Chapter 7 Penny
Penny
Penny Potter was a kaleidoscope of chaos in an ocean of grey. Lime green coat. Hot pink nails. Lemon yellow stilettos that clicked like gunfire on concrete. Her dark hair was pulled into a high ponytail, gold hoops winking in the fading light as she lifted a watermelon margarita to her lips.
She looked like candy.
She was my poison.
I spotted her instantly across the rooftop bar impossible to miss when everyone else was too busy pretending not to stare. I didn’t pause. Didn’t smile. Just cut a path through the crowd like a bullet aimed straight for her.
Penny didn’t even glance up. Just smirked around her straw.
“You’re late, sugar.”
“Cut the shit.” I dragged the chair opposite her out with a scrape of metal, but I didn’t sit. “You dropped something about Lucas. An assistant. A mystery redhead. You know how that looks.”
She slipped her sunglasses off slowly, her eyes glittering like they’d been waiting for this.
“I know exactly how it looks,” she said. “That’s why I wrote it.”
My teeth ground together. “You’re supposed to run what I feed you. Not chase your own headlines.”
Her smirk deepened. “I’m not your personal PR bitch. And for the record? You’ve been awfully quiet lately. I’m bored.”
“You leak something real, something dangerous and boredom will be the last thing you feel.”
She laughed, low and throaty. “That sounds like a threat, Logan.”
“It is.”
She rose to her feet, slow, heels clicking as she closed the space between us until her perfume wrapped around me like smoke. Now we were chest to chest, eye to eye, the city burning gold behind her.
“You gonna hurt me, Creams?” she whispered. “Or just try and scare me again?”
My jaw locked. My fingers twitched like they couldn’t decide whether to wrap around her throat or her waist.
“You think you’re untouchable. But even sharks get gutted, Pen.”
“And even wolves,” she purred, brushing invisible lint off my chest, “can be caged by a prettier monster.”
Silence stretched, electric.
“I’m doing my job,” she said sharply. “Unlike you hiding behind your golden boy brother while playing executioner in the dark.”
Her words hit like a blade slipping between ribs.
Because she wasn’t wrong .
And she knew it.
I stepped back, fists curling. “You’re gonna back off. Or I’ll make sure you do.” Penny tilted her head, lashes fluttering mock sweet. “You always say that. But you never stay gone.”
She turned, walking toward the elevator like she owned the building.
I should’ve left. Should’ve let her go.
But I didn’t.
Because she was right.
And I hated her for it.
And I wanted her anyway.