Page 54 of Blood & Throttle

I glance at her but she doesn’t look at me.

“I could’ve handled it,” she says again, quieter this time.

“No,” I mutter, voice low and sharp. “You shouldn’t fucking have to.”

Her smirk fades, replaced by something raw. Somethingreal. For a second, she doesn’t say anything. Just watches the dark horizon, lips pressed into a tight line. Then she lets out a slow breath, not quite a sigh, not quite surrender.

“You really don’t get it, do you?”

I flick ash onto the concrete. “Enlighten me.”

She laughs, but it’s bitter, brittle. “When I was a kid, before everything went to shit, I used to think things were already bad. Grew up in a shit apartment in the outskirts of Noxhaven. Mom worked nights, drank days. I figured out early the world didn’t hand girls like me anything but bruises.”

I glance at her, but she’s still not looking at me. Her eyes are locked on the sky, far away.

“But when the world crumbled? When the Syndicate took over and the cities burned?” She pauses and swallows. “That’s when it really started.”

I don’t speak, I don’t breathe.

“I was fifteen when I got traded for a bag of rations and two gallons of water,” she says, tone flat. “No one asked me. No one cared. One minute I was scraping by in some shelter, the next I was property.”

My stomach turns.

“They moved me from place to place. Men with hands that never asked. Chains. Markets. Fucked-up parties with rich assholes bidding on girls like we were fucking cattle.”

Her voice doesn’t shake. She’s past that. Past breaking.

“I killed the first man who tried to break me. Snapped his neck with a piece of broken pipe. Didn’t wait for applause, just ran.”

She finally turns toward me then, but there’s no fear in her gaze. No shame. Just steel.

“I don’t tell you this for pity, Riot. I don’t want it. I don’tneed you thinking I’m some broken thing that needs your fists to protect me.”

“You’re not broken,” I say without thinking.

She raises a brow. “You don’t even know me.”

I place the cigarette between my lips, slow and steady, the burn at the end flaring to life as I take a drag.

“I know enough,” I mutter through the smoke. “I know you didn’t just survive—you fucking burned the world down to do it.”

That makes her pause, just for a second.

Then she steps closer, real close, her chest brushing mine, fingers moving with zero hesitation as she plucks the cigarette from my mouth like she’s always had the right.

She brings it to her lips, inhales slowly, not breaking eye contact as she does. Smoke curls from the corner of her mouth as she exhales, that cocky smirk tugging at the edge of her lips.

“You know smoking’ll kill you,” I say, watching her mouth like I want to bite the words off it.

She tips her head, eyes flashing. “Yeah? So will breathing, fucking, and just about every other good thing in this world. Might as well go out with a little heat.”

I huff a quiet laugh, dark and amused, dragging my gaze across her face like it might be the last goddamn thing I see.

She laughs too—really laughs—and for a second, the pressure between us breaks. Just a little.

But the look in her eyes?

That fire?