Chapter 9
Smoke in the Air, Poison in the Blood
Asher
I don’t like being forced to play the long game, but tonight I allow it.
Patience has its perks when the pieces are finally on the board—and Violet has no idea she’s one of them.
She walks into this penthouse blind to the fact that every body here is curated, primed, and dosed under my eye.
No one breathes without me noticing. No one touches without it meaning something.
She doesn’t know I’m watching the entire night bend around her like gravity. She doesn’t know she’s the reason I’m here at all.
And she sure as fuck doesn’t know how distracting she is.
I move through the room with a bourbon warming my hand, letting the chaos swell around me. Z hums beneath the crowd like a live wire—skin electric, nerves firing, and inhibitions stripped down to bone.
A girl at the bar throws her head back, laughter dissolving into a sobbed moan as the man behind her grinds into her like he’s starving. Her fingers claw for the marble edge; his hands grip her hips hard enough to bruise, and the music swallows the sound of both of them coming apart.
To my left, a man lie on a velvet chaise, shirt open, and breath uneven. A woman kneels between his legs, dragging her mouth up his chest slow and filthy. He’s shaking, trying to hold still, but she’s eating every sound he tries not to make.
And then, through the haze of bodies and sound, I see her.
Violet stands at the edge of the room like she’s been carved out of stillness itself.
One hand on her hip, and the other curls around a glass she hasn’t bothered to drink.
Her hair is pulled back into a loose bun, with soft strands slipping free to brush her neck.
Her dress clings to her hips, to the curve of her ass, and it should be a crime to look that good without even trying.
She’s unmasked tonight. Exposed. Soft and sharp at once. More dangerous like this than she ever was in the skintight dress at the last party.
But it isn’t just her body. It’s the way she watches.
Her eyes—dark, warm, and too perceptive—follow every movement in the room.
The couple tangled on the velvet chaise.
The pair against the mirrored wall, his hands gripping her thighs as he lifts her like she weighs nothing.
Violet’s chest rises in shallow breaths.
Her cheeks flush. Her fingers tighten around her glass.
She doesn’t have to be touched to feel it. It’s written all over her face.
Violet takes all of it in with a scientist’s eye and a woman’s hunger she doesn’t want to acknowledge. She absorbs it and resists it at the same time—like she’s immune to drowning but not immune to heat. It makes my pulse tighten, something low and territorial curling in my chest.
I should walk away and pretend she’s not unraveling something inside me. But I don’t. I can’t. The way she stands—separate but caught up—is too tempting, too irritating, and too impossible to ignore.
Up on the mezzanine, Luca shifts his weight and scratches his shoulder twice.
Our code for: Someone doesn’t belong.
My eyes follow his line from where I stand on the main floor, landing on a man tucked near the back corner. Wrong energy. Wrong stillness. Wrong kind of watching. Not one of mine.
And he’s drifting too close to Violet.
I narrow my eyes as he pushes his hair back. His cuff slides up an inch. Enough for me to see the ink curled around his wrist.
A dagger through a rose.
Rinaldi.
My pulse flattens into something cold and efficient.
This isn't a coincidence, it’s a provocation.
I tap the cufflink on my left wrist once.
Maverick appears in less than a minute, slicing out of the crowd like a blade freed from its sheath. He leans against the pillar beside the intruder, as casual as a wolf picking its teeth. A murmur. A nod. Then his hand is at the man’s neck, dragging him off toward the shadows behind the bar.
Before I can move, Cami materializes beside Violet, bright, chaotic, and entirely inconvenient. She thrusts another cocktail into Violet’s hand.
“You’re standing here looking all broody and tragic,” she teases. “Drink. This is not a museum.”
Violet takes a hesitant sip, lips tightening at the burn. Cami giggles and loops an arm through hers, tugging her into the crowd.
Maverick returns just in time to intercept Cami’s path, his expression sharpening on Cami for a heartbeat before smoothing again. Violet senses it immediately and narrows her eyes—she’s too observant.
