself on the arm of her chair with no help from his father. Slowly, she slipped back into her seat and cleared her throat as she smoothed out the front of her cream blouse, now stained with drops of blood.

  “Now, let’s finish this pleasant family meal, shall we?” Maximus said, the coolness of his voice more brutal than the violence of the moment before.

  The scraping of silverware against china was the only sound that filled the room as each of them picked at their dessert, tasting nothing.

  At last, Maximus set down his utensils and addressed the room. “The Vow is scheduled for Saturday. I expect full attendance. No exceptions.”

  He rose, wiped his mouth, and left them with nothing but the echo of his footsteps. Elara’s voice caught as she rose, excusing herself to hurry after him, sparing a single look toward her children before disappearing into the corridor.

  Greyson waited until they were alone, the room shrinking around them.

  “You shouldn’t have said anything,” he said, but without the heat he’d intended. “He’ll make you pay for it.”

  Lira’s own voice was flat. “I don’t care, Grey. Not anymore.”

  “You need to care. You need to let him think he’s won. He will hurt you, Li.”

  “I need,” she replied, pushing her chair back with an abrupt scrape, “to get out of this family, before it eats me alive.”

  Greyson watched Lira go for only a breath before he followed her into the corridor, catching up to her near the elevator. For a moment, neither spoke as they waited for the lift to arrive.

  “If he’s not going to do it, we have to,” Lira started. “We have to find the Daggermouth that killed Brooker, and kill them ourselves. He deserves that much.”

  He wanted to argue, to tell her that she shouldn’t get involved, but couldn’t find the words. She put a hand on his arm, just above the elbow, squeezed once, then stepped into the elevator.

  CHAPTER FOUR DON’T DIE

  THE WAREHOUSE CHILLED TO the bone after sunset, sucking warmth from exposed skin until nerves went numb. Shadera had grown accustomed to it. It made her sharp, kept her from dulling around the edges.

  The cold crawled over her as she sat on the concrete floor, knees spread, ankles crossed, guns and knives meticulously laid out in front of her, while she fieldstripped the Veyra-issued nine-mil. Each click, each metallic slide, was as soothing as another’s heartbeat. She let herself vanish into the work, until the rattle of the outer fire door knifed through the quiet.

  She palmed the pistol one-handed, eyes on the crosshatch of shadow in the entryway. Only two people knew the passcode to her rooftop entrance. Jaeger and Jameson Vine. And Jaeger would rather walk on broken glass than show up uninvited.

  Jameson’s tread was softer than most, but Shadera still heard the whisper of worn boots on steel stairs, the way the second step always betrayed the weight of him.

  He didn’t knock, instead he shouldered through the door, letting it slam at his back. Jameson stepped into view and stopped, his brows pulling together as he looked at Shadera on the floor. He grinned at her, canines catching in the half light. He leaned against a steel pillar, his threadbare T-shirt stretching tight against the muscles on his scarred and tattooed arms as he crossed them over his chest.

  “Shit, Shade,” he said, his voice amused. “You ever fucking sleep?”

  “Sometimes,” she answered, twisting a silencer into place. “You look worse than usual.”

  “You still think I’m pretty, though, huh?” he teased as Shadera’s eyes rolled to the back of her head.

  He came to her in three long strides, then crouched by her side, elbows on his knees. “We got a problem. Jaeger’s boys just hit a Veyra patrol down in the sixth—”

  “Not my sector. Not my problem,” she cut in, finally setting the gun down and reaching for a bottle on the floor beside her. She took a long pull. “I’m busy tonight.”

  Jameson glanced down at her kill kit. “So I see.”

  He let the silence hang, scanning her face for a crack in her armor, then snatched the bottle from her and gulped down a heavy swig.

  Shadera quirked a brow at the gash on his forearm. “You here for something, or just to bleed on my floor?”

  His hand moved to her face, slow and cautious, as if she might bite. Maybe she would. But she let him trace the line of her jaw, let him hook a thumb behind her ear and drag the elastic free from her hair. Auburn curls tumbled loose, spilling around her face.

  He leaned in and Shadera didn’t pull away.

  Their mouths met with the same violence as every other part of their lives—teeth knocking, lips splitting, tongues pushing past the barricades. His hands were everywhere at once. She bit his bottom lip, and it unlocked a noise in his throat, almost a groan.

  The first time they’d done this, neither of them had undressed at all, just pressed into each other against an empty wall and fucked like the world was ending. Since then, the routine had gained only a fraction of tenderness on her part.

  Her hands slid up the back of his neck into his silver hair, feeling the way the cropped sides bristled against her palms as the longer strands on top caught between her fingers.

