When we returned to the penthouse, I barely had ti to help Evelyn out of her coat before the other three descended on her like a pack of curious wolves. They surrounded her on the living room sofa, their questions coming so rapidly that they overlapped into an incomprehensible barrage of excitent.
"How was it?" "What did you do?" "Was he romantic?" "Did he hold your hand?" "Tell us everything!"
I retreated to the kitchen, ostensibly to give them privacy for their conversation but mostly because I had a feeling that interrupting what Camille called "girl talk" was a mistake that could result in being banished from entire sections of the penthouse for hours. Instead, I busied myself cleaning up the breakfast dishes that were still in the sink while listening to fragnts of their animated discussion.
"The tasting room was incredible," Evelyn was saying, her voice carrying genuine enthusiasm. "We tried wines from regions I’d never even heard of, and whiskeys that were older than so countries. But the best part was just being able to feel... normal for once."
"And?" Sienna’s voice was loaded with expectation.
"And what?"
"Did you kiss him?" Camille demanded with characteristic directness.
There was a pause that seed to stretch for an eternity, followed by what sounded like squealing from all three interrogators simultaneously.
"It was perfect," Evelyn said softly, though even from the kitchen I could hear the smile in her voice.
I couldn’t help but grin as I loaded the dishwasher. The promise they had made to maintain fairness while Evelyn couldn’t participate had been the primary thing preventing romantic competition between them. With that barrier removed, things were about to beco significantly more complicated.
After what felt like hours of detailed questioning and enthusiastic comntary, the conversation in the living room finally began to quiet down. I erged from the kitchen to find all four won looking remarkably pleased with themselves, though there was an undercurrent of anticipation that my skills found slightly ominous.
"Reynard," Camille said with the kind of sweet smile that usually preceded demands I couldn’t reasonably refuse, "now that the promise is irrelevant, you realize you have to take all of us out, right?"
I had been expecting this conversation, though not quite so soon after returning from the date. "Of course. I was planning—"
"He does have to go to Brazil soon," Evelyn interrupted smoothly. "So maybe the dates will have to wait until after his mission."
The temperature in the room seed to drop twenty degrees instantly.
The change was so sudden and so intense that Instinct imdiately activated, flooding my system with warning signals that sothing extrely dangerous was happening. My detective abilities were providing rapid-fire analysis of facial expressions, body language, and atmospheric tension, but the conclusions they were reaching seed impossible to believe.
Sienna, Alexis, and Camille were all looking at Evelyn with expressions that could only be described as pure, concentrated bloodlust. Not taphorical irritation or playful competition – actual, honest-to-god murderous intent. The kind of look that predators gave prey right before the killing strike.
The pressure in the room was so intense that I felt like I was being crushed. My skills were screaming warnings about imminent violence, about fight-or-flight responses, about the urgent need to either defend myself or evacuate the area imdiately. Every survival instinct I possessed was telling that I was witnessing sothing that could escalate into genuine murder scene within seconds.
Evelyn, apparently unbothered by the fact that her three closest friends were currently contemplating her murder, sat calmly on the sofa with the kind of serene expression that suggested she had been expecting this reaction.
"I an," she continued with devastating casualness, "it would be irresponsible to start dating everyone right before an important international mission. Better to wait until he returns safely."
The bloodlust intensified. I was genuinely concerned that soone was about to die.
Evelyn’s suggestion wasn’t motivated by concern for mission focus or international diplomacy. She was leveraging her newly acquired advantage, being the first to go on an actual date since the promise was removed, to maintain a privileged position in the romantic hierarchy they had all been boasting so proudly about.
This was strategic manipulation disguised as reasonable planning, and everyone in the room knew it.
Instinct was now actively advising to remain completely silent and avoid any movent that might draw attention to myself. Whatever was happening between them, my survival apparently depended on not being perceived as taking sides.
"Actually," Evelyn said with the sa calm tone, as if she hadn’t just nearly triggered a civil war, "the Brazil trip isn’t for another two weeks. There’s plenty of ti for dates before then."
