The Predator's Gambit
(Devillione's pov!)
The kiss hadn't been an act of love. It had been an act of consumption.
When I pulled back, Rainier was gasping, his lips bruised and his eyes unfocused. But I didn't give him time to recover. The rage from the gala—the sight of another man's hand on his skin—was still a white-hot coal in my chest. I didn't want his compliance anymore. I wanted his total, broken submission.
"The game is changing, little ghost" I whispered against his mouth, my voice a jagged edge. "You've grown too comfortable in your silk suits. You've forgotten that you are a thief caught in the throat of a dragon."
I grabbed his tie and twisted it around my hand, dragging him off the bar. He stumbled, his expensive shoes clicking uselessly on the marble. I didn't lead him to his room. I led him to the sub-level of the penthouse but I used it as a laboratory for psychological endurance.
"Devillione, stop! You're hurting me!" he cried out, his voice echoing in the cold, windowless space.
I didn't stop until we were in the center of the room. I shoved him into a chair made of cold, reinforced steel. Before he could scramble out, I clicked the restraints on the arms.
The sound of the metal locking into place seemed to drain the color from his face. He looked up at me, his chest heaving. "What is this? This isn't the contract!"
"The contract has a force majeure clause, Rainier," I said, walking to a side table and picking up a tablet.
"And your behavior tonight was a force of nature I intend to tame. You think you're smart? You think you can calculate your way out of my grasp? Let's test that theory."
For the next four hours, the room became a vacuum. I didn't hit him—bruises are for amateurs. I used the one thing Rainier valued most: his mind.
I projected dozens of data streams onto the walls—his sister's medical records, the bank accounts he had tried to hack, and the private messages he thought he had deleted.
"Every lie you told in the interview," I began, pacing around him like a shark. "Every hidden server you've accessed since you arrived. I want the encryption keys for the 'C-Vault.' Now." I commanded
"I don't know what you're talking about," he gasped, his head lolling back. I had turned the temperature in the room down to fifty degrees. He was shivering in his thin dress shirt.
"Wrong answer." I tapped the tablet.
On the screen, his sister's heart rate monitor flickered. "The hospital is under my jurisdiction. If I lose interest in your cooperation, I might lose interest in her electricity bill. Try again."
"You... you monster," he sobbed. It was the first time I had seen him truly break. The mathematical genius was gone, replaced by a desperate boy.
"I am the man who saved her life," I reminded him, leaning down until our noses touched. I could smell the terror on him. "And I am the man who can end it. Give me the keys."
He told me. Through tears and chattering teeth, he gave up his last secret—the hidden cache of data he had been saving as a poison pill in case I ever turned on him. I watched the numbers roll across the wall. I had won. I had stripped him of his last weapon.
I reached out and unlatched the restraints. He collapsed forward into my arms, his body trembling so hard I thought he might shatter. I held him, stroking his hair with a gentleness that was more terrifying than the interrogation.
"See?" I whispered. "That wasn't so hard. Total honesty is the only way this works, Rainier."
He didn't answer. He just held onto my shirt, his fingers clawing at the fabric as if he were drowning.
"But," I said, pulling him back so I could see his eyes.
"Trust is earned, not given. And after tonight's display at the gala, I don't trust your loyalty. You need to be reminded of who the predator is in this city."
I stood up, pulling him with me. He was so weak he could barely stand.
"I'm going to give you a head start," I said, my voice turning into something dark and playful.
Rainier blinked, confused. "What?"
"It's a game I call 'Hunting,'" I explained. I led him to the elevator that opened directly into the private, forested estate I owned on the edge of the city. Fifty acres of high-walled wilderness, monitored by infrared cameras.
"You have twenty minutes. You can run, you can hide, you can try to climb the walls. If you can stay hidden until sunrise, I will double your sister's care budget and give you a week of peace."
Rainier looked at the dark treeline outside the elevator doors. "And if you find me?"
I smiled. It wasn't a kind expression. "If I find you... then the 'Zero-Sum' ends. I won't just own your debt. I will mark you in a way that ensures no other man—not Vricksen, not anyone—will ever dare to look at you again. I will be the only thing you remember when you close your eyes."
I checked my watch. "Nineteen minutes and fifty seconds. Run, Rainier. Run like your life depends on it. Because it does."
For a second, he just stared at me. Then, the survival instinct I admired so much took over. He turned and bolted into the dark woods, his white shirt a ghost among the trees.
I walked back to the control room in the penthouse and poured myself a drink. I sat in front of the bank of monitors, watching the heat signatures move through the forest.
He was fast. He was using the terrain, moving in a zig-zag pattern to avoid the direct lines of the cameras. He was trying to reach the north wall where the security sensor was weakest.
