Chapter One Hundred And Seven:Teeth

Marcus's man talked faster than Eve expected, which told her everything about how thin the Syndicate's loyalty had actually worn since the rail yard.

They had him in the estate's lower level — not the interrogation room Sophia had bled information in weeks earlier, but a smaller room Eve had chosen specifically because it had no history attached to it yet. She wanted this to be hers, clean, untainted by anyone else's ghosts.

"You're going to tell me where they're moving the next shipment," she said, circling his chair slow, boots silent on concrete. "Not because I'll hurt you if you don't. Because you already know I don't need to."

The man — mid-thirties, a mid-tier courier who'd made the mistake of being loyal to the wrong employer — swallowed hard. "I don't know anything about shipments. I just drive."

"You drive for an organization currently losing a war it doesn't fully understand it's losing yet." Eve stopped behind him, leaned down close enough that her voice landed right at his ear, quiet and almost gentle, which was somehow worse than shouting. "I could have my squad do this the slow way. Days of it. I find that boring, personally. So here's what's going to happen instead."

She came around to face him, crouched to his eye level, and let him see exactly how little was left in her expression that resembled mercy.

"You tell me the route. I let you walk out of here with your knees intact and enough of a head start to disappear somewhere the Board will never think to look for a coward who talked." She tilted her head. "Or you stay quiet out of some misguided loyalty to men who'll feed you to Marcus the second you stop being useful, and I find out anyway, except slower, and considerably less pleasant for you personally."

"You wouldn't—"

"I've buried men for less than sitting in that chair being difficult." She said it flat, unhurried, and watched it land exactly the way she meant it to. "Ask around, if you survive tonight. Ask what Viper's actually capable of when she stops being patient. Your friends who lasted longer than you have plenty of stories."

He broke in under a minute.

---

Alex found her afterward in the corridor outside, arms crossed, watching through the one-way glass as Aria's people processed the intel the courier had finally coughed up.

"That wasn't the interrogation I would have run," he said, careful, not quite an accusation.

"I know." Eve didn't look at him, eyes still on the glass. "You'd have been patient. Given him an out earlier. Made it about strategy instead of fear."

"You didn't touch him."

"I didn't need to." Something cold and satisfied moved behind her eyes when she finally turned to face him. "Fear's cheaper than pain, and it lasts longer if you use it right. He'll spend the rest of his life flinching every time someone mentions my name. That's worth more to us than a few bruises he could explain away to whoever finds him."

Alex studied her a long moment, something complicated moving across his face — not disapproval, not quite. Recognition, maybe, of a version of her he'd only glimpsed in fragments until now.

"You enjoyed that," he said.

"I did." She didn't flinch from saying it. "You've spent months being careful with me. Gentle, even when you're wearing the mask. I appreciate it. I do." She stepped closer, voice dropping. "But I didn't survive the program by being soft, Alex, and I'm done pretending that part of me went quiet just because I finally remember who I am. I like being good at this. I like watching men who've hurt people I care about realize, too late, that they picked the wrong woman to underestimate."

"That's not a version of you I'm afraid of," he said, low.

"No?"

"No." His hand came up, thumb tracing her jaw with a heat that had nothing gentle left in it. "I spent months chasing a ghost in a mask because some part of me wanted exactly this — someone who wouldn't break, wouldn't need protecting from her own choices, wouldn't apologize for the teeth underneath the softness." His grip tightened at her waist, pulling her flush against him. "I think I fell for the woman who just walked out of that room just as hard as I fell for the one who cried in my library."

"Careful," Eve murmured, tilting her chin up, something dangerous and pleased curling through her voice. "Keep talking like that and I'll start thinking you like it when I'm ruthless."

"I do." He said it without apology, mouth finding the shell of her ear. "I like watching you become exactly as dangerous as you were always built to be. I just intend to be the one thing in this world you never turn that particular hunger on."

"Don't tempt me." But her hands had already found the front of his shirt, fisting into the fabric, some sharper current passing between them that had nothing soft left in it at all. "I've got a long list of people who deserve it more than you. Try to stay off it."

"I'll do my best." His grip on her hips turned bruising, possessive, dragging her back against the corridor wall with none of the careful restraint from the cottage. "Though I have to say, mia cara — watching you take that man apart with nothing but your voice was the single most attractive thing I've seen you do since the rail yard."

"Then you're going to enjoy the next thirty-eight days considerably more than you're prepared for," Eve breathed, and let him kiss the rest of the sentence out of her, sharp-edged and hungry, both of them finally done pretending the danger between them was something to be managed instead of wanted.