Chapter 36
T he trip to the Capitol wasn’t for fucking permits.
That would’ve been a waste of time.
The judges were already bought. The summons tossed. The charges, buried. Every signature forged, every roadblock erased.
No—I came for something far more valuable.
A reminder.
Senator William Johnson has forgotten who he belongs to.
He doesn’t know about the war brewing between me and Lorenzo—and he doesn’t need to. He doesn’t need to understand the inner mechanics of organized revenge. Or why the buildings Lorenzo spent decades constructing now lie in ash.
What Bill does need is a very sharp, very personal reminder of why he pledged loyalty to me in the first place.
He expected a Companion to meet him tonight.
Someone soft and pretty to indulge his particular... tastes.
Instead, he gets me.
I slide into the booth across from him, ignoring the confusion that crosses his face. It’s the panic he tries to swallow that gives him away.
“Lucian.” He tries to smooth it over, already reaching for that political charm.
I cut him off before he gets another syllable out. “Let’s skip the pleasantries. You betrayed me.”
His mouth opens, closing just as quickly. “That’s not?—”
“You don’t get to argue,” I interrupt again, calm as ice. “You don’t get to explain. You get to listen.”
I pull out my phone and press play on a short video. The screen lights up with footage of me—earlier today—seated across from a well-dressed woman at a rooftop café. Elegant. Blonde. Older.
Bill’s wife.
He stares at the screen, blinking.
“I had lunch with her this morning,” I say casually. “Lovely woman. Kind eyes. A little lonely, maybe.”
His jaw tightens. “She told me she had a foundation meeting.”
“She did. Just not the kind she thought.”
I lift my phone again, switch to the tracking app, and tap the blinking blue dot pulsing on the map.
“She’s home now,” I say quietly. “Thanks to the tracker I had planted in her purse.”
“Jesus,” he whispers.
“No, Bill. Lucian. ”
He flinches.
I lean in slightly, voice dipping. “You sold me out. Took Lorenzo’s money. Looked the other way while my businesses were targeted. And now you’re wondering if you backed the right man.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” he says, grinding the words through clenched teeth. “He threatened me.”
“And what do you think I’m doing?”
I move to his side of the booth, sliding in next to him, close enough that he can smell the leather of my gloves, the cold press of my calm.
“If you fuck up around Lorenzo,” I say, “he’ll put a bullet in your head and be done with it.”
Bill swallows hard.
“But me ?” I chuckle, low and dark. “Bill, when a man breaks his word to me … I get creative.”
He turns toward me, fear in his eyes.
And I twist the knife.
“Does your wife know,” I ask, “that you pay my escorts obscene amounts of money to call you their baby boy while you sit in a diaper twice a month?”
His face goes pale.
“That you shit yourself so they can change you? Feed you a bottle, stroke your wrinkled cock while you cry like a six-month-old?”
“Lucian—”
“That you suck your own cum off their fingers and pretend it’s breast milk?”
His throat works. A choke. A stifled sob. His eyes dart toward the empty restaurant, realizing for the first time that it’s just the two of us.
No servers. No other guests.
I nod slowly. “It’s been cleared out. Just you and me now, Bill. And I’m not done.”
“Please…”
“But I don’t think that’s what she’d find most disturbing.” I smile. “No. I think it’s the horse one.”
His mouth opens, soundless.
“The one where you wear the mask. Gallop around on all fours. Take cock from my men in every hole while a Companion in cowgirl lingerie spanks your flabby ass with a riding crop.”
He’s shaking now. Visibly. I can feel the heat of his humiliation rolling off his skin.
“You think she’ll understand?” I ask. “That it’s just a fetish?”
I lean back slightly, then stand, smoothing my blazer down with one hand.
“I’m not here to kink-shame, Bill. I own a club where every kink imaginable gets indulged. But out there ?” I nod toward the world beyond the glass walls. “People aren’t so understanding. Reporters, especially.”
He begins to sob quietly.
I reach around my back, draw my Glock, and slam his head back against the booth before jamming the barrel into his mouth.
He screams around it, muffled and pathetic.
“Betray me again,” I whisper, “and I’ll fuck your life up so thoroughly, so unrelentingly, that you’ll beg Lorenzo to end it for you. You’ll swallow that bullet yourself just to escape the wreckage I leave behind.”
His shoulders quake, tears pouring down his cheeks.
“And your poor widow,” I murmur, dragging the barrel just slightly. “She’ll need comfort. A firm hand. A mouth that doesn’t lie.”
He sobs harder.
“How long do you think it’ll take before she begs me to fuck her out of mourning you, Bill? Before she lets me tie her up and show her what it’s like to be fucked by a man who actually finishes what he starts?”
He’s saying please —I can hear it in the way he gags on the steel.
I shove the barrel in deeper, forcing his head back as he chokes on it.
Then, slowly, I pull it out.
I grab the cloth napkin from his lap and wipe the Glock clean. Fold it neatly. Set it back on the table.
“Your suicide will be the least memorable part of your legacy,” I say. “Do you understand?”
