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A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.

Still, his eyes, midnight dark, ringed with an unnatural glowing gold hue, did the damage.

They didn’t just look at her. They assessed her. Read her.

He measured the heft of her defiance as if he were trying to decide whether she was a weapon, a threat, or worse, a temptation.

Her breath hitched, and her anger surged to compensate.

Then she saw it.

The ring on his fifth digit.

It was a heavy matte obsidian band inlaid with a stylized S, coiled around a wolfish spectral head of glowing wolf and a skull woven together, a line of gilded fire threading through the middle.

The mark of an unmistakable company. A distinctive, undeniable sigil.

Her eyes widened.

‘You’re Signet,’ she breathed. ‘Are you acapo, one of the under bosses?’

He didn’t confirm, nor did he deny her husky demand.

His lips twitched as if her revelation did not deserve his acknowledgment.

Her pulse roared.

‘Well.Santefor saving my ass, twice. But I won’t require your services again, now that I know who you work for.’

Fury hit, not at him but at what he represented. ‘Your company is destabilizing the entire armada. We believe you’re supplying the Lombardi faction families with black-market ordnance. You’re propping up thugs and calling it balance. But it’s blood money. You’re not peacekeepers, you’re warlords in nicer boots. We might not all get along, but to get to Pegasi all in one piece, we must coexist, but you’re making the Syndicate flotilla a living nightmare.’

Still no reaction.

Who did the kinai think he was?

She charged on. ‘Tell your CEO, Alexandr,whatever-the-fokk-his-name-is, I know what Signet’s doing. I’m not turning a blind eye. I’ll bring it to the Commission. Or the holo-nets. I’ll scream it through the vacuum to Pegasi if I have to.’

He shot her a maddening smile.

‘I’ll be sure to pass that on,’ he said, tone laced with that infuriating blend of irony and brooding insolence.

His voice was unhurried, a gravel-rich drawl with a timbre curling around the edges of every word like smoke from a fire not quite under control.

She jolted, stepping back when he rose, and strolled to a drinks cabinet against one wall.

His movements were sleek and economical. He poured a small glass of wine and turned, raising it to her.

‘Blanco? Perhaps even somecicchetti, an age-old Venetian breakfast tradition I’ve come to adore?’

She narrowed her eyes on the delectable platter of tapas behind him, then shot him a glare penetrating enough to cut through the hull. ‘I’d rather gargle xentium engine extract.’

He arched a brow. ‘You’re onto a great idea,mama. I knowkinaiswho’d pay top schills to try a vintage of that shit, if you offered it, given how fetching you are.’

She bit her lip. ‘Fokkoff.’

‘Woah. She barks.’

He chuckled, a rumble in his chest, and prowled back toward her, passing so close, she was suffused with his scent.