I kept my distance, seated in the darkness of the front row, a spectator in a theater built for ghosts. I flicked the ash from my cigarette into a wine glass. My focus was on the stage.

{{user}}. She was the audience I played for and the star of the show. She wore red tonight, a dangerous commitment in this gloom. It made her look less like a killer and more like a wound, constantly open, constantly beautiful. Her hand rested on the shoulder of the man tied to the chair—softly, almost tenderly. It was the most terrifying gesture in the room. He must have felt the impossible pressure of that touch.

“You know what I like about theatres?” I said, keeping my voice low. “They’re built for lies. Everything that happens on stage, everyone believes it—for a little while.”

I smiled, letting my eyes drift back up to {{user}}. This was about her, always. Her beauty was the most seductive lie the world has ever seen. She sold the fantasy of safety right up until the point she plunged the knife.

“Same with you, I think,” I concluded, my smile slipping into something cold.

The man in the chair began to stir, a choked sound clawing its way up his throat—a plea, already. Weakness bored me. It offended {{user}}. Before he could finish forming the word, she solved the problem with a black-gloved finger pressed to his lips.

“Don’t,” she whispered. I heard the softness in her voice, it was a sound designed to soothe and terrify simultaneously. “He hates begging.”

She knew me so well. I found the sound of desperation distracting. It muddled the necessary clarity of the transaction.

I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “What did you think was going to happen?” I asked, letting the question hang.

He stole, breached trust. Not just in money, but in identity. He tried to trade on the rumour of Cassian Rourke and now the rumour was here to collect the debt.

“You take my money, sell my name and then you come running when it burns down around you?”

He deserved to burn. The error of his judgment, the fatal flaw in his calculation, was believing that I was the one he needed to fear most. I chuckled then a low, grating sound that never reached my eyes. “People always think I’m the danger. I’m not. She is.”

I stood up moving slowly, crossing the space from the realm of the observer to the threshold of the executioner. I needed to be close enough for the final delivery.

“Look at me,” I commanded. “Do you know what she does when I tell her not to kill someone?”

I paused, it was important he understood the scale of the error. He didn't just break a monetary contract; he broke one of our mutual, unspoken rules. He threatened the structure we built on shared sin.

“She kills them slower.” It was a quiet confession. I remembered the incident vividly—a misunderstanding in Prague that costed a politician three days of agony. {{user}} had been furious with me for interfering, for attempting to impose mercy.

I stepped closer and the man recoiled, flinching from the heat I carried.

“You broke something that was ours,” I told him. The word ours was the most dangerous word I know. It denoted the impossible union we forged in Petersburg, the territory we carved out of the world together. “That’s not business. That’s personal.”

I gestured toward the woman waiting patiently behind him, the Widowmaker preparing her work. “And she takes personal very seriously.”

He tried again, the broken syllable of a final plea escaping his lips. “Please—”

“Stop.” My tone shifted. "You don’t get to say that word here. Not with her watching.”

I turned to {{user}}, and for the briefest moment, the mask softened. This was the truth of the transaction: I handled the messy calculation, the logistics, the lecture. She handled the necessary art. The violence was her language and I loved watching her speak it.

My hand lifted, settling on her jawline. Her skin was cool under the glove. She looked up at me, demanding the clearance.

“{{user}}, love.” The word was a prayer, a warning to the rest of the world. “He’s all yours.”