Page 111 of Lethal Lover

Logan Cooke begins to sweat. There’s a flicker of light in his eyes, a sign of things not quite right. But nobody notices.

And no one will.

The people surrounding me are off their tits and balls on coke; drunk on thirty-dollar artisanal cocktails. Not one of them is going to notice until Cooke hits the floor.

I lean against the wall in the shadowy corner of Seven7Seven, a trendy faux secret spot in TriBeCa, complete with an entry password and a non-descript flight of stairs. They lead to the graffitied door, which opens into a long, tall black velvet lined hall that opens up to the bronze door of Seven7Seven’s dark, glamorous interior.

The height of the below-Fourteenth Street crowd’s pretensions, here in good old Manhattan. As one of the silent, hidden owners, Seven7Seven makes me a shit ton of money, and I can keep an eye on movers and shakers of all kinds.

Some of them I can use.

Some of them I might need to dispose of.

The Barnes and Noble and Japanese convenience store on ground level don’t even hint at what’s up here. A person has to book for weeks in advance or receive a special invite. The place is well-known to its very specific target audience and entry is highly coveted.

I settle back in the shadows and observe.

I don’t need to be here. Cooke’s demise is a done deal and glitterati parties are not my fucking jam. With the next job I decided to take on? Let’s just say there are other avenues to get what I need. But there’s a certain symmetry, an air of fate about doing it this way.

Not real fate. This is crafted down to the finest detail of the evening, complete with her arrival on the dot. But like all good artists, it’s going to appear seamless, effortless. A natural occurrence, just like fate. And when she realizes there isn’t a drop of serendipity or chance of any kind involved, her real fate, her future, finite as it is, will be sealed.

But I still refuse to look at Ivy Gardner. Not yet.

I want to time everything perfectly. Cooke, my revenge, my next project—

“You’re pretty,” a girl says, slurring, her hand on me lushes fluttering furiously.

She’s hot enough, I guess, whoever the fuck she is. But she’s touching without permission.

I glance at her hand, then her until she releases her grip on me. Rich and never worked a day in her life. This type is easy to pick out of a crowd. She doesn’t go away and I’m aware my fellow Obsidian Knight, Malone West, is watching closely.

“Not interested. Go away.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“But,” I say, gauging just how cruel I can be. “I do.”

Her eyes narrow and she turns, flouncing off.

“That’s not nice, Vale.”

“There’s a lot more I could have said. Or done.”

“Boundaries,” he says.

“The thing, West,” I say, not bothering with the niceties of society—fuck society—as he hands me a Laphroaig, “is that money gives us the freedom to do anything we want.”

“You’re a cold fucker.”

“You aren’t?” I spare him a glance. “Also,boundaries? For fucking real?”

Malone doesn’t give a damn about boundaries. What he gives a fuck about, what all the Knights do, is his own ass. The ability to indulge in his deepest, darkest appetites when he wants, how he wants, with no repercussions.

The Obsidian Knights. A very secret society, one that exists in the realm outside law and order and rules the rest of the world follows. Each Knight has been carefully curated, each of us has special skills. The crème de la crème of underworld criminals. Shadowy, existing on the edges of society. No oneneedsto work; we take on jobs or projects for different reasons.

I’m not saying there’s no money involved. There is. So much that half the assholes in here would come in their pants over all the zeroes attached to the numbers we receive for our work. I’m just saying money is never the sole reason why we do what we do.

Revenge. Pleasure. Boredom. Power. Hate. Even love, for those who believe in it.

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