Page 7 of Roar Me Like You Mean It
“Intentional.”
I nod once, a gesture of recognition. Not respect yet. But interest.
“You researched me,” I say, not a question.
“Thoroughly.”
“Does anything surprise you?”
“Not yet.”
Her voice is level, but I can see the tension behind it. Not fear. Something closer to calculation. She’s threading a needle, trying to hold her ground without giving me an inch more than she has to.
“You have a reputation for disappearing men,” she says casually, tracing a finger around the rim of her glass. “Corruption cases, whistleblowers, journalists. They go looking into Thorne Strategic, and they either change careers or drop off the face of the planet.”
“They probably got bored,” I say. “Or tired.”
“Or dead.”
“Now that,” I murmur, stepping a fraction closer, “would be illegal.”
Our eyes lock again, and for a moment, neither of us breathes.
Then she leans in, just enough that her voice is low and intimate, but not enough for anyone else to notice.
“I’m not afraid of you.”
I don’t smile this time.
“No,” I say. “But you should be.”
She straightens, finishes her drink, and turns without another word, leaving her empty glass and a ripple of heat in her wake.
I watch her move through the crowd. Watch the way people instinctively shift around her, sensing something that doesn’t fit the mold.
Michaelis approaches from one side of the room, voice low in my ear.
“You want her removed?”
“No.”
He waits a beat.
“Interference?”
“She’s not interference,” I say. “She’s a storm system.”
I take another glass from a passing tray and this time, I drink.
It burns.
I don’t know whether I’m more interested in what she came here to do, or whether she has any idea what she’s just stepped into.
I move through the party again, slower this time, letting her drift just out of reach. Letting her feel me in the same space. Watching who she speaks to. She’s selective. Three conversations in twenty minutes. One with an oil executive who’s been trying to edge into shifter tech, one with a senator who owes me too many favors, and one with a woman in red whose name I don’t recognize.
None of it casual. Every move she makes is purposeful.
I want to see what happens when the control cracks.
