Page 31 of Ruin
Which, knowing Cassius, it probably was. He likely had a seamstress in here while I slept—clipboard in hand, tape measure sliding along my ribs. Let no dust gather and all that.
The fabric is obscene in the way only custom work can be—sourced from somewhere European and expensive, tailored by hands that don’t ask who’s wearing it or why.
I study myself in the penthouse mirror.
Floor-length. A high slit climbing my left thigh. Backless to the base of my spine.
Deep, arterial red—the kind of color that silences a room mid-sentence.
The collar rests above the neckline like the dress was built around it, diamonds catching the light with every breath.
I look like a weapon someone polished.
Good.
"You're staring at yourself," Cassius says from the doorway. He's in all black tonight. Suit, shirt, no tie. The top two buttons undone, showing the edge of a scar I've traced with my tongue. His hair is pushed back, his jaw is freshly shaved, and he looks like the kind of man mothers warn their daughters about.
"I'm assessing," I tell him.
"And?"
I turn sideways. Check the line of the dress over my hip. "I'll do."
His eyes move down my body, taking me in. "You'll do more than that."
"Flattery. That's new."
"Strategy." He crosses the room and stops behind me. We both look at our reflection. His hands settle on my waist, thumbs pressing into the bare skin of my lower back. "Tonight matters. Every captain, every lieutenant, every person who runs a piece of this organization will be in that room. They need to see you and understand what you are."
"And what am I?"
His hand slides up my spine to the back of my neck. Not squeezing. Just resting there. The weight of his palm against my vertebrae is a reminder of who put me here.
"Their queen."
The word settles into my chest like a coal, warm and dangerous.
"Then let's not keep them waiting."
Purgatory is different at night.
During the day it sleeps.
A glossy, empty shell waiting for the dark to fill it with bodies and music and the kind of energy that makes your pulse race before you've even had a drink.
But at night, with the bass thumping through the walls and the caged dancers twisting overhead and the clientele dressed in black and gold and sin, it breathes. It pulses. It becomes something alive and predatory.
We skip the main floor entirely. Peter meets us at the private entrance and walks us straight to the elevator.
Paul is already downstairs. I can tell by the way Peter moves alone, one hand near his hip, eyes scanning corners out of habit rather than concern.
The elevator descends.
The air changes.
Hell.
I've been down here many times now, and each time it feels different.
