The Miller Tech headquarters was a monolith of steel and polarized glass that pierced the city's smoggy skyline. Inside the 50th-floor boardroom, the air-conditioning hummed at a clinical temperature, but Clara felt a bead of sweat track down her spine.
"The merger is a mistake, Mrs. Miller," sneered Marcus Thorne, a man whose smile held all the warmth of a shark's belly. He was the lead investor, and he'd brought a team of "security consultants" who looked more like killers than bodyguards. "Your company is undervalued, and your security protocols are... porous."
Clara slammed her pen down. "My protocols are the best in the industry, Thorne. What you're asking for is a hostile takeover disguised as a partnership."
As the argument escalated, Clara felt a strange sensation—a prickle on the back of her neck. It was the same feeling she had in the kitchen that morning, a heavy, magnetic pressure. She glanced toward the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Fifty stories up, there was nothing but the gray sky. Or so she thought.
On the exterior ledge of the 51st floor, Ren crouched in the shadows of a massive ventilation unit. He wasn't wearing an apron now. He was clad in a matte-black tactical bodysuit that clung to his frame like a second skin, highlighting the explosive musculature he usually hid under loose sweaters.
He wasn't looking at the boardroom. He was looking at the elevator shaft on his thermal HUD.
Four signatures. Fast.
They weren't Thorne's men. These signatures moved with a synchronized rhythm that Ren recognized instantly. This was a "Sanitization Squad."
"Targeting my wife for a corporate dispute," Ren whispered, his voice caught by the wind. "Thorne, you just signed your own death warrant."
Before the elevator doors could even slide open on the 50th floor, Ren moved. He didn't use the stairs. He stepped off the ledge.
He fell three stories in a controlled drop, his gloved fingers digging into the structural grooves of the building to slow his descent. He swung his body with violent grace, shattering the reinforced glass of the 49th-floor server room just as the hit squad bypassed the floor's security.
The hallway was a blur of silenced gunfire and muffled grunts. Ren didn't use a gun; he was the weapon.
He moved through the first two assassins like a ghost made of lead. A palm strike to a throat, a sweep of a leg that shattered a femur—it was efficient, silent, and terrifyingly fast.
He was reaching for the third man when a blade whistled through the air, missing his ear by a fraction of an inch and embedding itself into the wall.
Ren stopped. He didn't turn around. He smelled her before he saw her: charcoal, rain, and a drop of something metallic.
"Zero," a female voice purred. It was a husky, dangerous sound that vibrated with a mix of hatred and twisted longing.
Ren turned slowly. Standing at the end of the hall was a woman dressed in crimson leather. Her hair was ink-black, tied in a high, whipping ponytail, and her eyes were a piercing, unnatural violet—the mark of a low-grade enhancement. This was Viper.
"You've gotten soft, Master," she said, her tongue flicking over her upper lip as her gaze traveled down Ren's body, lingering on the way his suit strained against his chest. "Playing house with a little CEO? Cooking her eggs? It's pathetic. It makes me want to kill her even more."
"Viper," Ren said, his voice flat. "Leave this building, and I might let you keep your hands."
Viper laughed, a sharp, melodic sound. She stepped closer, ignoring the three unconscious men on the floor. She didn't draw another blade; instead, she walked right up to him, stopping until her chest was brushing against his tactical vest.
"I've missed that look in your eyes," she whispered, reaching up to trace the line of his jaw with a trembling finger. "The way you look like you're deciding which part of me to break first. It's... intoxicating."
She leaned in, her lips inches from his. "Kill the wife, Ren. Come back to us. I'll be anything you want. Your soldier, your slave... your queen. Imagine what we could do with your Pulse and my venom."
Ren's hand shot out, gripping her throat. He didn't squeeze, but the sheer power in his grip made her breath hitch in a way that wasn't entirely caused by fear.
"She is my world," Ren growled, his amber eyes flaring to life, filling the hallway with a suffocating, heavy heat. "You are just a ghost I haven't buried yet."
Viper's eyes went wide, her heart hammering against her ribs. The sheer intensity of his presence was overwhelming, a raw, masculine force that made her blood boil. Even as he held her by the throat, she wanted to sink into him.
"Then bury me, Ren," she gasped, a dark smile spreading across her face. "But do it in your bed, not in the ground."
Suddenly, the fire alarm blared. The boardroom doors at the end of the hall began to open.
"We aren't finished," Ren said, shoving her back into the shadows of the stairwell just as Clara stepped out into the hallway, looking pale and confused.
"Ren?" Clara called out, looking around the empty, dimly lit corridor. "Is someone there?"
Ren shifted instantly. He shed his tactical hood and stepped into the light, looking like a worried husband who had just rushed up the stairs.
"Clara! Thank god," he said, pulling her into his arms. He held her tight, his heart rate already masking back down to a calm, human 60 beats per minute.
Over her shoulder, he saw Viper lingering in the darkness of the stairwell. She blew him a silent kiss, her eyes promising a very different kind of confrontation