Malakai's POV
The punching bag swung hard to the left.
So did my fist.
Leather met leather with a brutal crack that echoed through the private gym, followed by another hit, then another. My breathing was already rough, heat gathering under my skin, sweat rolling down the back of my neck and spine, but I didn't stop.
I hit it again.
And again.
Then I drove my knee into the center, sending the bag jerking backward on its chain before I caught it with both hands, yanked it toward me, and slammed another punch into it hard enough to sting my knuckles through the wraps.
Good.
Pain was useful.
Pain kept the body occupied when the mind refused to stay quiet.
The gym was dim except for the strip lights above, throwing hard white lines across the black mats, the weights, the mirrored walls. My breath came in sharp pulls, chest rising and falling, sweat dripping from my temples to my jaw. The room smelled like metal, leather, effort.
I preferred it that way.
No talking. No questions. No people.
Just impact.
I hit the bag again with a right hook, followed by two fast jabs and a kick that sent it swinging so hard the chain gave a strained metallic groan from above.
That should have been enough.
It wasn't.
So I kept going.
Another punch.
Another.
Another.
There was too much moving beneath my skin these days — too much pressure, too many loose ends, too many shipments to track, too many stupid men making expensive mistakes. The robbed cargo alone had been enough to warrant blood, and the fact that I still didn't have a confirmed location for the leak gnawed at the back of my skull like a persistent blade.
Then there was school.
That girl.
That house.
That strange shift in atmosphere every time she stepped into a room and somehow tried to disappear inside it.
It may seem like I don't notice. But I do. And I don't want to
The bag took another hit for that thought.
Then I heard a voice behind me.
"Bro."
I ignored it and hit the bag again.
"Bro," the voice said louder this time, full of lazy amusement, "do you actually have a personal argument with the punching bag, or do you just do this to everything, even when it's not alive?"
I stopped.
The bag swung once. Twice. Then slowed.
I turned.
Raphael was leaning against the doorway like he owned the room, or at least felt entitled to take up space in it. He had that same infuriatingly relaxed posture he always had — hands in the pockets of his joggers, hair still a little messy from sleep, grin already playing at the corner of his mouth like he'd arrived solely to irritate me into conversation.
Sweat rolled from my hairline down the side of my face.
"What do you want?"
Raphael placed a hand dramatically over his chest. "Wow. Is that really how you greet your best friend?"
"You're not my best friend."
Lie
"Yeah, keep telling yourself that."
I stared at him.
He grinned wider.
I turned away from the bag, grabbed the towel from the bench, and wiped my face. "What do you want, Raphael?"
He pushed off the wall and walked into the gym. "My office gave me a week off."
That was news.
I looked at him properly now. There was a fading bruise along the side of his jaw that hadn't been there last week, and though he moved like usual, I caught the slight stiffness in his left shoulder.
"What happened?"
He waved a hand. "Nothing dramatic. A few injuries. A few idiots. Some paperwork. Apparently everyone decided we should all 'take time to rebalance,' which is corporate language for 'go away until this turns into somebody else's problem.'" He spread his arms. "So I thought, why not spend the day with my best bro?"
He said best bro with so much enthusiasm that it felt offensive.
"You need to saturate me better," he continued, walking over to the water station like he belonged there. "You really, really need to saturate me better, or this relationship is done." he said giving me a sarcastic, grinned face.
I stared at him flatly.
Raphael clicked his tongue. "See? This is exactly what I mean. No warmth. No appreciation. No effort. I'm carrying this friendship alone."
"You'll always be an idiot."
He lit up. "Aw. See? That's the closest thing to affection you've given me this week."
I didn't bother replying.
Because the problem was, Raphael actually was my best friend.
My only real friend.
The only person alive who could walk into my space, run his mouth the way he did, and leave with all his teeth still intact. He was also one of the only people who knew enough of the old version of me to understand what I'd become without constantly trying to dissect it.
That history mattered.
When we were younger, before everything calcified into what it was now, I used to run to his house sometimes. When my father was still alive. When the house I grew up in felt less like a home and more like a war zone in a tailored suit. On the nights my father came back drunk, angry, looking for a target to remind himself he still had power, Raphael's place became the one door I knew I could knock on without questions being asked.
I never told Raphael's parents much.
I never had to.
They saw enough.
He saw enough too.
And somehow, after all these years, after distance and blood and business and burying people we should've had longer, we were still here.
He tossed me a bottle of water.
I caught it one-handed and sat down on the bench, my muscles still humming from the workout. Raphael dropped down beside me, stretching his legs out in front of him like he planned to stay until forcibly removed.
