The air in the Mayor’s private study smelled of aged cedar, expensive cigar smoke, and the faint, unmistakable tang of fear. Mayor Sterling sat behind his massive, hand-carved oak desk, his face a pasty, sweating mask of composure as he stared at the two people who had just walked through his heavy mahogany doors without knocking.
Julian Vane didn't look like a man who had just spent the morning breaking a rebellion in a grease-slicked hangar. He wore a crisp, midnight-blue bespoke suit, his dark hair styled back with surgical neatness, his sapphire eyes cold as arctic ice. He stood in the center of the room, his presence so massive, so undeniably predatory, that it seemed to shrink the office around him. Beside him, Elena stood like a statue carved from ivory and steel. Her high-necked c
