Chapter 21
Ahead of me, the matte silver doors of Executive Conference Hall Omega were the only thing dividing a dead man walking and me. Rip may not have been on my death note that day, but I knew one day he would face his demise at my hands.
Pulling both doors open with commanding force, they rocked against the outermost limits of the hinges.
Visitors who showed up unannounced, uninvited, and unwilling to leave had nothing but the sharp rise of my temper to look forward to. Rip would be no exception.
Stepping through the entryway, I was every bit the businessman who knew how to cut deals like a shark knows how to cut through water.
Eve followed behind me, her shorter stride struggling to keep up as indicated by her heels clicking wildly against the polished marble floor.
Rip’s silhouette looked pitiful in comparison to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the shimmering mirage pools where guests either basked in the glow of their winnings or drowned their sorrows. Sometimes literally.
He didn’t bother turning around. Instead, his hands remained tucked in his pants pockets like he had all fucking day to consume the air inside my casino.
My Little Spade came to stand at my side. The tension radiated off her, which just pissed me off even more because I wasn’t the cause of it.
I shifted just enough to gain a fraction of an inch in front of her, the gesture subtle enough not to hear her bitch about it but still make it clear she was under my protection.
“Rip,” I greeted with nothing but icy detachment. It was a stark contrast to the inferno ripping through my veins, ready to unleash the second he blinked wrong.
He turned, removing his hands from his pockets to smooth back his thinning hair over the crooked curves of his horns. The white strands looked like strands of cotton that had been stretched too thin and twirled back together.
“Ah! Ace, I thought you’d never show. You’ve been busy—or so I’ve heard.”
The thin smile he wore twisted into a curve, one corner lifting into a partial snarl while the other drooped into a twitching facial tic.
He was pissed.
Good. So was I.
Rip’s eyes shifted to Eve. Behind the fogginess of his eyeballs, a muted glint of excitement tried to peek through like the sun shifting behind poisonous clouds.
“Evie, you look… well.” Another twitch at the edge of his lips. “My men have been asking about you.”
He was undoubtedly referring to his henchmen, Jinx and Jasper. Twins of torment and intolerably inept excuses for demons.
He closed the distance until he stood within arm’s length of me. During his shuffle across the room, something about his gait was off. The stiffness of his left leg suggested concealment of an injury. I tucked that notable piece of intel away for later.
Keeping both his eyes on Eve, he leaned over. His voice dropped to a low purr, which sounded more like a sputtering engine than something smooth and charming. “A pleasure seeing you again.”
The slimy bastard reached for her hand, but I snapped to intervene before he could make contact. My fingers curled around his forearm, unforgiving and unbreakable in their hold.
“Her pleasure is all mine. Everything about her is mine.” I wouldn’t tolerate any misinterpretation of those facts. If he didn’t get the hint through the violence simmering in my gaze, the strength of my hold on him and the prickling of hellfire accompanied the reminder.
A drawn-out and dramatic sigh escaped him.
“Yes. Yes. She’s yours. I recall that conversation from our last encounter.”
I released him with a shove of his arm.
In his retreat, he clasped his hands together in front of him as he approached the conference table designed to seat thirty.
The massive table made of frosted glass swirled with smoke and lines of silver was overkill for a meeting with a demon whose horns were a gross overstatement for whatever shriveled dick he hid below his belt.
At least when I commanded Sevenfold employees from the head of the very same table, I not only had the balls to back it up but no shame in my fortunate endowment.
Rip pulled out a chair, dropping into it as one did after having a hell of a day at the office.
Worn loafers found their way onto the edge of the table as he got comfortable.
He positioned himself with his hands resting on top of his potbelly while leaning back far enough that the furniture groaned in protest.
“Cut straight to the point, Rip.” My green eyes already could feel the burn behind them.
His sigh, paired with the expression on his face, briefly reflected his disappointment that I was cutting straight past the pleasantries, or lack thereof. “Seeing as though you’ve made some deals worthy of trickster intervention with your finances, I’ve come bearing a proposal.”
I snorted. “Not interested.”
Both his brows lifted, if you could call them that, given how they seemed to grow vertically.
