It had been a week since Cami st saw John, and the silence was gnawing at her. She knew he was tangled up in something big, something he couldn’t give details about, not even to her. But she knew he would reach out the second when everything was sorted, because he always did. Still, worry for him itched under her skin, sharp and persistent.

  Today, she’d had enough of waiting. She would swing by his pce, poke around for news. Maybe check in on that stepmother he once asked her to pick out heels for, those strappy, sky-high ones he’d called a “gift.” Knowing John too well, Cami thought he probably had already charmed his way into his stepmother’s bed. Cami shook her head and smirked to herself. If she’s his woman too, I might as well meet this stepmom early.

  In Cami’s mind, she was his first wife, the one who would run his house in his absence, the one he’d always tilt the scales for, so looking after his other women was her duty. Even if this stepmom got no leads on John, offering a hand while he was gone felt right.

  But Cami, polished queen of the city’s upper crust, wasn’t built for John’s working-css maze of a neighborhood. Stepping out of her sleek ride, she was a fish out of water, heels clicking uncertain on cracked pavement, designer shades no help against the tangle of streets. She wandered, cursing under her breath, nearly twisting an ankle on a busted curb. Finally, she zeroed in on a house that she felt right. Close enough, anyway. She rapped on the door, shoulders squared, ready to charm or grill.

  Problem was though, she had overshot by a yard. This wasn’t John’s pce. It was Miko’s, right across the way.

  The door swung open, and Miko stood there, sleek, poised, with a gaze that could cut gss. Their eyes locked, and in that split second, their instinct screamed loud.

  This chick’s got John’s fingerprints all over her. And their nearly identical thoughts hit them both: John’s screwing this broke/rich bitch. A thin, electric hostility crackled between them, but neither flinched. Faces stayed cool, smiles tight, as they slipped into a dance of polite daggers.

  “Hi, I’m Cami,” she started, voice honey-smooth. “Is this John’s pce?” Miko just paused, weighing it. After their st heart-to-heart, she had cimed him her husband in all but name. So her house was his home, far as she cared. She nodded, crisp. “Yeah. How can I help you, Cami?”

  Cami’s pulse ticked up, thinking she had found the right pce. So this has to be the stepmom, right? But still, better to confirm for her, “and you are?”

  “Miko,” she said, chin high, eyes narrowing. “John’s my danna-sama.” No ring yet, but she wasn’t about to look weak in front of this stranger who clearly had a piece of him too. She threw out her mother tongue’s word for husband, staking her ground.

  Cami’s patience quickly frayed, a flicker of her uptown cws showing. What’s this cryptic shit? “English, motherfucker, do you speak it?1 Rewatched Pulp Fiction again, and just couldn't shake this line out of my head...” she snapped, rich-bitch mode kicking in, sharp and unfiltered.

  Miko’s hackles rose, her own fire fring. What kind of tramp does John drag in? “Hey, watch your mouth!” she shot back. “You’re at my door. The word means husband. I’m his wife!”

  “No fucking way,” Cami ughed, cold and cutting. “I’m his wife. I know he’s banging you, but you’re still his stepmom. Those heels he got you? I picked ‘em out from my wardrobe.” Her words nded like a sp, but Miko’s brain caught a snag, gears turning fast. “Wait, stepmom? That’s Catherine. She’s living next door. Hold up, you’re saying John’s trying to screw her too?” Cami didn’t answer. She just rolled her eyes. Seriously? Do you even know John?

  Miko’s frown deepened, but she stepped aside, voice tight. “Come in, Ca-mi-,” she said, practically chewing the name. “He had sex with my daughter too a few days back, so you and I have got some catching up to do. We need to know how many women John’s running through out there.” Cami sighed, stepping inside, heels clicking sharp. “Fine, but let’s get one thing straight now. I’m his first wife.”

  “No fucking way,” Miko fired back, using the same words Cami used on her a minute ago. “His first time was with me. I took his virginity, so if anyone’s his first wife, it’s me!”

  What followed was a storm, sniping, haggling, gasps at fresh dirt. They traded barbs and intel, voices rising and dipping, peeling back John’s tangled web. Only one thing they couldn’t settle: who was John’s first wife. Still, they clicked, almost cozy, swapping stories with grudging respect. A weird truce, even fun.

  What they didn’t know was that John just got himself a new girlfriend, the dy cop Seo-young. And right now, he was busy working his cock in and out of her pussy again after the steamy night they just had, after they both woke up in the afternoon. They both y on their sides, and Seo-young raised one leg, spreading her crack wide open for John. John was thrusting fiercely behind her, a hand kneading and squeezing her soft tits, fingers buried deep in her pale, bouncy flesh, lips running over her ear and neck, kissing, sucking, biting.