"Clever boy," I murmured, watching his red-and-yellow silhouette huddle under a rocky overhang to mask his body heat.
I waited until the clock hit zero.
I didn't take a gun. I didn't take a dog. I took a pair of tactical night-vision goggles and a single length of red silk rope.
The forest was silent as I stepped out. The air was thick with the scent of pine and damp earth. I didn't need the cameras now. I could feel him. Our connection had become something metaphysical—a tether of obsession that pulled me toward him.
I moved through the brush with the silence of a man who had spent his life stalking prey in boardrooms and back alleys. I heard his breath first. It was ragged, panicked. He was exhausted from the interrogation, his muscles cramping in the cold.
I found him near the north wall. He was trying to pile stones to reach the top of the twelve-foot barrier. His fingernails were bleeding, his white shirt torn and stained with mud.
I stood in the shadows, watching him for a moment. He looked so small against the wall. So desperate.
"You're losing time, Rainier," I said, my voice coming from the darkness.
He shrieked, spinning around and pressing his back against the stone. He couldn't see me, but he knew exactly where I was.
"Please," he gasped. "Just let me go. I'll do anything. I'll work for free. I'll give you everything."
"You already gave me everything in the vault," I said, stepping into the moonlight. I took off the goggles, letting him see my eyes. "Now, I'm just here to collect the interest."
He tried to run past me, but I was faster. I caught him by the waist and slammed him into the soft dirt, pinning him down with the weight of my body. He fought like a wild animal, scratching and biting, but I welcomed the pain. It was the only thing that felt real.
I grabbed his wrists and bound them together with the red silk rope, the friction making him hiss.
"You lost the game, Rainier," I whispered, my lips against his sweaty temple.
He went limp beneath me, the fight finally leaving him. He began to sob—not the quiet tears from before, but a deep, gut-wrenching sound of total defeat.
"I hate you," he choked out. "I hate you more than anything in this world."
"I know," I said, pulling him up and throwing him over my shoulder like a prize kill.
"And that hatred is the only thing that's going to keep you alive in the cage I'm building for you."
As I walked back toward the tower, the first rays of dawn began to bleed over the horizon. The game was over. The audit was complete.
I didn't just have a brilliant analyst anymore. I had a soul that was bound to mine by fear, debt, and a dark, twisted thread of something that looked dangerously like love.
I reached the elevator and pressed the button for the penthouse. Rainier was silent now, his head hanging down, his bound hands resting against my back.
"Welcome home, Rainier," I said as the doors closed, sealing us in the silver box. "The real game starts tomorrow."
---
The night air was a sharp, biting cold against my face as I stepped out into the darkness of the estate.
The trees of the private forest were like skeletal fingers reaching for the moon, swaying in a wind that carried the scent of wet earth and pine.
I didn't rush. A hunter who rushes is a hunter who misses the beauty of the struggle.
I checked the pulse-transmitter on my wrist. Rainier's heart rate was a frantic, irregular rhythm—165 beats per minute. He was panicking. He was pushing his body past its limits, his lungs likely burning as he scrambled through the dense underbrush.
"Where are you going, Rainier?" I whispered into the night. "There is nowhere on this earth that I haven't already bought."
I adjusted the night-vision goggles. The world turned a ghostly, radioactive green. I saw the heat signature of a fox darting into a burrow, and then, about three hundred yards to the north, I saw a flickering patch of white.
The shirt.
The white silk shirt I had let him keep. It was his beacon, his flag of surrender, though he didn't know it yet. I began to move, my boots crunching rhythmically on the frosted grass.
---
I caught his scent first—that mix of expensive soap and the raw, metallic tang of fear. It was intoxicating. I found myself slowing down just to savor the proximity. I watched him through the brush. He was trying to climb a steep, rocky embankment, his fingers clawing at the loose dirt.
He slipped, falling several feet back into the mud. He didn't scream; he just let out a sharp, choked gasp and immediately began to climb again.
"You're making too much noise," I said, stepping out from behind a massive oak tree.
Rainier froze. He didn't turn around immediately. He went perfectly still, his forehead pressed against the cold stone of the embankment. I could see his shoulders shaking—not from the cold, but from the realization that the twenty-minute head start had meant nothing.
"Turn around, Rainier."
He turned slowly. His face was a mask of filth and tears. One of his sleeves had been torn off at the shoulder, revealing the pale, bruised skin of his arm. He looked like a fallen angel dragged through the gutter.
"Please," he whispered, his voice barely audible over the wind. "You've had your fun. You've proven you can catch me. Just... let me sit down. I can't breathe."
