"My Queen."
The words lashed across Hiraya's senses like a whip, sharp and stinging.
The corners of her eyes flickered, and heat surged into her cheeks, a quiet blaze of indignation rising within her.
Fortunately, the mask she wore concealed every trace of her reaction, its grandeur hiding the storm beneath.
"Five… four… three… two…" she counted silently, steadying the chaos threatening to spill over, as Joel's second-in-command –a man feared as both a drug baron and a biological weapons dealer—moved closer, bowing in calculated reverence.
A few meters behind the odd couple, Veta stood rigid, her pulse drumming under her veins.
Every atom of hatred stirred in her black heart the very second the word "queen" left Joel's lips.
Her eyes –those molten hazel eyes – narrowed slowly into slits, sharp and lethal, like they had been carved from the very eye of a raging storm.
