The sirens in Neo Verona didn't sound like warnings anymore. They sounded like a funeral dirge.
Mila Volkov stood on the edge of the skyscraper's helipad, the wind whipping her dark hair across her face like a lash. Rain soaked through her leather jacket, but she didn't feel the cold. She was too busy feeling the Rage. It was a physical thing, a black sun burning in her chest that made her want to tear the stars out of the sky.
"Stay back," she hissed, her voice cutting through the thunder.
In front of her stood three men who owned the world. Three men who had turned the city into a graveyard just to find her.
To her left was Dante Moretti. He looked like a god in a three-piece suit, his golden eyes glowing with the power of Absolute Command. The concrete beneath his feet was cracking just from the pressure of his presence.
"Mila," Dante said, his voice a low, vibrating hum that forced every other person on the roof to drop to their knees in agony. "You've had your fun. The city is burning. My patience is gone. Come here, and I might leave your favorite district standing."
"Go to hell, Dante," Mila spat. She took a step back, her heel clicking on the very edge of the roof.
To her right, Xavier Thorne laughed. It was a bright, terrifying sound. He flicked a coin into the air, and before it could fall, he used his Molecular Rupture to turn the oxygen around the coin into a miniature supernova. The explosion illuminated his wicked, handsome face.
"Don't be so boring, Dante," Xavier smirked, his eyes locked on Mila with a hunger that was purely predatory. "She doesn't want a king. She wants a playmate. Mila, darling, if you jump, I'll blow up the ground so you land on a cloud of fire. Wouldn't that be a thrill?"
Mila's breath hitched. Her power the Void was pulsing. It was an invisible field, a dead zone where their divinity went to die. She could feel their frustration; they were like addicts staring at a drug they couldn't touch.
But it wasn't Dante or Xavier that made her heart hammer against her ribs.
It was the shadow.
A patch of darkness detached itself from the ventilation shaft behind her. It didn't make a sound. The temperature on the roof plummeted. The rain turned to ice before it could hit the ground.
Kyan Zale emerged from the void.
He didn't wear a suit. He wore tactical black, his hands stained with the blood of the men he'd just slaughtered downstairs his own brothers-in-arms. He didn't look at the other two bosses. He only looked at Mila.
His gaze was heavy, suffocating, and terrifyingly devoted.
"They talk too much," Kyan whispered.
The sound of his voice sent a shiver of pure, traitorous heat down Mila's spine. She hated him. She hated that he had killed for her. She hated that he spent every night watching her from the corners of her room, a silent ghost she couldn't exorcise.
Kyan stepped into her Void zone. As he crossed the threshold, his shadow-manipulation died. He became just a man a lethal, beautiful man. He reached out, his cold fingers hovering just an inch from her throat.
"You're shaking, Mila," Kyan murmured, his dark eyes searching hers. "Is it rage? Or is it because you know that if you jump, I'm the only one who will follow you all the way down to hell?"
Mila clenched her fists, her knuckles turning white. She wanted to scream. She wanted to break his beautiful, stoic face.
"I'll kill you all," she promised, her voice trembling with the weight of her anger. "I'll strip your powers away and watch you crawl in the dirt."
Dante stepped forward. Xavier raised his hand. Kyan closed the gap between them, his chest almost touching hers.
The three monsters were closing in. And the worst part?
Mila didn't know if she wanted to jump... or if she wanted to see which one of them would burn the world down first to catch her.