“You haven’t even heard all I’ve had to offer.”
Stepping forward, I placed my hands on the edge of the table opposite where he sat. I leaned in just enough to make the threat clearer. “Unless it’s your head on a platter made from seraphic-plated silver, I disrespectfully decline.”
There was nothing but venom in my voice. The runes beneath my clothes grew hotter by the second. Each line of heat seeped through the fabric, emitting the scent of hellfire and warm cloth.
None of it fazed Rip. He continued. “Since my last distributor made some fundamental errors in delivering some valuable product, I find myself in a rare pinch.”
“Product,” I repeated. “Would said product come with a fatality rate that would make even a haunting spectre think twice?”
Rip laughed as if anything I said bore humor to it. The hand he had used to try to reach for Eve slapped against his thigh.
“Oh, I knew you had a temper, Reynard. But funny as well? Now I know we’re more alike than I ever realized!” he exclaimed, amusement dripping from his words.
“I sincerely doubt that.” There was no hiding the dryness in my voice. He and I were as alike as a succubus and a priest.
He tutted. “Now, now. Don’t be so quick to judge, Ace. Hear me out.”
My gaze was locked on him like a missile prepared to launch. The edge of the table groaned beneath my tightening grip.
“Since I can’t move product as effectively as I once did, I need a place to store it. Where can I find better security than that of Superbia’s most lucrative casino?”
He was playing to my ego. I knew it. He knew it. And he wasn’t wrong about Sevenfold having the best in terms of security for its assets. Money flowed in and out of here in obscene volumes. Admittedly, it mostly flooded in from the pockets of weak-minded gamblers instead of trickling back out.
Rip continued his pitch, sounding like he’d concocted the grandest plan since the invasion of Troy.
“Once I find a qualified buyer, I move the product back out, and we negotiate a portion of the proceeds for your hospitality. Easy money for you.”
I tilted my head with curiosity. “And what makes you think that I’m willing to store anything for you?” He had to be mental to believe I would scratch his back at the risk of exposing my throat to the powers monitoring Superbia’s Glayze problem.
There was no flinching. He straightened himself in his seat, taking his filthy shoes off my damn conference table and setting them back on the floor.
“Because,” he began with an edge to his tone—the type of edge that preceded a vague threat— “I have it on good authority that one particular sibling of an exceptionally fine-looking woman is scheduled to go before Blackscale’s Board of Execution.”
An audible hitch in Eve’s breathing beside me punctuated his statement.
The red crept in at the edges of my vision.
Before I could respond, Rip raised his hand as he stood from the chair.
“Don’t get your runes in a twist, Reynard. As an upstanding member of Superbian society, I have enough pull with the members of the Board to sway leniency.”
A dark chuckle filtered past my lips as I pulled myself upright, shoulders drawn back tight. The only part of Superbia’s population where Rip could be considered influential was amongst the likes of feral sewer demons that fed on their own excrement.
My Little Spade stepped forward, but my arm stretched out in front of her to keep her from interfering. I’d handle this my way.
“Is that right?” I scanned the sickening sight of his face, which looked like bile that had dried on top of flesh.
“You see, Rip. I don’t negotiate with those beneath me. I don’t negotiate where I know I have the winning hand. And let’s face it, I am the house edge.”
The energy in the room practically crackled with raw power, ready to bleed out of me, and Rip’s arrogance seeping out of his porous skin.
He lifted his chin as he let tension stretch between us.
“Does your pride so easily blind you, Ace? You have been so busy playing cards that you haven’t realized that you’re standing on a chessboard. I’m offering you a place on that board, and yet you are so quick to reject me? I thought you were wiser than that.”
The final strand of my fraying patience snapped violently. My eyes bled over with fiery wrath, and the Knight of Hell was breaking through my runes all over my body.
“You disrespect me in my domain?!” The words thundered through the open space, rattling the windows and vibrating through the empty glassware of the wet bar beneath the mounted letters spelling out the name of the room.
The metal O in the word Omega rattled loose violently, swinging on a hinge several times before coming loose entirely. It crashed down onto the empty tumblers and decanter, shattering them much like my self-control. All that remained in its wake was Executive Conference Hall mega.