  “I missed you,” he breathed against her lips, but the words didn’t land anywhere.

  “Don’t get clingy,” she warned, shoving him back, then rising from the floor.

  Jameson grinned again as he looked up at Shadera with sharp green eyes, and rose to his full height. In the next heartbeat, he’d swept her off her feet and set her on top of her desk, hands greedy on her hips, lips pressed into the pulse at her throat. The force of it startled the desk chair backward, made it clatter against the desk, then tip sideways. Shadera let her head fall back, eyes closed, jaw working as he bit a line up her neck to the place she always kept a razor blade tucked behind her ear.

  She arched against him, feeling the hard line of his body through both their clothes. He was already hard—he was always hard for her, like a dog starved for too long and afraid it would never eat again.

  She cupped the back of his skull and twisted her fingers in his hair, pulling him off her throat, then pushing him onto the bed tucked in the corner. He let her have her way with him, he always let her. Because the part of him that was as broken as she was, liked it best when she played rough.

  They landed on the nest of blankets, and she climbed on top of him with all the grace of a wolf mounting its prey as she dragged his shirt over his head. His own body was covered in wounds similar to hers, under his heavily tattooed flesh—stitches that never quite faded, puckered pink welts from Veyra shock batons, a ragged knife scar running from collarbone to rib cage.

  In the next second, his hands were up her shirt, hot against her scars. He traced every raised edge like he was reading braille, mapping out the damage with a reverence that made her stomach knot. She grabbed his wrists and held them above his head, pinning him to the bed.

  “Stop stalling,” Shadera hissed, and Jameson’s smile turned crooked.

  “You always fuck me like you’re mad at me,” he said, voice muffled as she leaned forward and raked her teeth down his throat.

  “I am,” she replied. “You came into my house without permission, again.”

  She let his hands go, and he stripped her shirt over her head, mouth on her chest before the cloth even hit the floor. She felt his breath catch in his lungs as his fingers found an old bullet wound just under her ribs, the jagged oval where a Veyra officer had tried to end her three years ago.

  “This should have killed you,” he whispered against her skin.

  “They’ll have to do better than a bullet.” She pushed her hips down, and ground against him.

  He pulled at the buttons on her jeans, and she lifted her body just enough for him to slide them down her legs. Jameson moved to touch her face, but she caught his hand and drove it down to her hip, guiding his grip exactly where she wanted it. He didn’t protest. Instead, he looked up at her like she was the only thing in the world worth dying for.

  Shadera leaned down, auburn curls falling over her shoulder, and her lips met his. Her nipples brushed against his skin, hard and dark against his chest. The room was freezing, but her body ran hot as engine coolant.

  She ground herself against the rough denim still clinging to his hips, then, growing impatient, reached down, and unfastened his belt with a single jerk. The button popped, and she slid his jeans down, dragging his briefs with them, leaving him fully exposed.

  His cock stood up straight, thick and veined, the head glistening with proof of his need for her. Shadera wrapped her hand around it, squeezing just enough to make his eyes flutter shut. She let him see her, all of her, just for a moment, then sank down, taking him in a single, unhesitating motion.

  They both groaned at the contact, the sound coming out of Shadera’s mouth too close to a whimper for her liking. She rode him slow at first, her pace measured and controlled.

  Jameson’s hands found her waist, then her ass, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.

  “Fuck, you feel good,” he said, letting his head drop back onto a bundled blanket. “You always feel so fucking good.”

  She leaned forward, bracing her hands on either side of his head, and picked up the pace. Each roll of her hips was deliberate, calculated to draw out the exact sounds she wanted from him. His breathing went ragged, chest heaving beneath her as she worked him with the same precision she used to dismantle her guns.

  “Shut up,” she breathed, but her body betrayed her, clenching around him at the praise.

  She hated how he could make her respond like this, hated the way her pulse hammered when he looked at her like she was more than just a weapon.

  His thumb found her clit, circling with practiced strokes.

  “You like it when I tell you how perfect you are,” he murmured, voice rough with want. “You get so wet for me.”

  Shadera’s rhythm faltered, a sharp intake of breath escaping her lips. She pressed her palms flat against his chest, using the leverage to ride him harder, faster. “I said shut up.”

  Jameson wouldn’t be silenced.

  His free hand tangled in her hair, pulling her down until their foreheads nearly touched. “Tell me you want this,” he demanded. “Tell me you want me.”

  “I want—” The words caught in her throat as he drove up into her, meeting her movement with a brutal thrust. “Fuck. I want you to stop talking.”

  He laughed, the sound dark and knowing. “That’s not what your body’s saying.” His grip tightened in her hair. “You’re so tight around me, Shade. So perfect. Like you were made for this.”