He nods frantically, mouthing yes again and again.
I grab his jaw, hard, squeezing until his lips pucker.
“Say it, stallion. Do you understand?”
“Y-yes,” he chokes. “Yes, yes, yes.”
He won’t betray me again.
Not unless he wants to die choking on more than just his secrets.
I leave him there, still shaking, still sobbing quietly in the booth that now smells like his piss.
The restaurant is silent except for the sound of my steps across the marble floor. My Glock rests cool against my back again, but the heat pulsing through me is far from cooled.
Outside, my black SUV idles at the curb. The sky’s turned heavy with summer dusk—warm, gold-edged, and lying to everyone about the storm rolling in.
My driver stands beside the open door. He looks at me like he’s already apologizing.
Never a good sign.
“What the fuck is it?” I snap, not breaking stride.
He clears his throat. “Sir… it’s Miss Knight.”
I stop.
Stillness sharpens around me like a blade being drawn.
“What about her?”
He shifts, clearly nervous. “She’s accepted a soft contract tonight. With another sponsor.”
Everything inside me goes silent.
For a full beat, I say nothing.
“What?”
“She’s… currently having dinner. With Mr. Langston. Sir.”
My blood turns molten.
Of course she is.
I should have seen this coming. That damn gleam in her eyes when I told her we would talk about ending her sponsorship soon.
She fucking planned this the second I told her I wouldn’t be at the luncheon.
Calculating. Fucking. Brat.
Langston should know better. It may not technically break the rules, but every sponsor at The Ledger knew what I’d made very clear —Sienna Knight is off-limits.
I hold out my hand, palm up. “Keys.”
My driver doesn’t argue. He just tosses them into my hand and wordlessly climbs into the passenger seat, snapping his seatbelt like a man who’s been through this before.
I slide into the driver’s side, already pulling out my phone.
The app opens with a blink.
Her tracker pulses on the screen—bright and fucking defiant.
With a low growl, I punch the gas, tires squealing against pavement, horns blaring as I shoot into traffic like a fucking missile.
She wants to play games?
She just invited the devil to the table.
And I guarantee she won’t like the fucking punishment I’m going to serve her.
* * *
I ’m half on the curb when the SUV jerks to a stop outside the restaurant.
“Keep it running,” I bark, slamming the door before the driver can respond.
The ma?tre d’ barely gets a greeting out before I’m brushing past him, scanning the room. It takes no time at all.
Langston’s at the corner table, tucked beneath low-hanging glass chandeliers.
Alone.
He stands as I approach, ever the polite gentleman. “Lucian.”
“Where is she?” I cut him off before the pleasantries even form.
His brow creases. “Miss Knight only stayed a few minutes. Enough to apologize for canceling.”
I don’t blink. “Canceling?”
Langston nods, confused but not rattled. “Said you had a last-minute sponsor training session set for her tonight at your club. That you needed her.” He sips his wine. “Naturally, I deferred.”
What the fuck…
I pull out my phone and glance at the app again. Her tracker still pulses, right here. This restaurant. This table.
“She did give me this,” Langston says, holding out a small white envelope. “Said I could drop it off at the Ledger tomorrow with my sponsor report, but… if you don’t mind.”
I snatch it from him, already knowing what it is before I even tear it open.
Inside my palm lands a tiny speck of tech. No bigger than the head of a pin. Lightweight. Nearly invisible.
The tracker.
She removed it. Left it here. With him .
Fucking hell.
He would have had this with him all night. No matter when I found out, it would have looked like she was with him.
I clinch my jaw so hard my molars nearly crack.
If I had seen her little dot blinking at this assholes house.
I have to stop that thought before it goes further.
Something in me likes to think I would have kept my calm. Rang the doorbell like a normal fucking human being. But who am I kidding?
I would have blown his goddamn door off the hinges and put a bullet in his face. No questions asked.
She’s playing a game. A step ahead. Luring me here on purpose, smiling while she pulled the leash from around her neck and dropped it right in front of my feet.
Smart.
But this is where she loses.
Because now I know exactly where she is.
She told Langston I called her in for training. At my club.
Which means she’s at The Masquerade.
The Devil’s Playground.
My domain.
I know every inch of that place. Every corridor. Every secret door. Every two-way mirror, every crawlspace above the suites. I designed it to give the illusion of power to others—while keeping the real power in my hands.
Let her think she’s hiding.
Let her think she’s bold.
Because when I find her?
I’m not going to scold her.
I’m going to ruin her.
And the sweet, smug little rabbit who thought she could outmaneuver the devil is about to find out what it means to be caught .
I glance back at Langston, who’s watching me like he’s trying to decide whether to apologize or run.
I give him the answer.
“Off-limits means off-limits, Langston. You’re out.”
I don’t wait for his response.
I’m already moving—out the door, into the heat of the evening, the roar of the city wrapping around me like war drums in the distance.
She thinks she’s clever.
She thinks she’s unpredictable.
But all she’s done is light a match in a room full of gasoline.