I took one step forward, prepared to leap across the width of the table before me to tear into this bastard.
Only I was stopped, my energy dimming instantly at the feel of my Little Spade clutching onto the back of my arm.
I turned my head with the sharpness of a predator assessing its surroundings, only to find her eyes in a still blankness and the precognitive waves of energy around her pushing against me.
She saw something I didn’t.
Keeping a watchful look on Rip from the corner of my eye, I monitored her carefully. Whatever she saw was rippling through her, fast and furious.
When she finally blinked, her chest heaved from exertion, and she stumbled forward. Instinct to protect what was mine overrode all my rage. I turned and grabbed her arms, steadying her before her knees buckled.
One arm wrapped around her waist and the other supported her back to keep her upright against my chest.
“Eve,” I rasped, my voice still bearing the rough press of Hell’s energy thrumming through my body. “What is it?”
Her eyes swam with moisture, tears pressing at the boundaries of her lids. “H-he’s lying about the Glayze. The supply isn’t his to store. He’s just the middleman trying to stow it away,” she warned, her voice shaking with breathlessness.
The truth sank into me, hitting with terrifying clarity. My head turned towards Rip. I pinned him with the look of someone who had just discovered his attempt to bluff the best card shark from Superbia to Lucifer’s Throne.
“Looks like you’re someone else’s pawn, Rip. You want to tell me who you’re working for? Because make no mistake, when I find out who it is—and I will find out—I’m going to watch your pathetic house of cards topple down, burying you with whoever is behind this little scheme of yours.”
Eve’s hands curled into the front of my shirt, fisting the fabric as her forehead rested against where my heart beat with a steady thump in my chest. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. Her energy was wavering as I felt the reach of her precognition flicker with a weak effort.
She whispered against my body, revealing an integral piece of the puzzle, “It’s…a setup.”
There were a million questions floating through my mind about what my Little Spade saw, but here was not the place to press. Not when she was falling apart in my arms.
I saw Rip shift in my peripheral vision, a look of desperation on his face as he fumbled around in his pants pockets. His hands dug deep, no longer settling casually like they had been earlier. His energy was frantic, the veil peeling back from whatever plan he had been concocting.
At the sight of him withdrawing his hands, I prepared to lunge at whatever he held to launch my attack before he could strike first. But instead of a weapon, he clutched a small vial of liquid with an oil-like sheen to it. It was uncorked and swallowed down before I could stop him.
In a flash of blinding golden light, Rip’s body appeared to warp like the desert air during an unforgiving heatwave. It lasted just longer than the time it took to turn with Eve in my arms, shielding her from the visual onslaught.
My eyes quickly recovered, the hue of red dimming while my hellfire pulsed in a lazy rhythm through my runes. Still on high alert, I scanned the room, and there was no sign of the coward.
Whatever magical concoction had been in that vial had been a magical escape hatch of some sort.
Time stretched, and I half-expected Rip to cut through thin air and reappear. The feeling of Eve shifting in my arms drew my attention back to where it belonged.
Her face was pale, eyes heavy as though the effort of keeping them open took every last bit of her energy.
Anger threatened to reignite in me. Rip had done this. Perhaps not intentionally or even directly, but his presence here in my domain had triggered whatever was going on with my Little Spade.
Keeping an arm banded around her waist, my fingers tipped her chin upward so she could look me in the eyes.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” I demanded.
If she so much as uttered that fucker’s name, there wouldn’t be enough shadow demons in Superbia to hide him.
Each breath she took felt sluggish and heavy in my hold.
The effort of her words took its toll on her. Her speech was drawn out, with hardly enough breath to make her response audible.
“Nothing. Just… tired.”
“Bullshit.” The accusation came out harsh. “Don’t lie to me, Little Spade.”
“Pushed too hard,” she confessed.
The admission that probing through the visions with her mind’s eye had tapped her out struck a chord in me that made me both want to admonish and condemn her actions.
“Bed. Now.” I scooped her up in a smooth motion, cradling her against my chest, her head resting against my shoulder.
Her brows drew together as she attempted to protest, but her face went slack before words formed. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and the rest of her body went limp in my arms.