  “John, Ahh—don’t go so hard. My pussy’s already swollen from st night. And I need to go to work now. I have almost a hundred missed calls on my phone!” Seo-young’s voice shook with loud moans. Her words were full of rejection but her tone was screaming for more. She was enjoying all this, maybe too much, as she didn’t expect John to want her this bad. After a whole night’s fucking, the first thing he did after he woke up was to lick her wet again, and stuck his penis back in.

  John didn’t answer, just kept shoving, till he reached his peak. He pressed his crotch tight on her firm, smooth ass, and unloaded his seeds deep inside her again. And she pushed her butt firmly against him, eager to feel his release as much as possible. The sensation of being creampied, his cock throbbing, twitching while wrapped by her tight walls, his thick, hot cum spilling and flowing inside her, grew on her. Hated to admit it, but she felt like herself becoming a cum slut, his cum slut.

  She only gently pushed him away after he completely finished. Panting heavily, sweat still beading on her forehead, her voice hoarse from all the screaming and moaning, but ced with lingering excitement, she said, “John, we need to talk about st night.”

  So they finally stopped fucking like rabbits, and found a moment to pool their knowledge, piecing together the fractured truths they had uncovered. John revealed his newfound ties to the Reapers, a fragile connection he’d forged through recent dealings. He also disclosed Commissioner Miller’s role in orchestrating the trap that nearly ensnared them both, a betrayal that cut deep. Most shocking to Seo-young was the revetion about Vitacore Pharma. She learned that they were using trafficked women as test subjects for experimental drugs, a grotesque scheme that confirmed some of her worst suspicions from the warehouse ordeal. Though she’d glimpsed fragments of this horror that night, the full scope of Vitacore’s involvement left her reeling, her sense of justice bruised by the corporate rot.

  Seo-young, in turn, shared her own findings. Beyond Anthony’s role in luring her into the dockside ambush st night, she also had uncovered more about his recent behavior. Her team had rigged surveilnce at the downtown crime scene, the site of the test rape-murder case after the crime. And they caught Anthony returning multiple times in the footage, always cloaked in his signature hat and mask. She counted at least three or four visits, each one a quiet taunt. This behavior cemented her belief that Anthony was the serial killer they were hunting. As an experienced detective, she certainly understood such predators often reveled in their crimes, revisiting scenes to bask in their twisted pride, a mix of narcissism and defiance against the w.

  Yet one puzzle nagged her: once John began probing these cases, Anthony’s spree halted. She couldn’t fathom why his presence alone seemed to choke the killer’s impulse.

  John, however, had already unraveled this knot, though he kept his insight guarded. That message left days ago from the killer in John’s email drafts had indicated more than mere bravado. It hinted at wariness, even fear, of John himself. The note’s threat to eliminate John before targeting his women struck him as deliberate, not just cruel. If the killer aimed to shatter him, why not strike at those closest first? John’s tight security, mercenaries, surveilnce, made such moves risky, true, but he suspected a deeper block. His mere existence seemed to sap the killer’s libido, as if John loomed like a bde over his psyche, stifling his ability to act, perhaps even to perform. More audaciously, John theorized the killer’s pn extended beyond death. He recalled a system skill from way back in his magical world days, [Soul Shackle], which could bind a soul post-mortem, forcing it to witness horrors at the caster’s whim. John had skipped it himself, not because he hated the idea. He simply deemed it impractical for combat, and thus it was a waste of precious skill points. But for a sadist like this psycho, it might be perfect: kill John, trap his essence, and make him watch his women suffer, sexual assaults and otherwise. The logic fit the killer’s warped mind like a glove.

  But John chose not to burden Seo-young with these grim specutions, having the belief that they were not significant to their immediate needs. Instead, he confirmed a practical detail: the radio frequencies she arranged to broadcast across Nexis City’s towers. She assured him they were still active, a fact that eased a quiet tension in him, securing a contingency he wasn’t ready to expin.

  Seo-young then stressed that the police might come sniffing around for him soon, so he needed to lie low, stick to the storage unit, a hideout she had kept off everyone’s radar. John nodded, then gave her a tip of his own: if anyone asked who gunned down those goons st night, say he’d snatched her weapon and done the deed. It’d muddy the trail. Seo-young didn’t know how to react to John’s words. His idea was naive, to be honest, but also heart-warming. She hugged him again and gave him a kiss on the lip, before she grabbed her things and headed for the precinct, leaving him in the dim glow of their makeshift safehouse.

