The silence following my declaration hung in the cold basement like an unexploded bomb. None of them moved. The seven most dangerous men in the city stood frozen in the space I had claimed, their eyes locked onto me with varying degrees of shock, fury, and dark fascination.
"You think you run this, little bird?" Victor Vance was the first to shatter the quiet. His voice was a low, rumble that vibrated through the floorboards. He took a single, deliberate step toward me, his towering frame casting a massive shadow across my satin dress. "You are playing a game with men who built the very board you're standing on."
"And yet," I replied, holding his piercing grey gaze without yielding a single inch, "your son kneels at my feet behind locked doors, the Pact is tearing up its own sacred blood
