I move before the sentence finishes.
Not far. Not wildly. Two sharp steps and one hand around the front of his coat, shoving him back into the steel support column hard enough to rattle the diagnostics panel. The Odex outside the door slam against the threshold at once, but the door doesn’t open quickly enough for them to reach us before I lean in close enough that Mysk can smell exactly how little of the old game is left in me.
“You say one more word about them,” I tell him, voice quiet enough to be lethal, “and I will drag you through this compound by your imported lapels and hand you to every camera in the building while you explain your gambling scheme to the galaxy.”
Mysk’s breath catches. Not in fear, exactly. More in surprise. He did not expect this version of me. Good.
The door hisses open halfway behind us. One Odex shoulder jams through the gap. I release Mysk before the move becomes stupidity and step back on my own terms, palms open, heartbeat steady. The enforcers fill the doorway now, enormous and ugly and very ready for a reason. Mysk smooths the front of his coat with furious precision.
“There he is,” he says softly. “I was wondering how long the animal would stay house-trained.”
I smile without warmth. “Try me.”
For a second I think he might order the Odex in anyway. If he does, the prep bay becomes a blood problem immediately, and while I’m no longer the idiot who thinks every fight is improv theatre, I am still extremely capable of making this expensive and loud. But Mysk calculates faster than his temper. He glances at the door, the corridor beyond, the cameras that probably cover at least three approach angles, and decides—correctly—that open violence inside the compound is less profitable than threat.
So he adjusts his cuffs and returns to menace.
“You overestimate the usefulness of exposure,” he says. “Do you imagine these people care? The producers? The corporate sponsors? They are bathing in the same river as the gamblers, Bron. Everyone profits from uncertainty. Everyone skims from chaos. Show them a criminal scheme and they will ask whether it can be branded.”
“Maybe,” I say. “Still not throwing it.”
His eyes go flat. “Then you are choosing pain.”
“No,” I reply. “I’m choosing not to be owned by the stupidest man in a five-system radius.”
That gets me the flash I wanted. His composure cracks for just a heartbeat, and in that heartbeat I see the petty vanity beneath the operation, the little frightened tyrant who built a mythology out of curtains because his actual soul lacked the architecture for grandeur.
He takes one slow breath and smiles again, but now it is all teeth.
“You will regret this.”
I shrug. “Probably. My life is very consistent that way.”
“I can be patient.”
“That’s the first funny thing you’ve said all night.”
His gaze drifts, just once, toward the inner corridor leading deeper into contestant housing. Family wing is not visible from here. Neither is the lounge. But the implication is enough. He doesn’t have to say the name. We both know which fear he is trying to touch.
“You won’t touch them,” I say.
Mysk’s brows rise. “Won’t I.”
And there it is. No more polite dance. No more pretending the conversation is only about me.
I step toward him again, slower this time, making sure every word lands exactly where I want it. “Listen carefully. If anything strange happens tomorrow—anything—if a route glitches wrong, if security turns lazy in the wrong corridor, if somebody so much as breathes toward the family sector with your cologne on them, I won’t wait for proof. I will come straight through you.”
The Odex at the door tense, but Mysk lifts one finger without looking and they hold. He studies me for a long second, perhaps recalculating whether the threat in front of him is still useful as a debtor or only as an obstacle.
Then he smiles thinly. “Fatherhood has made you melodramatic.”
“Fatherhood has made me efficient.”
That lands. I can tell because something in his face cools into true dislike, stripped of the theatrical pleasure he usually takes in our exchanges.
“Very well,” he says. “Keep your principles. Keep your romance. Keep your touching little family ideal. Tomorrow, when the costs arrive, remember that I offered elegance.”
He turns toward the door.
