Ayla’s breath hitched.
The man from the shadows was suddenly standing directly beside her. He had moved with the terrifying, silent grace of an apex predator.
“Put it on my tab,” a voice rumbled – deep, gravelly, and laced with absolute authority.
Ayla spun around, muscles tensing defensively. “I don’t need your charity. What do you want?”
The man leaned down slightly, and the dim light finally caught his face. He looked like a fallen angel carved from marble – pale skin, a sharp jawline, and a faint, jagged scar cutting through his left eyebrow.
Cassius didn’t look at her face. His dark, dangerous eyes dropped to the glowing screen of her tablet.
He was looking at the financial acquisition blueprints for the Gilliam Group.
A slow, wicked smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth.
“You have good taste,” Cassius murmured, his voice sending a shiver down Ayla’s spine. “But Gilliam’s firewalls aren’t that easy to hack.”
Ayla’s heart slammed against her ribs. She snapped the tablet shut.
Ayla forced her breathing to steady and looked up into the man’s terrifyingly calm eyes.
“I’m reading public SEC filings,” she said, her voice dripping with ice. “I’m not a hacker.”
Cassius let out a low, rough chuckle. He opened his mouth to respond, but a loud crash at the entrance cut him off.
Two massive bouncers were shoved violently aside.
Axel stormed into the speakeasy radiating pure, unhinged rage, with Kristal trailing closely behind him, a smug smile plastered across her face. His eyes swept the dark room and instantly locked onto Ayla at the bar. He had been forced to fly to New York for an emergency board meeting about the impending PR disaster, and his security team – leveraging Farrell tech against the city’s surveillance network – had flagged her face entering the building.
He marched across the room, his heavy footsteps cutting through the jazz.
He lunged forward and grabbed Ayla’s wrist, his fingers digging into her bones with brutal, bruising force.
“Is this how low you’ve sunk?” Axel spat, his face inches from hers. “Begging for drinks from random men in a basement?”
Ayla gritted her teeth against the pain shooting up her arm and tried to yank her hand free. His grip was iron.
“Let go of me,” she hissed. “Tracking my location is a felony.”
Kristal stepped up beside Axel and crossed her arms. “We had to cancel three investor calls to hunt you down, Ayla,” she sneered. “Cut off from the Farrell money for one day and you’re already selling yourself for a glass of cheap liquor.”
The surrounding patrons turned their heads to watch. Recognizing Axel Farrell, not one of them dared to intervene.
Axel reached into his jacket, pulled out a blank check, and slammed it onto the bar counter.
“Cash out whatever this guy paid for her,” he barked at the bartender. “I don’t want his dirty money touching my wife.”
Just inches away in the shadows, Cassius’s eyes went completely dead. The temperature around him seemed to drop ten degrees.
Axel didn’t notice him. He yanked Ayla’s arm violently, dragging her off the barstool.
“You’re coming with me to a psychiatric ward,” he snarled. “You’ve completely lost your mind.”
Ayla’s wrist burned with pain. Her eyes fell on the glass of untouched bourbon sitting on the bar.
Without a moment’s hesitation, she grabbed it with her free hand, twisted her body, and threw the entire contents directly into Axel’s face.
The alcohol splashed into his open eyes.
Axel let out a howl of agony, his hands flying to his face and releasing her wrist instantly. Kristal shrieked and frantically dug through her purse for a tissue.
When Axel’s eyes cleared, his face was twisted with blind fury. He raised his right hand high and swung it down with full force, aiming a brutal slap at Ayla’s face.
Ayla didn’t blink. She held her ground, prepared to absorb the blow and secure the assault charge.
The slap never landed.
Axel’s wrist stopped dead in mid-air.
A massive hand clamped around his forearm like a steel vice. Cassius stepped out of the shadows, his towering frame completely shielding Ayla from Axel. He tightened his grip. The sickening sound of bone grinding against bone echoed through the quiet bar.
Axel gasped, his knees buckling as cold sweat broke across his forehead.
Cassius looked down at him with the absolute boredom of a god regarding an insect.
“In this lounge,” Cassius said, his voice a lethal, quiet rasp, “no one touches a lady on my tab.”
“Who the fuck are you?!” Axel screamed, his face pale with pain. “Do you know who I am? I’ll destroy you!”
Behind Cassius, two men in tailored black suits stepped forward. As they moved, their jackets shifted to reveal the distinct, bulky outlines of military-grade tactical holsters strapped to their ribs.
Axel’s bodyguards, who had just rushed in, froze instantly. They recognized the hardware. This was no corporate security detail. This was a death squad.
Cassius released Axel’s arm with a flick of his wrist, as though discarding a piece of trash. He reached into his pocket, produced a pristine white silk handkerchief, and slowly wiped his fingers clean before dropping it at Axel’s feet.
“Scram,” Cassius said. One word. Absolute dominance.
Axel clutched his bruised wrist. He looked at the armed men, then at Cassius. The humiliation burned his face red, but the primal fear coiling in his gut forced him to step back. He grabbed Kristal’s arm and practically ran for the exit.
Ayla stood frozen, staring at the broad, muscular back of the man who had just humiliated the most powerful tech CEO in California. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
Cassius turned around and looked down at the angry red mark blooming across her wrist. His dark eyes lifted to meet hers.
“Your taste in men,” he murmured, a mocking smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth, “is truly tragic.”
Ayla sat on the edge of a lumpy mattress in a cheap, rundown motel on the outskirts of Brooklyn. She had paid for the room in cash. No ID required.
She crossed to the heavy wooden door and slid the rusted deadbolt into place, then pressed her forehead against the peeling paint and let out a long, trembling breath. The room smelled faintly of bleach and stale cigarette smoke.
She walked into the cramped bathroom and turned on the faucet, splashing freezing water onto her face to wash away the adrenaline and the lingering scent of the speakeasy. She grabbed a scratchy towel, looked up at the cracked mirror, and her eyes immediately dropped to her wrist.
The bruise Axel had left was deepening into an ugly shade of purple.
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