The murderous expressions vanished instantly. Within seconds, all three won were hugging Evelyn like nothing had happened, their voices filled with affectionate laughter and excited chatter about scheduling and planning.
I stood frozen in the kitchen doorway, trying to process what I had just witnessed. The emotional whiplash was so severe that I felt like I had aged several years in the span of thirty seconds.
These won, who I had thought I understood reasonably well, had just demonstrated that they were capable of switching between genuine murderous intent and loving friendship with a speed that defied normal human psychology. The competitive dynamics underlying their relationships were apparently far more intense and potentially dangerous than I had ever realized.
But more importantly, my mind was already moving beyond the imdiate social drama to consider the larger implications of what Evelyn had revealed. Two weeks until Brazil ant I had a limited window to address several critical issues, the most important of which was finding a solution to the Cain Protocol that kept her blindfolded.
While I didn’t have to find a cure before I went, I still wanted to give it a try, but the difficulty wasn’t helping in the slightest. I didn’t know the specific chanisms behind the experintal program that had affected her, but I knew it had been developed in Europe. France was definitely aligned with our coalition against the World President, which ant I could potentially request access to classified information about the project. If I could understand how the Protocol worked, there was a chance that Alexis – with her multiple combined specialized jobs – could find a way to reverse its effects.
The possibility of giving Evelyn her sight back, of allowing her to see and the world around her, was worth pursuing regardless of the political complications it might create. She deserved to have that choice, and I was in a position to potentially make it happen.
I was pulled back to the present by the sound of renewed giggling from the living room. All four won were now engaged in what appeared to be enthusiastic planning discussions, with notebooks appearing from sowhere and complex scheduling negotiations underway.
"So it’s settled," Camille was saying with satisfaction. "Reynard is taking all of us on proper dates before the Brazil mission."
"Individual dates," Sienna clarified. "Not group outings."
"Obviously," Alexis agreed. "The whole point is for it to be romantic."
I realized they were all looking at expectantly, waiting for to participate in whatever logistical discussion they had been having while I was lost in thought about European experintal programs.
"Individual dates," I confird, though I was already dreading the follow-up question I knew was coming.
"Perfect," Camille said with the kind of smile that suggested she had been planning this conversation for weeks. "So who are you taking next?"
The mont the question left her lips, the atmosphere in the room shifted again.
Sienna, Alexis, and Camille were all looking at each other with expressions that combined competitive determination with barely controlled aggression. The friendly cooperation of monts before had evaporated, replaced by the kind of tense calculation that preceded strategic warfare.
None of them were looking at – they were too busy engaging in so kind of silent psychological battle with each other. But I could feel the pressure radiating from their direction like heat from a furnace.
I was standing at the center of a conflict that could potentially destroy the careful balance they had all been maintaining, and any choice I made would be perceived as favoritism with unpredictable results.
Sienna was my first partner, which gave her a certain historical precedence, but also made choosing her seem like the safe, predictable option. Alexis was the one who had been helping navigate the SS-Rank transformation as well as many other dical ergencies that I’ve had for a while now which could be seen as a form of debt that deserved acknowledgnt. Camille was the one who had just orchestrated this entire conversation, which might an she expected to be rewarded for her initiative. Not to ntion that she had made all the masks and clothes related to my ti as the sole mber of the Masked Syndicate. She definitely expected sothing for it.
But choosing any of them would an not choosing the others, and based on what I had just witnessed, I couldn’t tell if this was their twisted form of friendly banter or if they would actually kill each other on the spot.
The silence stretched on, filled with the kind of tension that made the air feel thick and difficult to breathe. Three pairs of eyes continued their psychological warfare while I stood there trying to figure out how to navigate a situation that my skills were classifying as a no-win scenario.
You’ve gotta be kidding .
I had destroyed their carefully constructed system of romantic fairness, and now I was going to have to deal with the consequences of unleashing whatever competitive instincts they had been keeping carefully controlled.
This was going to be a very long two weeks.
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