#youcannotaffordme

The man in question was a wealthy chem-baron by the name of Van Colt. Nothing much made him stand out among the dozens that warred for supremacy in Zaun’s depths, an ambitious soul who often postured with far more strength than he possessed. Therysa had found located his office with some effort, where Van Colt oversaw his syndicate’s money-laundering work. It had minimal guards, for the crime lord had gone through enough paranoid measures to ensure that nobody would associate it with him, although clearly he had not anticipated that he would anger not only the Royal Rose, but also the Crow hidden inside it.

As the young woman stepped through the doors of the building, her jacket still trailing dust from the outside, she thought on the companion that Van Colt had injured, perhaps beyond recovery. He’d backhanded her across the face with his ring hand, and the iron band had torn her right eye. Even with the doctors that Valentina could call upon, the escort likely would never see from that eye again. While the retribution that Therysa had planned was likely disproportionate in its severity, as Valentina had said, a message needed to be sent.

The offices itself were relatively empty at this point in time, save for a pair of bodyguards who stood at the entrance to Van Colt’s sanctum. When they saw Therysa, they exchanged looks of confusion; to their knowledge, Van Colt had not made a call for one of Valentina’s girls. Therysa never gave them time to second-guess themselves; a pair of throwing knives slipped into her hand from within her sleeve, and she ended them both with a well-aimed throw, sinking the two slivers of thin steel into their hearts. They collapsed without a sound, and she drew her favourite blade; a wicked knife made of vermilion-tinted steel, its blade curving forwards in a deadly reversed talon.

Shedding her jacket, revealing a simpler outfit of darkened, steel-threaded leathers, the Crow kicked open the doors to the office, revealing a startled Van Colt, a large man in imported furs, a still-smoking cigar held in thick lips. To his credit, he shook off his surprise to reach for a weapon concealed beneath his desk, but Therysa launched herself forwards in a blur of motion, crashing into him and sending them both to the floor.

The desperate scramble of close-fighting was never a clean affair, but it was in this frenetic chaos that Therysa found her killer’s tranquility. As Van Colt fought to get his gun in her face, she brought her elbow down into his nose, and the crunch of cartilage brought its own sickly satisfaction. Her crimson blade sank into his wrist while he flailed, forcing nerveless fingers to drop the weapon to the floor. Her legs locked around his waist in a parody of lovemaking, for despite his greater size Therysa knew that leverage mattered so much more than strength in moments like these. She ripped her blade free with a flourish, arterial blood spraying them both in darkened red, prompting a scream of unmitigated pain from the chem-baron.

It was swiftly silenced, however, when Therysa jammed her forearm under his chin and pinned his throat. As his eyes bulged from the pain and lack of air, she stared into them with emerald ones that showed only cold, focused rage.

“You took my friend’s eye.” She hissed, reversing the grip on her knife and raising it high above her head. “Before you die, you’re going to know how that feels.”

A few days later, Therysa slipped into Valentina’s office, a privilege afforded to her unique station. The Queen was out, as it was common for her in her work, but when she returned, she would find a gift laid upon her desk; a human eye, preserved in clear chemical fluids, contained within a small glass container, the gash where a blade had impaled it perfectly captured for the rest of time.