The Devil's Favourite Obsession

Cixi burned with mortification. Her cheeks flushed beet red, and heat crept up to her ears. How could this despicable man casually talk about making love in front of people who were waiting to be executed? What had she done to deserve such a fate?

Her gaze faltered. She longed to look away, yet she could not bring herself to do so. Instead, her eyelashes fluttered rapidly as she struggled to maintain her composure, fighting the urge to hide her face behind her palms.

”I would prefer food cooked by you, Darling,” Cixi forced the words out through clenched teeth. Then she looked around and smiled. ”These are too messy for my taste.”

Cassian raised one perfectly arched brow as he looked at her. ”The greatest gift is determined by the giver, not the receiver, Fiancée.”

”The concept of giving someone to make a person happy. Should you not gift me according to my likes?” Cixi asked.

”Of course, you should receive exactly what you desire, alongside what I wish to give you!” he replied.

That night, the dance floor became a stage for fear, death, and flirtatious talk.

The crowd, realising the mobster’s fiancée was taking their side, immediately dropped to their knees.

Almost all of them knelt.

A few incredibly foolish rich men refused.

One wealthy man in a bespoke suit cleared his throat, trying desperately to sound haughty despite the tremor in his hands, which he kept hidden in his trouser pockets. ”I am absolutely not going to say a single word about this,” the foolish man declared loudly.

Cassian, standing in perfect posture, tall and utterly dominant over the bloodstained floor with the bright flame of a cigarette resting between his long, strong fingers, watched him. He observed the rich man for a moment, then his gaze shifted back to Cixi’s flushed face, where he found her watching the full extent of his power.

”How much is a human tongue worth these days?” Cassian asked mockingly, locking eyes with the rich man.

He waited for someone to answer, but no one spoke.

Every damned person in the club knew that no one in this world could truly be trusted anymore.

A second man, already on his knees and nearly sick with terror, practically screamed his plea. ”My life is worth far more to me than this one dead body! I swear it! I will take the secret to my grave!”

Cassian stepped leisurely around Andi’s severed head and regarded the man who had spoken of taking the secret to his grave. At first, he nodded as though he understood, but then his smile widened into something quietly dreadful, a smile that seemed to say, You foolish people.

”There is a famous story from sixteenth-century France.”

The crowd stared at him, stunned, unable to understand why he was suddenly offering them a history lesson. Were they being toyed with before the next strike?

Ignoring the disbelief faces around him, Cassian continued. He glanced once at Cixi before returning his attention to the crowd.

”A wealthy noblewoman once swore on the Holy Bible to her king that she would carry his military secret faithfully to the grave. She begged violently for her life, promising that a lady’s sacred word could never be broken. She lasted exactly three days before she whispered the secret to her lover in bed.”

The crowd understood at once where the story was headed.

”When the king found out, he did not merely take her deceitful life. He tore out her lying tongue, fed it to his royal hounds, and then severed her beautiful head.”

Cassian’s dark gaze swept slowly across the people sweating with fear.

”A promise made out of fear is nothing but empty words waiting to break.”

This time, a third rich man near the front, drenched in sweat, broke down completely and dropped heavily to his knees. ”My father will give you millions! A great deal of money! I will leave the country!”

”Hmm,” Cassian sounded almost bored. ”Same dialogues. They are beginning to bore me to death. You will need to offer something more creative.”

Before the third man could utter another word, Binge stepped in. He had had enough of Cassian’s game.

”We have a deal between us, and I will start looking into it,” Binge said, smoothly crossing his thick arms over his chest.

He knew that this was absolutely not the time to provoke Cassian, or else he would have demanded an answer as to why he decided to kill Andi instead of sending him to his torture chamber. However, the Devil was clearly on a killing spree for some reason, rather than dragging people to the dungeon as he usually preferred. Cassian possessed an infamous reputation for both psychological and physical torture, yet tonight, incredibly, he had decapitated one of Binge’s men simply because Andi had tried something amusing with his newly found fiancée.

Keeping those dark thoughts entirely to himself, Binge shot a calculating glance at Cixi before returning his attention to Cassian. ”My men and I have nothing else to do here. I will leave now to deal with my wife and her lover.”

When Cassian said nothing, Binge took the silence as permission.

However, before leaving, he deliberately turned towards the still-terrified Marion.

He pulled a heavy, embossed business card from his tailored suit and thrust it into her hand. ”Call me when your foolish husband cheats on you,” Binge said bluntly. ”Perhaps I should keep a close watch on him.”

Marion’s eyes widened in fury. Her whole body was already trembling from the grotesque carnage surrounding them, yet despite her paralysing fear, she glared straight at the massive mobster.

”There is no need,” Marion hissed through tightly clenched teeth. ”I know exactly what kind of man my husband is. We do not need a third person interfering in our lives.”

Binge merely shrugged his massive shoulders with complete indifference. ”Fine. I will keep an eye on him, anyway.”

Then he turned his broad back and strode towards the exit.

Zoyar openly and shamelessly winked at Lily before following his boss out of the blood-soaked room.

Dumbfounded, Cixi, Marion, and Lily quickly exchanged a look of complete disbelief. In the middle of a horrifying mafia slaughter, their minds briefly went blank. For one absurd moment, all three of them found themselves wondering whether all-powerful mobsters were genuinely this thick-headed.