Page 59 of Onyx Realm

A slow smile curled across my face. The lover might not die tonight, but this idiot was going to sate my rage. With a manic laugh, I took off sprinting.

Serena tripped, sprawling and rolling over the curb. She rounded quickly on the man and screamed in his face, “I don’t have anything! For the first time in my life, I am penniless, and I love it!”

But, princess, you have me.And I was loaded. She would want for nothing.

Not protection, not luxuries. As my queen, it was all hers.

It was time she learned that.

Chapter 20 – Serena

“Excuse me, miss, can I trouble you for some cash? I’m hard on my luck,” a voice called out from the heap of trash beside me, breaking the turbulent mental gymnastics of the pie slice and the dilemma it posed. There was no reasonable explanation for showing up with the dessert, but I was loath to let my conquest go to waste. I was half contemplating shoveling it down my throat when the voice stopped me. So focused on hurrying back to Delphi before I was missed, I nearly stepped on his sprawled legs. I moved nimbly around him before pausing.

“I don’t have money. But...here!” I said brightly.

The pie was going to be my declaration, the symbol of my choice to stay. There was something here, some attraction with the Greek, and I wanted to explore it rather than resume my previous life of haunting the halls of my brother’s mansion.

The man swatted the Styrofoam box away. “I want money!”

I reared back, more angry that the pie fell than scared. Just because I’d realized I needed to dispose of it before going back into Delphi didn’t mean I wanted to see it splattered on the pavement. But there it was.

“Hey! That was my pie,” I protested.

“Money,” the man threatened. “Give me.”

He stepped forward. The motion finally clicked, and fear trickled down my spine.

I jumped back, leaning precariously on the base of my heels.

With more speed than expected given his lethargic position against the wall, the man stumbled after me. I didn’t move quickly enough, and he pawed at my dress. Disgust roiled through me.

“Get off me!” I shoved him.

He reached for my breast. “Where’s the money?”

I jerked to the side, dug my heel in, and took off running.

The sound of his rapid footfalls said he was equally as fast.

A crack in the cement snagged my heel and sent me pitching forward. The ground rose to meet me. Sprawled out on the dirty ground, my body screamed in multiple places, but I twisted around. “I don’t have anything! For the first time in my life, I am penniless, and I love it!”

“A rich girl like you always has money,” the man sneered. He was gross, smelling as bad as the trash he’d been snoozing on, while dirt and filth painted his clothing. “Just give me something for food and I’ll leave you alone!”

“I gave you my pie!” Unbelievable! Un-freaking-believable!

“That’s not what I wanted,” the man slurred.

Great. He was likely drunk, and in my frenzy of emotions, I missed that detail.

But it didn’t matter. I was done with masculine nonsense. This man was harassing me. Leo was pissed at me. And Markos? Well, Markos was a lot of things, but he was on my shit list too.

“If you weressooohungry, you would have eaten that,” I shouted.

“You took the lady’s pie?” a dark voice cracked through the night like a thunderclap. “Big mistake—your second, in fact.”

Markos unfolded from the shadows and caught the man behind his throat. The thug started twitching manically. But he was no match for the raw violence pulsing around the creature of the deep.

“What was his first?” I muttered, pushing to my feet and dusting the dirt off my dress. The action was futile. The white skirt was streaked.

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