CHAPTER 5 - Deimos #3
Inside the room, she tries to pull away again.
He doesn't let her. She looks toward the door.
Then briefly, toward the glass. Toward me.
She can't see through it. But something in her gaze lingers for a half a second longer than coincidence would allow.
Her breathing changes. A thought forms. A thought she doesn't say out loud.
But bodies are honest even when mouths lie.
For a moment her eyes close, and the expression on her face is almost imperceptible. A flicker. A wish. Not for the police. Not for Lucy. For something else. For someone else. The corner of my mouth lifts slowly. Mine.
That brief moment still echoes in the tension of her body. A wish. A dangerous one. She wants someone to stop him. And somewhere in the quiet part of her mind, she already knows who that someone would be. Twisted satisfaction. She shouldn't want that. She definitely shouldn't want it from me.
Her protective move with the table is now useless. He leans toward her face, speaking quickly. Aggressive. His grip is tight. And then, he shoves her. Not hard enough to knock her down. But enough. Hard enough for me.
A cold, familiar calm washes over me. My hand is already in my pocket, my thumb hovering over the screen of my burner phone. He smiles after he shoves her, a smug, entitled expression that expects her to just take it. He is wrong.
I type the message with a steady hand. No hesitation. No mercy.
ME: "Leave the room right now."
I hit send.
Inside the salon, I watch Madeline's phone vibrate in her hand. Her eyes scan the screen, and the change in her is instantaneous. She doesn’t look confused. She looks… aware. She feels me nearby, the same way i felt her silent wish for someone to end this.
She steps back from him. He's still talking, still loud, still pathetic. She doesn't answer him. Instead, she turns to the door. Fast. He lunges, grabbing her arm one last time, trying to drag her back into his orbit. She rips it free with a snarl.
"Don't fucking touch me Jake!"
Her voice rings out, sharp and defiant.
Good girl.
The moment she bursts into the hallway, she freezes. I’m right here. Less than two meters apart. My mask hides my face, but I know she recognizes the predator in my eyes. Her pupils dilate. Shock. Fear. And a flicker of something that looks dangerously like relief.
She doesn’t wait. She runs. Not away from me, but past me, fleeing toward the safety of the crowd and her friend Lucy. I listen to the frantic, uneven rhythm of her heels hitting the carpet until the sound fades into the distant thrum of the ballroom music. Now, for the mess left behind.
Jake is still inside the room, pacing like a caged animal, muttering curses under his breath. I push the door open slowly. It clicks shut behind me, the sound final and absolute.
His head snaps toward me, irritation written all over his face.
"What the fu—"
He stops when he notices the mask. The suit. The way I'm standing between him and the exit.
"Private room’s taken buddy," the pathetic excuse for a man barks, his voice dropping with the arrogant confidence of someone who thinks the world belongs to him. Jake. The ghost of her past who just tried to force his way back into her life.
I stand rooted between him and the exit.
I don’t move. Beyond these walls, the muffled thump of the ballroom music bleeds in, but here in this gilded cage, the silence is so thick it feels physical.
He runs a hand through his hair, his posture shifting.
It’s not fear yet. Not quite. It’s just the instinct of a former cop sensing confrontation.
"Did you hear me? Get the hell out," he repeats, taking a step toward me.
I take one toward him. The tension in the room snaps like electricity before a storm.
"You shouldn't have touched her," I murmur. My voice is calm, stripped of every emotion except the one that defines me now.
Jake narrows his eyes, a flicker of irritation crossing his face.
"What?"
“You shouldn’t have put your filthy hands on her skin,” I repeat, and this time, the edge of a blade is audible in my tone.
He scoffs, that smug, entitled sound that irritates me more than anything else.
"Oh, I see. So what are you? Her new boyfriend or something?”
Silence stretches between us. I tilt my head to the side, studying him like an insect under a microscope.
"No,” I replay after a long pause.
"Something else. Something much worse."
He snorts, still believing he’s the one in control of this situation.
"Yeah? What, her bodyguard?"
My gaze hardens. He doesn’t realize the seconds of his life are already being counted down.
"She doesn't need a fucking bodyguard,” I state quietly, closing the distance with predatory certainty.
“She just needs someone to take out the trash.”
My eyes return to him slowly, and I’m already mapping out all the ways I’m going to make this man suffer.
