The entity wasn't just targeting my drain. It was targeting everything connected to me. Every ability I'd copied. Every channel I'd opened. Every woman whose Essentia lived inside my body alongside my own.
If it got through my defenses it would get to them too.
No.
Absolutely not.
I felt something shift inside my chest. Not the drain. Something deeper. Something that had been asleep since I woke up in this body and started playing a game I hadn't asked to join.
The original Rome D'Angelo had been a failure. A womanizer. A waste of potential and family resources. But he'd also been an Angelo. And Angelos did not go quietly.
I opened the drain.
Not all the way. Not the full channel. Just a crack. A thread. Enough to taste what was coming through before it overwhelmed me completely.
The entity's Essentia hit my tongue and this time I didn't flinch.