“And what exactly are you getting her into?” he asks, voice lazy, but there’s an edge beneath it. Something almost territorial.
Cami smirks. “Relax, Mav. I’m having fun. You should try it before you die of being boring.”
The tension between them hums. Challenge threaded with something darker—playful, dangerous. Interesting.
But then Cami drags Violet toward a cluster of men outside the VIP section.
Her first mistake.
“Gentlemen,” she purrs. “This is my friend. She’s new.”
One man turns, eyes sharpening with interest the way a predator assesses an opening. Older. Polished. Power hanging on him like tailored silk.
I recognize him immediately. Emilio Santoro. A member of The Order.
Violet has no idea who he is. She hasn’t quite grasped the game she just walked into.
And Cami, in her drunken unaware state, doesn’t realize that she just pushed her friend into dangerous territory.
Emilio smiles, his eyes lingering on Violet’s face before sliding lower. “Pleasure,” he murmurs, extending a hand. “We don’t get a lot of fresh faces at these things.”
Violet hesitates before shaking his hand, she is polite but wary. "I’m just… observing."
His smile widens. “The first step toward—”
I move in before the words finish leaving his mouth.
“Careful, Emilio.” My voice is quiet. Cold. “We wouldn’t want to overwhelm her.”
The second Violet hears my voice, her head swivels toward mine, her features impossible to read. But there’s a flash of something—relief? Annoyance? Maybe both.
Emilio chuckles, but his eyes flicker with calculation. “Of course.”
I don’t have to raise my voice. I only look. A shift in expression. A flicker of displeasure.
Enough.
The men around him tense. Conversations die mid-breath. They back away in perfectly choreographed fear. Emilio holds my gaze a second longer—then steps back.
Good boy.
This is my world.
And everyone here remembers why.
Maverick slips in, wraps an arm around Cami’s waist, and murmurs something dark against her ear. She pouts, then lets him pull her away, tossing Violet a final mischievous look before disappearing.
Leaving the two of us alone.
I face her fully, letting silence settle over us like a velvet curtain.
“Now,” I say, voice low. “Where were we?”
There it is—that spark she carries in her eyes. Sharp. Curious. A little heated.
“See anything you like?” I murmur.
Her lips tilt. “Depends. Are you asking for yourself or taking requests?”
I huff a quiet laugh, stepping closer. “Bold. I like it”
“Good for you,” she fires back. “Are you going to keep staring, or do you actually have a purpose here?”
God, she’s quick. Everyone else tries to impress me. She doesn’t care what I think.
Refreshing. Maddening.
“Maybe I just wanted to see the woman who watches everything without lifting a finger,” I say, glancing at her untouched glass. “It’s a risky move for someone in a dress like that.”
She narrows her eyes. “If you think I wore this for anyone else, you’re wrong.”
“No?” I lean in slightly. “Interesting, considering how many men are wishing otherwise.”
Her lips twitch. Fighting a smile. “Are you going to tell me your name, mysterious stranger?”
“Asher.”
“Just Asher?”
“For now.”
She rolls her eyes. “Right. Well, Asher, I was doing something before you interrupted.”
“Watching?” I drag the word slow.
A flush spreads across her chest, but she doesn’t look away. “Yes. Watching. It’s more interesting than you, anyway.”
A low laugh leaves me. “Careful, Kitten. You almost sound like you don’t like me.”
Her jaw clenches. “Kitten? Really?”
“It suits you. All soft curiosity and sharp little claws.”
She glares. I grin.
Perfect.
Before she can snap back, Cami reappears in a golden blur. I lean in close enough to breathe her in—clean skin, faint flowers, and something warm and entirely her.
“We’ll finish this another time, Kitten,” I murmur.
Her jaw tightens, and I notice her trying to come up with a retort, but I don’t let her get it out.
With a wicked smile I turn, disappearing into the sea of bodies behind me, and leaving her to handle Cami’s stream of questions.
As much as I hate to leave, knowing that I walk away from her dumbfounded, irritated, and now, intrigued is the best of feelings.