"How's work?" He asked, as I twisting the cap off the bottle.
"Good. What about you?" I asked after a huge gulp of water.
He sighed like a man burdened by the stupidity of the world. "Terrible. Everyone's incompetent. The coffee tastes like betrayal. One guy used the phrase circle back four times in a single meeting, which I think should legally count as provocation."
I took a long drink of water. "I heard about the case with the leeches." he said and I just stared blank
"Yeah."
"Find out who they are yet?"
I sighed because I felt incompetent. "We've got fragments. Names. Routes. A few faces. But getting their actual locations? That's going to be harder."
"Damn."
"Exactly."
For a moment, the gym went quiet except for the sound of our breathing and the distant hum of the air conditioning. Then Raphael tilted his head toward me.
"So," he said, "you going out tonight or what?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't have time for it."
He groaned like I'd said something personally insulting. "After this?"
"I shower. Then I go see my men. Then I deal with the shipment problem."
Raphael turned to look at me fully, scandalized. "You know you're only twenty-two, right?"
I said nothing.
"You're still young, bro. You should be living your life."
"I am."
He stared at me for a second, then barked a laugh. "No, you're not. This?" He gestured vaguely at my sweat, the gym, my general existence. "This is not living. This is brooding with a bank account."
I drank more water.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Look at you. You don't even have a girlfriend."
I didn't answer.
He smirked. "When was the last time you got laid?"
Still nothing.
Raphael made a triumphant sound and pointed at me. "Exactly. See? I knew it." He shook his head solemnly. "Bro, if you don't want to take your pants off, you can just give them to me. I know at least two people who'd write sonnets to your thighs."
I looked at him with genuine disgust. "That's disgusting."
"And yet we're still talking."
"That's the tragic part."
He laughed.
It was easy with him. Irritating, but easy. Raphael had that kind of personality that could make a morgue feel conversational. Bright where I was dark. Loose where I was controlled. Loud where I preferred silence. He stepped into rooms and warmed them. I stepped into rooms and altered their temperature for other reasons.
And somehow it worked.
He leaned back on the bench. "Alright then, Ice Viper. Let's talk about something else."
I knew that tone.
I glanced at him sideways. "No."
"Oh, come on. I'm already interested."
"You're always interested in things that don't concern you."
"And yet I'm always right."
He turned toward me, eyes sharp now beneath the humor. "What's the deal with Kiera?"
I looked at him.
He held up both hands. "There it is. That expression. Which means I'm onto something."
"She's here because her father still owes me over two million and couldn't pay."
Raphael's brows lifted. "So she's collateral."
"Yes."
"And she's here?" He looked around like she might materialize in the gym. "In the house-house?"
"Yes."
He frowned slightly. "Why?"
I knew what he meant.
Why not the basement. Why not one of the lower holding rooms. Why not keep her where debt collateral usually went until the debt was settled or redirected.
That had been the original plan.
The logical plan.
The appropriate plan.
I stared at the black rubber flooring for a second before answering.
"Because when I went there," I said slowly, "I saw her."
Raphael didn't speak.
I continued, voice flat. "And she didn't look like them."
He waited.
"She looked..." I paused, irritated by the imprecision of the thought. "Wrong."
He blinked. "Wrong?"
"Too thin. Too pale. Too quiet. I saw the bruises on her body. Her neck, face, wrists..... " My jaw tightened. "Like she was already living in a place darker than anything I would've put her in."
Raphael said nothing for a moment, then let out a low whistle. "So the Ice Viper does have a heart."
I looked at him sharply.
"You don't understand."
His grin faded a little.
"If someone had looked at me like that back then," I said, staring straight ahead now, "if someone had seen what was happening and actually done something..." I shrugged once. "Maybe I wouldn't be who I am now."
The words settled heavily in the air.
Raphael looked at me for a long second, and when he spoke again, his voice had lost some of its teasing edge.
"She's young."
"Yes."
"And you didn't want that for her."
"No."
That was the simplest version of it.
The fuller truth was uglier and less convenient. If it had been the stepsister instead — the one with the hard eyes and that polished little cruelty she wore like perfume — I wouldn't have thought twice. She would've gone downstairs, into the cold stone and dark air, and maybe worse depending on how annoyed I felt that day.
But Kiera?
No.
She'd stood in that house like a ghost no one had buried properly. Invisible on purpose. Silent in that way some people become silent only after they've learned that noise gets punished.
I knew that kind of silence.
And maybe that was the problem.
