Contract and Consequence

The city had a way of holding its breath whenever Ares decided to move. It wasn’t the lights or the people or the noise; it was the sudden, thin silence that fell over whatever room he occupied, the quiet of a man who had decided that something would break, and that he would be the one to break it.

Tonight that silence lived in the back booth of an upscale sushi bar, in the hush between bites and the small clink of porcelain. Lila sat opposite him, elegant and ...