She’ll look for me. They always do.
Turning my back on the chaos above me I walk down the hall toward where they took the guy, my eyes meet Maverick’s across the room. He keeps pace with me in silence. He knows the look in my eyes. We’re beyond the point of subtlety. Past diplomacy. This is personal.
The intruder sits tied to a chair in the middle of the room—breathing hard, and trying too hard not to look afraid.
The effort almost makes it worse. Fear isn’t something you can swallow down in a place like this; it seeps out through your posture, your eyes, and the way your fingers twitch against the metal.
He’s failing on every front, and he knows it the second I step fully into the room.
He tries to stand when I move closer, some pathetic last attempt at control, but I plant a hand against his chest and shove him back into the chair.
The legs shriek across the concrete like they’re protesting on his behalf.
I let the sound hang in the air before I speak, my voice low and steady—quiet enough to make him lean forward. “What’s your name?”
He keeps his mouth shut, jaw clenched, and gaze flicking toward the door like he’s calculating whether he can run.
Maverick ends that fantasy quickly. His slap cracks across the room—sharp, fast, and humiliating.
Not meant to break him. Just meant to remind him who sets the rhythm in here. It’s not him.
“Name,” I say again, letting the word roll out a little slower this time. “And what were you doing sniffing around Violet?”
He gives me a lazy shrug like he’s bored. “She was just there,” he mutters. “Didn’t know she was marked territory.”
The way he says it—like she’s an object, like she’s something I left unattended—lights something violent under my skin.
Maverick moves in, cracking his knuckles with the kind of casual menace he doesn’t even have to perform anymore. It’s just who he is. “Do you always poke around shit you weren’t authorized to breathe near,” he asks, “or is tonight a special occasion?”
The bastard has the audacity to smirk. There’s blood in his teeth, arrogance in his stare, and a spark of provocation he hasn’t earned. “Sorry,” he says, mockingly polite. “Didn’t know chemistry majors were this protected.”
My jaw tightens. Because that detail isn’t public. Not something you glean from watching her at a party. They dug. They researched. They know her name, her face, and the fucking shape of her life. And that makes this more than trespassing—it makes it a threat.
“You work for Rinaldi,” I say. I don’t need him to answer.
His silence is confirmation. The way his shoulders tense is confirmation. The flicker of defiance in his eyes is confirmation.
I move in until I’m standing toe-to-toe with him, forcing him to look up.
There’s nowhere for him to hide from the weight of this.
“Tell Rinaldi he’s playing a dangerous game,” I murmur.
“If he so much as lets one of his men breathe near her again—fuck, if they whisper her name—I’ll dismantle every piece of his empire.
Slowly. Quietly. In ways he won’t see coming until it’s too late to run. ”
He lets out a humorless huff, licking the blood from his lip like the taste gives him courage. “You think he cares about your petty threats?”
I smile, just a small curl of my mouth, barely there. “It wasn’t a threat.”
That’s when he understands. The silence that follows isn’t just quiet—it’s surrender. You can see the moment a man realizes he miscalculated, that he’s not facing a warning but a wall he can’t get through. He gets it now.
Maverick drifts a little closer, voice flat, almost bored. “Want me to turn him into a message?”
I study the intruder a moment longer. The stiffness in his shoulders has melted into something weaker. Acceptance. Or fear. Maybe both. “No,” I say finally. “He wanted eyes on this. We’ll give him something to see.”
A few minutes later, he’s still breathing.
Barely. Just enough to crawl to his people with the knowledge that mercy exists—but only when I decide it does.
Maverick tucks a vial of blood into his jacket, the old tradition our enemies always understand.
Blood spilled, but not taken. A warning wrapped in restraint.
They want a war. And they’re about to get one.
I straighten my cuffs, exhale once, and let the calm settle back into place. The chaos of the party waits beyond the door—heat, noise, and bodies still dissolving under the drug Violet created without realizing what it would unleash.
But none of that matters.
I have a Kitten to find.