Raphael leaned his forearms on his knees. "I don't really know her," he said. "She doesn't talk much."
"No."
"But she seems cool."
I said nothing.
"And she gets along with Bridget."
That made me look at him again. And smirked.
Raphael laughed. "Exactly. That alone makes her suspicious. Who the hell gets along with Bridget that fast?"
Despite myself, I let out a short breath that almost passed for a chuckle.
Raphael caught it immediately and pointed. "There. See? Human emotion. I knew you were still in there somewhere."
I ignored him.
He kept going. "So she's going back to school, right?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because she has exams coming up. College entry in a term or two." I twisted the cap back onto the bottle. "I'm not holding her back from that."
Raphael made a low sound, thoughtful now. "She does seem different."
I knew that tone too.
I turned to him slowly.
His mouth twitched.
"It's not what you're thinking."
That made him grin outright. "I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"Probably."
I stood up, done with the conversation.
Raphael looked up at me from the bench, shamelessly entertained. "Okay, okay. Relax. I'm just saying — she's different, you notice she's different."
"I don't have time for relationships. Or women. Or whatever pointless direction your brain is trying to take this." I grabbed the towel again and ran it over the back of my neck. "It's me and work. My empire. That's it. She knows her place, she adjusts to it, and she doesn't give me a reason to be brutal. If she keeps doing that, she won't have any problems."
Raphael nodded exaggeratedly. "Yeah, yeah."
I looked at him.
He held up his palms. "I'm agreeing with you."
"You're insufferable."
"And yet beloved."
Before I could respond, my phone buzzed against the bench.
I picked it up.
The screen lit with a name.
Tiger. One of my men.
I answered immediately. "What?"
The voice on the other end was rough, deep, all business. "Boss. We found one of the cargo containers that was robbed."
Every muscle in my body sharpened.
"Where?"
"Lakeview Street. Closer to the ship docks. It's been cracked open, but you should come see this yourself."
I straightened fully. "What's inside?"
A pause.
"Not enough."
Of course.
My jaw locked.
"I'll be there in an hour."
I ended the call and slid the phone back into my hand.
Raphael had already read enough off my face to know the mood had changed.
"Trouble?"
"Shipment."
He sighed. "Of course."
I started toward the door. "Make yourself comfortable. I have to go."
Raphael pushed himself to his feet too. "Yeah, no problem." Then, with that irritatingly easy smile again, "Good luck."
I paused just long enough to look back at him.
"I don't need luck."
He laughed under his breath. "Sure you don't."
Then I left him in the gym and straight to my room to shower.
The shower water came down hot.
It hit the back of my neck, ran over my shoulders, traced the lines of my chest and stomach, washed sweat and the metallic taste of adrenaline down the drain in curling streams. Steam thickened the glass, fogged the mirrors, blurred the edges of everything except thought.
And against my will, thought circled back to Raphael's voice.
She's different.
I leaned one hand against the tile and let the water beat down on the back of my head.
She was.
That was the problem.
Or maybe not the problem. Just the fact.
Different in a way that irritated me because I hadn't decided what to do with it yet.
Most people in my world made themselves obvious. They reached. They performed. They wanted to be noticed, feared, desired, useful, protected, chosen. Everyone was always trying to be something.
Kiera did the opposite.
She tried so hard to make herself invisible that it made every small thing about her stand out more.
The way she watched before she spoke.
The way she thanked the staff like she still expected kindness to expire if she touched it too much.
The way she carried hurt without displaying it, like she'd learned to fold pain into herself until it became posture.
The way she looked at luxury like it was temporary and danger like it was familiar.
And that silence of hers.
Not emptiness.
Not stupidity.
Restraint.
A girl making herself smaller than she really was because experience had taught her that taking up space came with punishment.
I knew that instinct intimately.
Maybe that was why I noticed her more than I should have.
Or maybe it was because when she looked at me, she didn't look impressed.
Nervous, yes. Cautious, definitely. But not dazzled. Not thirsty. Not stupid.
Just alert.
I dragged a hand through my wet hair and exhaled sharply.
Too bad.
I didn't have time for any of that.
Not now.
Not with missing cargo, traitors in the chain, men too stupid to understand the cost of stealing from me, and blood that was already overdue somewhere by the docks.
I shut off the water.
The silence that followed felt colder.
As I stepped out and reached for a towel, I pushed the thought of her where I pushed everything else inconvenient — down, away, locked behind the part of me that knew exactly how to function without softness.
Work first.
Always.
Whatever those motherfuckers had done to my shipment, I was going to see it for myself.
And then I was going to make sure somebody paid for it.