Page 109 of Lethal in Pink

We drift back into the press of the party, mingling shoulder-to-shoulder as Jae talks, his hand resting lightly at the small of my back. I keep my movements casual, letting the noise and the crowd swallow us until we pass a massive, leggy potted fern sitting in the corner of the living room. As Jae turns to laugh at something a guy in a backwards cap yells across the room, I casually tip my cup sideways, letting the dark liquid soak silently into the soil of the fern. Empty. Done.

I turn back to Jae just as he raises his cup to his lips and takes a long, easy swallow.

My breath catches. I wait for the drop. I wait for the sudden neuromuscular lockup, the gasp, the collapse.

One second. Five seconds. Thirty seconds.

Jae just smiles down at me, entirely unbothered, completely alive, and takes another sip.

Nothing happens.

I gave him the wrong cup, the realization hits me like cold water. I dumped the lethal dose into a potted fern, and he’s currently drinking plain, harmless cranberry vodka.

Before I can fully process the catastrophic failure of my mission, Jae sets his empty cup down on a passing tray, steps closer, and cups my face in his hands. His mouth finds mine, warm and tasting faintly of cranberry and citrus, a deep, unhurried kiss that makes my knees feel suddenly weak.

When he pulls back, his dark eyes are heavy-lidded and warm. “You’re quiet tonight, jagiya,” he murmurs, his thumb brushing my cheekbone. “Let me go get us another drink.”

He turns and heads back toward the bar, completely unaware that he has just walked away from an assassination attempt, leaving me standing alone in the sticky, deafening dark, technically holding a second empty cup and realizing I’ve completely blown it.

Chapter forty

Amiyah

Four-seventeen in the morning is not a real time. It is a fabricated construct invented solely to punish people who make poor life choices, like staring at a ceiling for four hours replaying the exact, excruciating frame where two red cups slid six inches across a laminate tabletop.

I do not blow assignments. I don't lose my head, and I certainly don't stand frozen in a crowd like a panicked rookie because somebody bumped my elbow. Perfection isn't a goal in my line of work; it's the mandatory fee for staying alive. And yet, there it is on an endless, looping playback in my skull—the slide of the cups, the mixing of the drinks, the total, pathetic collapse of a protocol I’ve spent years executing blindfolded.

I’m already awake when a sharp, rapid rattle echoes down the hall—three quick raps against my door, followed by a fourth, heavier kick. I don’t even need to check my security camera to know who its is.

I pad across the apartment in bare feet and a sleep shirt that’s seen better decades, the hardwood freezing against my soles and pull the door open.

Penelope looks like she was dragged through a paper shredder and reassembled by someone with a severe grudge against symmetry. Her dark hair is crammed under a beanie the exact shade of a gas station parking lot. She’s wearing yesterday’s blazer over yesterday’s jeans, the purple highlights along her temples crushed flat against her skull. She clutches a half-empty can of Alani Nu, the kind of pastel energy drink she treats like an oxygen supply.

“Let me in, bitch,” she says, sidestepping me before I can form a syllable. “We need to talk.”

Penelope drops onto my sectional with the graceless authority of someone who has sat on this exact cushion approximately nine hundred times and does not require an invitation. She sets the energy drink on the coffee table with a dull clack and pulls her beanie off, running a hand through her flattened hair.

“They’re starting to ask why you haven’t pulled the trigger.”

The words land in the thick, still air of the apartment with the weight of something that’s been sitting in the room since I opened the door. I cross my arms over my chest, my sleep shirt riding up at the hem, feeling the heavy, trapped heat of the Los Angeles night clinging to my bare legs.

“You’re not known for taking this long,” Penelope continues, her voice stripped of its usual sardonic cushion. “That’s exactly why they’re suspicious.”

She doesn’t accuse me of anything. She doesn’t have to. Her eyes find mine in the half-dark and hold there, steady and warm and entirely fucking terrifying because Penelope Gardner does not show up at four in the morning to deliver good news.

I lean against the kitchen island, the smooth marble cool against my palms. “How suspicious?”

“Enough that they came straight to me to find out what’s going on.” She picks up the energy drink, takes a sip that looks more performative than thirsty, and sets it back down. “Which means they’re watching you. Which means they want answers.”

The math unfolds in my head without my permission. People at the top don't ask questions unless they're running out of patience. And in the underground, running out of patience is just one step away from cutting losses.

“I blew it,” I murmur, the words tasting like ash against my teeth.

Penelope freezes, her hand halting halfway to her flattened hair. “What?”

“At the frat house.” I push off the island, pacing two steps toward the window and back, the hardwood warm beneath my bare soles. “I had the drinks. I sat them down on the table, and someone bumped right into me. The cups slid right past each other. I couldn't tell which was which. In the panic, I grabbed them, handed him one, and then later dumped the other one into a potted fern while we were mingling. And then I watched him drink the whole thing, and nothing happened. I gave him the wrong fucking drink, Pen.”

Penelope stares at me, her chest stilling beneath the crumpled blazer. The sardonic edge completely vanishes from her face, replaced by a sharp, horrified comprehension.