5. THE WRONG WOMAN

♣️XAVIER♣️

I walked through my own front door bare-chested, blood dried tight down my forearms and across my knuckles, and the guards posted along the hall straightened at the sight of me the way they always did. Their eyes flicking to the blood and then away again fast, trained well enough not to ask questions.

Dorian was waiting near the stairs, and he looked me up and down once, unbothered by any of it. "You look like hell."

"You should see the other twelve." I smirked.

"I'd rather not." He fell into step beside me, easy and familiar, the way we'd walked beside each other since we were boys sparring in this same house before either of us understood what any of it would cost us. "Both of them are locked in the east room."

"Both of them?"

"I told you. I wasn't sure which one was actually her under that mask, so I had my men take the two dancers who matched the build and hair color you gave me. One of them is Angela or something like that." He glanced sideways at me. "I didn't want to risk grabbing the wrong girl and letting the right one walk free while we figured it out."

"Good thinking."

"Doesn't mean I liked doing it." He shook his head, his jaw tight. "Snatching two women off the street and locking them in a room. That's not a small thing, Xavier, whatever's going on with you right now."

"I heard you the first time you said it, on the phone."

"I'm saying it again because you didn't listen the first time."

I didn't answer that, because he wasn't wrong, and arguing about it now wouldn't undo a single second of what we'd already done. We reached the east room and the guard posted outside straightened and stepped aside without a word.

I opened the door myself.

Both women were sitting on the floor against the far wall, wrists bound in front of them, and the second the door swung open and they saw me standing there, bare-chested, blood dried down both arms, one of them screamed.

"Please don't hurt us." The one with brown hair scrambled backward until her spine hit the wall, tears already streaking down her face. "Please, we didn't do anything, please—"

"Quiet." I didn't raise my voice and it didn't matter, she flinched like I'd shouted directly in her ear, and the second one, blue eyed, went rigid beside her, staring at the blood on my hands like she was trying to decide whether it was going to end up on her next.

Blue eyes.

For one full second my heart slammed against my ribs so hard it hurt, and I crossed the room faster than I meant to, crouching down in front of her, gripping her chin and tilting her face up into the lamp light before she could pull away.

Wrong shade. Too light, almost gray at the edges, nothing like the deep unwavering blue that had been living behind my eyes for three straight days.

I let go of her chin like it had burned me.

"Please," she whispered, shaking so hard her bound wrists rattled against each other. "Please, whatever you think we did—"

"Shut up." I stood, and both of them went completely still, the way prey goes still when it's decided moving might get it killed faster. "Where's your mask?"

"What mask?" The brown haired one's voice cracked into something almost hysterical. "We don't have a mask, we don't know what you're talking about, please, we work the early shift, we don't even dance in masks—"

"Angel." I said the name like it might mean something to them, like saying it out loud again might somehow conjure a different answer than the one I already knew was coming. "Silver mask. Which one of you is her."

"Neither of us." The blue eyed one found some steadiness in her voice despite the tears still running down her face. "We don't even know an Angel personally, we've seen her dance, everyone has, but she wasn't even at the club tonight. There was trouble earlier. Some men came in, smashed the place up over a debt, half the girls went home before their shifts even started."

Trouble over a debt.

Something cold moved through my chest at that, I filed it away fast because right now I had two sobbing women bound on the floor of my own house and an anger building in me with absolutely nowhere left to go.

"You're certain she wasn't there."

"I'm certain." The brown haired one nodded fast, desperate, like agreeing hard enough might buy her safety. "Please, just let us go, we haven't done anything wrong, please, I have a daughter, please don't—"

"Dorian." I turned away from both of them because looking at that woman's face while she begged for her daughter was doing something unclean in ny chest. I was still bloodthirsty. "Untie them."

"Xavier." He said my name carefully.

"Untie them, Dorian."

He crossed the room and worked the rope loose from the brown haired one's wrists first, and she yanked her hands free the second they came loose, cradling them against her chest, sobbing openly now that the fear had cracked into something closer to relief. The blue eyed one held still while he untied her, her jaw tight, eyes wet but her composure holding in a way the other one's hadn't.

"You're free to go." My voice came out flat, tired, disgusted with myself in a way I didn't have the energy to examine yet. "My men will drive you home."

"Just like that." The blue eyed one rubbed at the raw skin circling her wrists, and there was an edge creeping into her voice now that the terror had started to drain out of her. "You drag us out of our own club in the middle of the night, tie us up, lock us in a room, and now you expect us to just leave."

"I expect you to take whatever money my men give you on the way out and forget any of this happened."

"And if we don't forget it?" She said, her fist clenching, “we could go to the police—”

"Then you'll find out exactly how much worse tonight could have gone." I said it quietly, and it landed the way I meant it to, her mouth snapping shut, the fight draining back out of her face.

"Dorian." I didn't look away from the door. "Get them out of my house. Now."

He didn't argue this time. He gathered both women up, the brown haired one still sobbing, the blue eyed one silent and rigid, and steered them out past the guard and down the hall.

I stood there alone in the room with disappointment sitting in my chest heavier than anything I'd carried out of that forest a few hours ago, over a woman whose face I still hadn't seen.