"Look man," he says, pointing a finger at me.
"I don't know who the hell you think you are, but whatever's going between me and Mali—"
The word hits me like a physical strike. It echoes inside my skull, sharp and jagged. Mali. Again.
"Don't fucking call her that,” I state. My tone isn’t a murmur anymore. It’s a threat.
"The fuck is your problem?"
I take another step. Now we’re close enough that he can see my eyes through the net attached to my mask. I want him to see the abyss before he falls into it.
Then he laughs. An actual, genuine laugh.
"Oh my god," he says, shaking his head.
"You are serious."
He leans closer, invading my personal space on purpose. He smells like stale alcohol and unearned confidence. Up close, the stench of him is offensive.
"You people from the hospital are fucking weird," he mutters, his voice dropping.
"First she acts like she's scared of me, now some masked psycho shows up playing knight in shining armor?"
My lips curve faintly. Knight. That's new.
He points a finger toward the door where she disappeared.
"She's my ex. Which means whatever conversation we were having is none of your business."
Then he adds, smugly.
"And trust me, if she really didn't want to be alone with me, she wouldn't have walked in here."
A dark growl escapes my lips. He believes that. That's the fascinating part. Men like him always do. They confuse proximity with permission. My voice stays calm even through the urge of strangling him right here.
"You've been watching her all night."
Not a question. A statement.
His reaction is immediate.
"Every time someone came near her," I whisper.
"You were looking."
He freezes. For the first time, uncertainty creeps into his face.
"You followed her everywhere."
His face is getting almost red with embarrassment.
"You stalking her or something?"
A slow smile spreads across my mouth. This night is full of irony. He shifts again, trying to regain control of the situation.
"I'm trying to understand something."
My voice is almost conversational. He frowns. Only waiting for the words to leave my mouth.
"How a man can see a woman look at him like that... and still think she wants him anywhere near her."
His jaw clenches.
"That's none of your business, again."
"You're right."
I allow a small, lethal pause to stretch between us.
"But touching her made it mine."
That finally snaps something in him.
"Alright, that's enough," he says sharply, stepping forward and shoving a finger against my chest.
"Take the mask off or get out of here before I make you."
The contact lasts less than a second. But it's enough.
My cold gaze drops briefly to the finger pressing against the fabric of my suit. Then, I slowly lift my eyes back to his face.
"You really shouldn't do that."
He scoffs, though the sound is hollow now.
"Or what?"
For a moment, I just look at him, memorizing every feature of his face. I study his arrogance, his misplaced assumption that the world will continue to behave the way it always has for him.
"You've already made countless mistakes tonight..."
My voice drops even lower, becoming a vibration he can feel in his bones.
"But the main one was walking into this room."
Silence settles over us like a shroud. He searches my mask, trying to decide if I'm bluffing, his eyes widening as he tries to figure out why the back of his neck suddenly feels like ice.
"Who the fuck are you?"
He asks, his voice cracking just enough to betray him. The question lingers in the dim light of the salon.
"Someone you should have prayed never to meet," I respond.
Another beat of suffocating silence follows. Then, slowly, his confidence starts to return.
"Right,” he lets out a short, hollow laugh.
"Okay. Creepy rich guy with a mask fetish. Got it."
Now he's really starting to piss me off. Adrenaline rises with every word that leaves his mouth. This is going to be so much fun. I can’t fucking wait. I'll replace that arrogance with begging. For his life. No. For me to even have the mercy to end it quickly would be too kind. I won't.
"So here's what's going to happen. You're going to walk out of this room, go back to your little masquerade party, and forget this conversation happened,” he states confidently, trying to reclaim his status.
I don't move. I don’t even blink. The corner of his mouth twitches. The temperature in the room drops another degree. He stares at me now, really staring, searching for a weakness he won’t find.
My voice drops to a whisper, because this is the last thing he will hear from me. For now.
"Here's what's actually going to happen. I'll knock you out. Give you sedatives. Throw you in my car. You will wait there, unconscious, while I go to my girl and fix what you have already fucked up. And then? Then we have some real fun."
I let the promise of that “fun” hang in the air.
His expression is unreadable, but his whole body tenses at my threat. It isn’t just a threat anymore. It’s a vow.
"You know what? I'm done with this."
He turns toward the door. Big mistake.
Because the moment he moves past me, he's already down.