"You don't get to rest until the game is over," I said, stepping closer. I held up the red silk rope. "And the game only ends when I have you in hand."
He looked at the rope, and something in him snapped. It wasn't fear—it was a final, desperate surge of the genius I had first seen in the vault. He grabbed a heavy stone from the ground and lunged at me.
He was fast, but I had been trained by the best mercenaries money could buy. I caught his wrist mid-swing, the force of the impact vibrating up my arm. I twisted, hearing the sickening pop of his joint, and pinned him against the embankment.
"You tried to hit me," I murmured, my face inches from his. I felt a surge of genuine, dark delight. "You actually tried to fight back. I was worried I had broken the spirit out of you too soon."
"I'll... I'll kill you," he hissed, despite the tears of pain streaming down his face. "I'll find the zero... I'll find it..."
"You are the zero," I said, slamming him harder against the stone. I took the red rope and began to bind his wrists. I didn't do it loosely.
I wanted him to feel the bite of the silk. "You are the nothingness that I am filling with my will."
---
I didn't carry him back this time. I kept the end of the red rope in my hand and forced him to walk. Every time he stumbled, I gave the rope a sharp tug, forcing him back to his feet. It was a slow, agonizing procession back to the elevator.
By the time we reached the penthouse, the sun was beginning to bleed over the horizon, painting the sky in shades of bruised purple and gold.
I didn't take him to his room. I took him to the master bathroom—a cathedral of black marble and heated floors. I turned on the shower, the steam immediately filling the room, smelling of eucalyptus and power.
"Take off your clothes," I commanded.
He stood by the glass-walled shower, his head hanging low. His hands were still bound in front of him. "I... I can't."
I walked over and used a small, sharp blade to cut the red rope. His hands fell to his sides, limp and blue-tinged from the lack of circulation. I reached for his collar and began to unbutton the ruined white shirt myself.
I stripped him slowly, methodically, as if I were conducting an audit of a failing company. I noted every scratch from the forest, every bruise from the vault, every mark I had put on him. When he was finally standing naked and shivering in the steam, I pushed him into the water.
He gasped as the hot spray hit his cold skin. I stepped in after him, fully clothed, my suit darkening as it soaked through. I didn't care. I grabbed a sponge and began to scrub the mud from his back.
"This is the Zero-Sum, Rainier," I said over the roar of the water.
"Everything you took from me—my time, my data, my peace of mind—I am taking back from you. In skin. In tears. In loyalty."
I turned him around to face me. He looked up, his eyes glassy. He was so tired he could barely stand. I reached out and traced the line of his throat, my thumb pressing against his windpipe just enough to make him swallow.
"Vricksen looked at you today," I whispered. "He looked at you and thought he saw something he could win. He was wrong. There is no winning here for anyone but me."
I leaned in and bit his shoulder—hard enough to leave a mark that would last for weeks. He let out a sharp, jagged cry and slumped against me, his forehead resting on my soaked shoulder.
"You're mine, Rainier," I murmured into his hair. "The forest didn't save you. The law won't save you. Even your own mind is beginning to betray you, isn't it? You're starting to wonder if you even want to be free."
"I... I hate you," he whispered, but he didn't pull away. He couldn't. He was a tethered bird, and I was the only thing keeping him from falling.
"I know," I said, a dark smile touching my lips. "And I'm going to make sure that hatred is the only thing you have left to live for."
---
I carried him out of the shower and wrapped him in a heavy, black silk robe. I sat him down on the edge of the bed and went to my safe. I pulled out a small, velvet box.
Inside was a collar. Not a leather one—that would be too crude. This was a masterpiece of white gold, thin as a wire, with a single, microscopic tracking chip embedded in a small, black diamond.
I knelt between his legs and placed it around his neck.
Click
The sound was final. It was the sound of the vault door closing forever.
"The hunting game is over, Rainier," I said, looking up at him. "From now on, the world doesn't see a hacker or an analyst. They see a man who wears my mark. You are the 'Zero' in my equation. And I am the only one who can solve you."
Rainier reached up, his fingers trembling as they touched the cold gold at his throat. He looked at me, and for the first time, I didn't see defiance. I didn't even see hatred.
I saw a void.
I had finally done it. I had subtracted everything until there was nothing left but me.
"Go to sleep, my little ghost," I whispered, lifting him into the bed and pulling the silk sheets over his bruised body. "Tomorrow, we start the real work. Tomorrow, you show the world ex
actly how much you love your cage."
I sat in the armchair by the window, watching him sleep as the sun finally rose over. The city was waking up, but Rainier's world had just ended. And mine?
Mine was just beginning.