KAYE
Rose. The drug has touched so many lives in New Malcolm. Even mine.
The previous videos were filmed with a more direct, purposeful focus on the subject, but the next is footage from a security camera. The image is fuzzy at first. I inhale sharply as it clears and reveals a place burned into my memory. Mayor Valentino Vanall’s office.
His desk is made from cherry wood. Sturdy. Antique. It takes up most of the center of the longer, narrow room with only a couple feet on either side for access. A half-height bookcase lines one wall; a shallow bar waits along the other. The art above them is tasteful. Modern. A massive slate fireplace makes up the entire back wall. Its flames dance in the viewscreen. Two leather armchairs face the desk, their backs nothing more than splotched shadows in the video feed, but I can smell the scent of them mixed with cigar smoke and spice nonetheless. The same smell follows Vanall wherever he goes.
Several meetings passed before I realized the scent was so much more than furniture or environment. It washim.A man in his fifties, Vanall carries his age well. His dark hair may be streaked with gray, but it only serves to give him an air ofgravitas. His tall form—six foot two inches, I once read in a magazine profile—is corded with lean muscle. The type of man who takes pride in his appearance, he is often seen in new, tailored suits or getting a shave at his preferred barber.
The women of New Malcolm call him a catch. His wife calls him a bastard. For me, Valentino Vanall was a generous benefactor. He’s the man who made Checkmate legitimate. The first one to speak to me and of me with respect. As a hero.The savior of New Malcolm,that’s what he called me.
Until I wasn’t.
I take in the familiar space. I’m so caught in my thoughts that I startle as the painting over the bookshelfmoves.Slides to the side on a hidden track to reveal an opening. I would estimate it at no more than three feet by three feet, not small by any means, but not large either. Something moves inside.
It’s just a flicker, a stirring within the dark cavern in the wall. If I weren’t examining the footage so closely, I could easily have missed it. Then limbs made of shadow spill out into the office.
“They call her the Black Monarch.”
I glance over my shoulder to find Zane fixated on the screen. I turn back just in time for the inky limbs to form into a shapely pair of legs, sheathed in material so purely void of color they seem transparent on the screen. Her waist cinches in appealingly, giving the perfect amount of curve to her thighs and buttocks. Darts sliced into her oxblood-colored, long-sleeve top give away tantalizing glimpses of sun-kissed skin. A matching capelet covers her hair down to her shoulders while a black mask conceals her face from cheekbones to chin.
“Black Monarch,” I sample the taste of the name on my tongue and find it bitter.
“An assassin,” Zane adds. “She’s on our trail.”
“I think I would notice if an assassin were targeting me.”
“I never said she was after you.” He smirks. “Who do you think set the fire in that warehouse, hm?”
“You.”
He looks away, his face undergoing a rapid shuffling of emotion as he turns. “You always thought the worst of me, didn’t you? You never once even considered that I didn’t want to be your villain. It’s just a role I got stuck playing.”
I fumble through words and thoughts faster than my mind to process them, trying to find something to say, because IwishI had. I wish I had seen in him an inkling of what he saw in me.
He huffs a laugh, shifts his weight to the other leg. “Did you know that you were going to see me that night?”
I shake my head, still searching for language that seems to have left me momentarily high and dry. The words that come out in no way encompass all of what I’d like to communicate, but at least it’s a start.
“I’m sorry,” I sputter.
I’ve wounded him. I’m not sure how I know—maybe it’s in the slope of his shoulders, the hair’s breadth of distance he adds between us.
“I’m sorry, Zane,” I repeat, and reach for him. Let me fingers dance across the tension in his shoulders to rest on the curve of his bicep.
His head dips into his hands, fingers carding through his hair as he thinks. He looks up at me through his lashes, expression shuttered again. “The worst part is that I can’t say I blame you. I made it too easy for them to narrate my story to their own benefit. This is about proof, right?” He tips his chin toward the screen.
Black Monarch is seated behind the mayor’s desk now, toying with the ballpoint pen on its surface, one long, slender leg crossed over the other. A stripe of light spreads across her face, her dark eyes glinting. They are the only part of her facethat is visible. An onyx cloth draped from her cheekbones to chin obscures the rest of her features, but even so she is mesmerizing.
Vanall storms into view, confronting Black Monarch in a flurry of silent speech and gestures.
“No audio?”
“We’re lucky to even have this.” He scoffs. “What I had to do to get it would offend your virtuous sensibilities.”
My cheeks heat, shame and something very different alight just below my skin’s surface. “I’m not diabolical, but that doesn’t make me a prude either.”
“We’ll see.” He snickers, and I want nothing more than to wipe that smug smirk right off his handsome face.
