Silvia’s focus was no longer on the ring but on Ronny, with sudden interest sparkling in her eyes as if he were talking about finding treasure.

"A cleaning lady." She repeated the words slowly, tasting each word. "Little Miss Scholarship. The top of the class... now scrubbing floors." And she laughed so hard that her shoulders shook.

"On her knees." Ronny nodded, adding more savagery to their conversation about Cixi. "I would want her on her knees for very different reasons, though." Ronny replayed the video of Cixi in his mind. It was a clip he had watched countless times, especially during nights when he had masturbated many times.

Each time he viewed it, he desired Cixi in his bed. He fantasised about how she would be in real life—would she be just as bold as she was on screen? The thrill of finally locating her after a lot of searching only heightened his lust.

"When we catch her next time, you can have her all you want," Silvia chuckled at her own words. "Did you confront her?" Silivia then asked a very important question.

"What do you think?" he replied, his eyes narrowing with satisfaction at the memory. "She was still terrified of us. I could see it etched across her face—the sheer fear—for us." There was a sense of dark pleasure in knowing that he had left such an impact on her, making him feel everyone else beneath him. That moment was a delicious blend of power and desire, only fueling Ronny’s obsession with her.

In the ring, Kevin cornered his opponent against the turnbuckle. The man tried to clinch, wrapping his thick arms around Kevin’s torso and pulling him close to smother the assault. Kevin drove his knee into the man’s thigh, broke the clinch, and stepped back just far enough to launch an uppercut that connected with the underside of the man’s chin.

The man’s head snapped upward, his eyes rolled white for a fraction of a second, and his legs buckled. He hit the canvas on one knee.

The referee stepped between them and started counting.

Silvia uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees. Her smile had not faded. If anything, it had grown sharper.

"I wish I were there too."

"I told her I expected to find her in a brothel," Ronny added more about their encounter.

Silvia laughed, imagining the look on Cixi’s face. "What did she say?"

"Nothing. Some guy showed up like he owned the place... or Cixi." Ronny’s jaw tightened at the memory. Zoyar’s hand on his shoulder. Zoyar’s eyes were drilling into him with the promise of permanent damage. "If he hadn’t come in between, I might have dragged Cixi out of the cafe."

The laughter drained from Silvia’s face, and annoyance replaced it. "It sounds like she has a new lover..." She looked at him the way a teacher looked at a student who had failed a test they should have passed.

In the ring, the opponent dragged himself upright at the count of seven. The referee wiped the man’s gloves on his own shirt and signalled the fight to continue.

"I am not afraid of that guy, Silvia." Ronny’s grin had finally faded. "But I am also not stupid when I have an important to match the next day. I was not about to get my face rearranged over that girl."

"Over that girl," Silvia repeated his words back to him, and her tone made it clear she found his reasoning both accurate and pathetic in equal measure. She straightened in her chair and crossed her arms. "Which cafe?" 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

"It’s no use if that guy is present."

"I want to know where she works, Ronny." Silvia looked at him the way she looked at everyone. "You did not come here just to brag. You came here because you want to do something about it, and you know you cannot do it alone. So tell me, which cafe?"

Ronny held her stare for three seconds, then reached into his back pocket and pulled out his phone. He scrolled through his photos, found the one he had snapped of the cafe’s exterior after Zoyar forced him out the door, and turned the screen toward Silvia.

She studied the image.

*

*

*

Back at the room, Cixi set her glass of water down on the marble coffee table and leaned back against the sofa cushion. She had finished eating. She had finished drinking. She had finished doing every possible activity that did not involve looking at or speaking to the man sitting next to her.

Cassian let the silence hold for exactly as long as it took Cixi to exhale.

"Who was the man in the cafe?" His voice carried zero preamble. The question had been on his mind ever since he received that strange piece of information about her. "The one whose appearance caused you to react so unconventionally."

’Damn it.’ Cixi screamed in her mind before immediately cursing this man and his people, who seemed to know everything about her day-to-day life as if she had no space left to hide. Before Cassian could grow even more suspicious, she forced herself to speak. She could not let Cassian’s suspicion deepen.

"H-he was someone I knew." The words stumbled out of her mouth like they had tripped over each other on the way.

Cassian’s face gave her nothing. He sat with his arm stretched across the back of the sofa, his wine glass empty on the coffee table, his dark eyes watching her with phlegmatic patience. Not a single muscle in his face moved. Not a twitch. Not a blink. He simply waited, his silence doing the work that most men needed shouting to accomplish.

Cixi searched his expression for something to read. A clue. A hint. A crack in the mask. She found nothing.

"So why did you react with such visible stress when he approached you?"

"I don’t understand." Cixi kept her voice level, forcing composure into syllables that wanted to crack. "Me? Stress? I think your man got something wrong."

"Are you sure about that?" Cassian tilted his head by a single degree. "My men got it wrong?"