Brisenna did not flinch, even though her tailored trousers felt like spun glass against her calves. She tilted her chin precisely four degrees—the angle Jelika had drilled into her skull while pinning her obsidian hair back—and let her gaze drag down Rhovann's Italian wool lapels. Three hours earlier, this exact man had sneered at her burnt toast, declaring that a woman without capital assets ranked lower than office greenery. Now, grease coated the bridge of his straight nose. "Get out of my path," Brisenna said softly. Her voice naturally possessed a gentle, rounded timbre, but behind the frosted slate collar of a four-thousand-credit blazer, the quiet murmur carried the rasp of drawn wire. Rhovann stumbled backward into his own marketing manager, babbling apologies as the bronze-gilded private elevator chimed. Jelika slipped into the cab beside her, a heavy black leather briefcase dangling from her hand with measured calm. "Floor ninety," Jelika instructed the biometric console. She gave Brisenna a sideways, razor-sharp smirk. "You didn't vomit on his shoes. High marks." "I brought pastries," Brisenna hissed under the motor's hum, clutching a wicker basket covered with red gingham cloth. "Jelika, my hands shook so hard I baked at four in the morning to calm down. There's real creamery butter in these. If they taste them, will they know I'm an imposter?" "Tyvola rule number three," Jelika muttered, checking the slide on a snub-nosed ceramic pistol tucked under her silk blazer. "Kindness is a threat. Always. Let them connect the dots you don't draw." The doors parted with a pressurized hiss onto the zenith of the Spire. The boardroom was a stadium of smoked glass, suspended over the smoggy canyons of the lower wards. Twelve department chiefs from logistics and heavy munitions sat around an obsidian crescent table, their faces set in open mutiny. At the center sat Senior Vice President Vorst, a man with titanium collarbone implants and a reputation for having his junior accountants drowned in cooling vats. Brisenna entered. The twelve men and women instantly snapped their mouths shut, shoulders stiffening until the fabric of their jackets strained. She walked to the head of the table. Every muscle in her legs begged to curtsy, to ask if anyone wanted their tea topped up. Instead, she took a breath and carefully set the wicker basket in the center of the polished stone. She lifted the red cloth with a soft, nervous smile. "Good morning, everyone," Brisenna said, her tone warm, motherly, and brimming with earnest goodwill. "I know our quarter has been fraught, and tempers have run quite thin. So... I made these for you. Wild blueberries from the rooftop hydroponics. Please, have one. Take as many as you like." Silence fell across the room, sudden and suffocating. Board member Moros, who had spent the last week actively shorting company stock, leaned back so violently his chair groaned. Vorst stared at the golden-brown crust of the baked rolls, his skin blanched until his synthetic collarbone ridged against his neck tissue. "Blueberries," Vorst rasped, his fingers twitching toward his datapad to enter a toxicology scan. "From the private gardens. Hand-delivered." "Yes!" Brisenna chirped, delighted that he noticed the provenance. "Still warm." Moros swallowed audibly. He looked at Vorst. Then he looked at the nearest roll, where a bursting violet berry leaked juice across the polished surface. "The, ah... the dispute regarding the sub-dock distribution margins," Moros croaked, shoving his digital stylus across the glass. "My faction withdraws its objections. Completely. Full compliance with the chair's decree. Effective this morning." Brisenna blinked, bewildered. "Oh. But you haven't even reviewed the transport wages yet. I really think we should discuss—" "No need to mock us, Madame Veltoris!" a senior manager on the left blurted, raising her hands in surrender, her knuckles pale. "We accept the quota reduction! Just... please, clear the table!" Brisenna looked at Jelika, whose face remained an unreadable sheet of marble. Before Brisenna could explain that nothing hid inside the crumb except nutmeg, the boardroom double doors flew open with an indignant slam. Rhovann strode into the room, his tie straightened, clutching a thick leather-bound dossier. Behind him trailed Lirienne, dressed in an emerald sheath dress, her polished nails tapping an arrogant rhythm against a tablet. "Madame Veltoris!" Rhovann announced, projecting the brazen confidence of a mid-tier predator trying to claim a wolf pack's scraps. "Pardon the intrusion, but your security staff recognized the urgency of my portfolio. My firm, Morvath Dynamics, has an exclusive proposal for your micro-thruster distribution." Brisenna's mouth parted slightly. Just five hours ago, this man had thrown her floral luggage onto the rain-slicked curb, telling her that her pathetic domestic mindset was dragging down his socio-economic climb. Now, Rhovann looked at her with an intensity approaching religious frenzy. He didn't see the wife who ironed his socks; he saw Vanya Veltoris, the sovereign monster who owned half the city's power grid. "Morvath Dynamics," Rhovann pressed, taking a bold step toward the table, completely blind to the twelve petrified executives shrinking away from the muffin basket. "We are prepared to sign an unbreakable exclusivity pact. I have recently liquidated... personal encumbrances that were compromising my operational focus." "Encumbrances?" Brisenna asked, unable to stop the word from slipping out. "Dead weight," Rhovann said smoothly, throwing a slick, self-satisfied grin toward Lirienne, who beamed with vicious pride. "A former domestic arrangement. A woman of no vision, no capital, and negligible intelligence. In fact, if the Board requires proof of my ruthless loyalty, I am currently drafting proceedings to seize her maternal inheritance and strip her family's remaining land deeds. I will force her into utter insolvency to guarantee my firm's liquidity for this contract." Brisenna stared at him. The sheer, naked malice in his eyes struck her not with fear, but with a strange, icy clarity. She had scrubbed this man's floors. She had made his bone broths when he had the flu. He wanted to take her mother's cottage in the outer ring to buy micro-thrusters. Her instinct to be polite did not vanish; it crystallized into something smooth, sweet, and horrifyingly lethal. Brisenna smiled. A soft, radiant, exquisitely kind smile. "How deeply thorough of you, Mr. Morvath," Brisenna murmured. "However, your debt-to-asset ratio is abysmal, your supply chain relies on bankrupt orbital haulers, and your pitch... lacks basic decorum. I believe I will pass. Entirely. Have a wonderful day." Rhovann froze. His face went through three distinct shades of gray. In the cutthroat dialect of Tyvola, a gentle, smiling refusal was not a rejection—it was an execution notice. It meant: *I find you so utterly beneath contempt that I will not even bother to negotiate your destruction; it is already ordained.* "A... a masterclass," Rhovann stammered, his voice trembling in warped adoration. His gaze fixed on her rigid posture, mistaking quiet revulsion for cold-blooded calculation. "You're testing my resolve. You're applying psychological compression before the squeeze. Madame Veltoris, please—name your terms. Double the collateral? My personal assets? Anything." "I just don't want the contract, Rhovann," she sighed, leaning forward to lift a pastry for herself. The entire room held its collective breath. Moros whimpered. "She's eating it," someone croaked in horror. "She's immune to her own venom." Brisenna brought the pastry toward her lips. *Crack.* The reinforced ballistic window behind her exploded inward in a shower of glittering diamond shards. A supersonic heavy-caliber slug screamed through the vacuum of the high-altitude wind. The bullet did not take Brisenna's head. It struck the center of the blueberry muffin in her raised fingers, obliterating the pastry into a cloud of steaming purple mush and lead fragments that sprayed across the black table. Jelika was moving before the sound reached the walls, her body slamming into Brisenna's shoulder to drive her flat against the marble floor as a second round stitched a lethal line across the ceiling.

Muffins and Murder