  The precinct hummed with its usual grind, a gray sprawl of battered desks heaped with dog-eared files, chipped mugs, and monitors glowing faint with outdated software. A corkboard loomed against one wall, bristling with grainy mugshots and tattered bulletins, some curling loose like dead leaves. Overhead, fluorescent tubes buzzed, one flickering erratic, casting jittery light across scuffed linoleum that hadn’t been mopped right in years. The air carried a stale mix of burnt coffee, toner, and sweat, pierced by the occasional ring of a desk phone. Last night’s op, earth-shaking for Seo-young, seemed like just another Tuesday here, reduced to a stack of paperwork waiting to be stamped.

  She had been missing since st night, so when she strode in, the bullpen snapped to attention. Cops swarmed, some genuinely worried, others just hungry for details, bombarding her with questions about her night. Her outfit was a patchwork of necessity, cobbled from John’s wardrobe after the warehouse chaos. Her shredded T-shirt was swapped for one of his white tees, baggy but tucked under her sharp bzer. The blood-streaked suit pants stayed, too stubborn to ditch, though she’d traded her ruined panties for a pair of his cotton boxers, a practical choice after st night’s chaos left hers soaked in every kind of mess. Her bckpantyhose, shredded by John’s hands, clung on, hidden beneath the pants, their tears invisible to prying eyes. Around her neck, a thin scarf, chic at a gnce, draped artfully, less fashion and more cover for the map of hickeys John had left, blooming red and purple across her skin.

  While her colleagues pressed close, voices overpping, Min-jun just stood apart, a shadow against a filing cabinet. His eyes locked on her, cold and unyielding, dissecting every flicker of her face for a hint she might have unraveled his trap. Seo-young kept her guard up, letting only anger bleed through, no trace of knowing Min-jun and Miller’s deal of getting rid of her. John’s advice echoed in her head: “give him some truth for sure. Let him have it, rage, tears, whatever. Push him to slip. But don’t py it too cool. He’ll smell something’s wrong if you’re acting too professional.”

  She met Min-jun’s stare and didn’t waver. Pointing a finger straight at his nose, she let loose, her voice slicing through the precinct’s hum. “You trying to get me killed, asshole?”

  Min-jun’s stomach lurched, she knew? But her next words doused his panic with a spark of rage. “Your fucking assignments st night nearly got me raped and killed, you know that? With your braindead pns, just fucking stop pying commander! I called for backup, and no one showed up! I’m filing a compint for your fuckup as the commanding officer!”

  Her words lit a fuse. The bullpen buzzed, cops swapping looks and murmurs, especially the ones from the op st night. They knew she wasn’t spinning tales. Seven cops split into four groups, three pairs sent deep into the docks to chase nothing, not a thug, not a whisper, while Seo-young fought five alone and freed dozens of captive women. Min-jun’s call had been a fucking disaster, pin as day, and the room’s shifting gnces said they saw it too.

  Min-jun’s face burned, embarrassment warring with fury. He’d been the precinct’s golden boy, Nexis City force’s rising star, a detective prodigy pegged for Lieutenant before thirty. Now, Seo-young’s finger jabbed at his ego, calling him incompetent in front of his peers. He cleared his throat, loud and sharp, trying to cw back control.

  “Ahem, don’t you all have work to do? Why are you still chatting here?” he barked, scattering the crowd. Then, choking down his fury, he beckoned her. “Detective Park, I need to talk to you about what happened st night, in private.”

  Seo-young’s mind kicked into overdrive the second he spoke. If Min-jun knew she pulled the trigger on those goons st night, he would have called it out right there, loud and public, pinning her with misconduct far worse than his own fumble. She had just humiliated him in front of the whole squad, and his ego wouldn’t pass up a chance to flip the tables. But this private chat? It screamed he was clueless, fishing for her to slip. He wanted to pry, to crack her story open.

  Today, Seo-young felt like a razor-tuned analytical machine, picking apart Min-jun’s moves with surgical ease, every gnce, every pause id bare. A stray thought tickled her, absurd and fleeting: Did John’s cum inside me make me smarter? She smirked inside.

  Of course not, it was way simpler. Her rose-colored crush on Min-jun was gone, burned to ash. Without that haze, her instincts ran clear. She had always been a damn good detective; love had just dulled her edge, let him slip past her guard. But not anymore.

  Whatever the reason, she was locked in, ready for the dance of feints and jabs Min-jun was about to start. Her hand brushed her pocket, feeling the weight of her underwear from st night, torn, stained with her juice and John’s cum, a trophy of lust and fun. She’d kept it, a weapon to humiliate Min-jun further. When it came to it, she would dangle the panties in his face, twist the knife of his betrayal right back.

  Bitch-boy Min-jun, she thought, a spark of defiance fring. Game fucking on.