Maximilian's breath came in ragged, wheezing bursts as Kaiden stepped forward.

"N–N–No…This can't be!!" he whimpered. His voice was unrecognizable even to himself. Sweat poured down his neck in thick beads. "W–W–Why… why are you here?!"

Kaiden didn't answer.

His boots hit the ground with a slow, steady rhythm.

Step.

Step.

Step.

Every one of them felt as if they landed directly on Maximilian's chest.

"What- what do you want?!" Maximilian screamed from the bottom of his lungs this time, getting more agitated the closer Kaiden came. He even did his best to scramble backward. His massive body was shaking violently with all the loose fat. The mattress squealed beneath him as he pushed with his heels, trying to escape.

Kaiden's silence was worse than rage. His face was carved from stone, showing no mercy, no hesitation. Only wrath so cold and certain that it made the air itself feel heavier.

Maximilian's back slammed against the headboard and then the reinforced wall. There was nowhere else to go. His lungs shrank. His heart thrashed wildly in his chest.

His mind raced, though not with plans, but pure animal terror.

'He's going to kill me!!'

The bedframe rattled from his trembling. His fingers clawed uselessly at the wall as his vision blurred with tears. His tongue felt dry, glued to the roof of his mouth. There was no smirk left. No arrogance. Just a whimpering, cornered rat.

"Y–You c–can't!" Maximilian screamed. "Y–You're awakened! Y–You c–can't attack a civilian! It's- it's illegal! You'll go to prison! They'll arrest you-!"

Those words finally, finally, drew a reaction.

Kaiden didn't stop walking.

His expression didn't soften.

He only turned his head to the naked, chained woman still lying on the bed next to Maximilian.

She had been silently watching, motionless, eyes wide and glassy. Bruises painted her skin. Blood dried on her lip. Her wrists trembled, but she made no sound, that was, until she realized Kaiden was looking at her.

His voice was calm. Too calm.

"Miss," he asked, "are you in any sort of danger? Is the man next to you a threat to your safety? Do you need me to help you?"

She blinked.

The words seemed to take a full heartbeat to reach her.

'Help me...?'

Her lips parted. A fragile, broken sound escaped her throat. Her eyes overflowed.

Then she screamed from the bottom of her very soul.

"I need saving! Please! Please! I'll do anything, anything…!" she sobbed, voice scraping against raw vocal cords. "He kidnapped me! He raped me! He was about to kill me!"

Her body convulsed as the dam broke. All the agony, humiliation, and hopelessness poured out in a single, soul-shattering confession.

Kaiden nodded once.

Just once.

His shoulders eased. The storm in his eyes dimmed, but only for the briefest moment, as he looked at her not as a witness, a tool to let him do what he wanted, but as a human being who lived through extreme and unjust misfortune.

"You're safe now," he said softly.

Then he turned back to Maximilian.

And the storm returned a hundredfold.

His jaw tightened. His gaze hardened into a predator's wrath. And without slowing, he continued his approach.

Maximilian's world shrank to that expression.

That was the face of a man who had already passed judgment.

And there would be no mercy.

Maximilian's legs betrayed him. He tried to scramble to his feet and run, but he was shaking far too much, resulting in his feet slipping.

It took him several seconds to manage to get on his feet, but when he looked around, he realized that escape was nothing but a dream. Between him and the heavy slab of the exit door, the Paragon of Sin was a living wall.

"Please-" Maximilian babbled on, words tumbling into a slurry. He began bargaining like a drowning man. "I'll give you one hundred million! A billion! Ten billion!"

No reaction.

"Name the figure, cash, stocks, property, no! I'll give you partial ownership of ChronosX! I'll promote your people, I'll-"

Kaiden didn't even blink.

"Full ownership!" Maximilian clawed on, breathless. "Take it all! I'll transfer everything to you! Hell, take my shares, my yachts, my private island!"

Nothing.

"The hottest women from all around the globe! Anything! Name it, and it's yours!"

Silence met each offer. There was no attempt at bartering. No appetite for money or anything else he could offer.

"Please," the fat man slurred. His voice was now rawer than ever before in his entire miserable life. "Just- Just don't kill me. I can make it worth your while!"

Kaiden was by now close enough that Maximilian could see the small shaking of his whole body. Not from fear, of course… Just blood-curdling rage that was about to explode as soon as he reached Maximilian.

Then, as the distance separating the two was almost fully covered, the Blood Monarch's Gauntlet, which had guarded his hand like armor, retracted with a soft slither of blood-slick metal, withdrawing so Kaiden's bare hands showed, no longer hidden behind metal.

"The only thing I want from you…" Kaiden began at long last when he stepped the last fraction forward.

Maximilian's eyes went wide with a new kind of panic.

Kaiden's hand closed around the man's throat. Lifting him was effortless: one motion, and the heavyweight CEO dangled in the air as if he were a frightened child. "… Is to hear your squeals…"

He tightened his grip and leaned close enough until his breath landed on his ear, "… You filthy fucking pig."

"Hiiieeeeee!!!" Maximilian immediately squealed as feet kicked around wildly. The attempt was entirely fruitless and useless. He clawed at Kaiden's arm, fingers scrabbling for purchase on material that wouldn't give.

The Paragon of Sin did not budge even for a single moment, no matter what he tried.

"Please, please! Anything but this!" he screamed. His voice hitched, broke, and then climbed into a high, girlish sobbing that only served to make Kaiden's expression even more cruel, more menacing.

When their gazes met, something in Maximilian's body froze raw, looking like a deer caught in front of a predator there to eat him alive.

For an instant, he was utterly, unbearably small.

Kaiden's free hand opened, palm up and empty. "You like hitting defenseless women. Isn't that right?"

Maximilian's mouth formed nonsense at a speed that made it seem he was trying to rap.

But no one was buying it.

"Then let's see how you like it."

*Slap!*

The room rang as Kaiden's open palm slapped across Maximilian's cheek. The blow snapped the man's head hard to the side; spit and a thin red smear bloomed at the corner of his mouth.

"AGGHHHGHHH!!" He howled, releasing a high, broken note that echoed off the metal walls.

Kaiden's palm came down again, even harder this time. The slap rocked Maximilian's head, and blood and dislodged teeth smeared across the metal wall behind them. "Red blood, huh…? I expected green from you."

The CEO's face was a mask of terror and pain as he squealed incessantly.

Then the hold at his throat vanished as if cut. Maximilian thudded to the floor and, scrambling like a cornered animal, tried to flee on all fours toward the heavy door.

His movements were frantic, clumsy; shame and fear pushed him faster than his legs could carry.

But he was not allowed to leave. Of course, he wasn't.

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