Page 80 of Alien War Daddy's Got Rizz
GRAU
Idon’t move at first.
She’s already gone. She walked away hours ago—eyes colder than anything I’ve ever faced on the battlefield, mouth tight with fury, with betrayal. Said I’d crossed lines she couldn’t forgive. That she didn’t know who I was anymore.
Thing is… she never did.
And I think maybe, for one aching second, I wanted her to. Wanted her to look past the teeth and the claws and the bone spurs and see something worth trusting.
Idiot.
The silence in her penthouse is surgical now. Like the air itself’s been sterilized of her scent, her breath, her warmth. The space feels hollow. Unused. The kind of quiet that only happens after a war—or right before one.
I’m still on the edge of her sofa, the one she used to curl into when I made her laugh hard enough that she couldn’t keep her knees together. My claws dig into the leather. Not enough to rip. Just enough to feel something.
She told me to leave.
Told me I’d gone too far. That framing Tidball—exposing him—was too much.
But I didn’t frame him. I just didn’t wait for permission.
The bastard’s been bleeding her dry for months. Gaslighting her. Isolating her. Hollowing out her company while whispering sweet reassurances in her ear like some parasitic father figure. I gave her the evidence. Everything. Names. Routes. Laundering trails. Payoffs.
And still she looked at me like I was the villain in her story.
That’s the part that stings. That sticks in my chest like a poorly buried blade.
She was hurting, and I was the reason.
And maybe that should matter more to me. Maybe. But it doesn’t change what comes next.
Because if she won’t let me protect her the clean way—the noble way—the way where I stand by her side, shoulder to shoulder in the daylight?
Then I’ll protect her in the dark.
I’ll tear the rot out by the roots, and I won’t be gentle about it.
My first target? Mendez.
Jonathan Tidball’s golden boy. He’s the one who launders the credits through fake consulting contracts and buried shell corps. Thinks nobody’s watching him because he only skims in five percent increments, spreading it thin.
He doesn’t even see me coming.
I catch him at a rooftop bar in Quadrant Twelve, laughing too loud over some stupid joke one of Tidball’s legal fixers tells. He’s wearing a jacket that cost more than I made last month, hair slicked back, comm implant glowing blue behind one ear.
I wait until his fourth drink. Until he’s relaxed, confident, cocky.
Then I walk through the crowd.
He doesn’t even register me until my hand closes around the back of his neck and slams his face into the glass tabletop. Shatters like sugar crystal.
Screaming. Scrambling. Blood.
I lean down and murmur against his ear.
“You should’ve used burner accounts.”
He gurgles something I don’t care about.
