Chapter Four
Berkley
As I step back into the world, the night air greets me with a cool breeze, sharp enough to sting against my still-swollen eyes and cuts and bruises from my recent basement escapade. The chill cuts like glass, burrowing into my skin, reminding me that I’m still here, still breathing, even when the shitstorm inside me screams I shouldn’t be. My eyes must be rimmed in angry red, betraying the breakdown I barely crawled my way out of hours ago, but I don’t bother hiding it. But I don’t smear away the tracks of tears or smooth out the cracks in my armor. Let the world see. Let them whisper.
I feel raw, as though I’ve been flayed open for all to witness, my nerves exposed and pulsing, the weight of every shame, every secret, carved across my face like scars no one can ignore. It feels like walking through the aftermath of a battlefield naked, stripped of every defense, with only my bruised heart on display. For a fleeting moment, the thought threatens to crush me, to drag me back under—to remind me of every hand that has hurt me, every voice that told me I was weak. The panic claws at my chest, greedy, aching to pull me back down into the dark.
But then the part of me they never broke—the part that refuses to stay broken—surges to the front. The warrior I’ve become doesn’t tolerate weakness. She doesn’t bow to pity or wallow indespair. She rises, fierce and unrelenting, from the ashes inside me, scattering the debris of that fragile girl who used to cry alone in the dark. Instead, she smirks at my trembling hands, bitch-slaps the thought of pity into the next life, and takes her rightful place at the helm.
That’s the part of me they’ll never take. The piece they underestimated. The part that will burn them alive for thinking they could strip me down to nothing.
There’s no room for doubt anymore. Doubt is for the girl I used to be—the one who hesitated, who second-guessed every choice, who let shame weigh her down until it nearly buried her alive. She’s gone. Burned away in the flames of everything I lost. What’s left in her place is harder, sharper, forged in pain and betrayal until there’s no softness left for anyone to cut into again.
I am not defined by what was done to me. I refuse to be. Their hands, their lies, their cruelty—they may have scarred me, but they do not get to own me. I am not the shattered pieces they tried to leave behind. I am not the broken girl they carved and twisted, molding me into something small and weak so they could carry their sins without resistance.
I am the victim, yes, but that word is only the beginning of my story. More importantly, I am a survivor. I am the one who refused to stay down when they shoved me into the dirt. I am the one who crawled through fire, through blood and ash, through grief so black it threatened to drown me—and I came out the other side tempered steel. Stronger. Colder. Deadlier.
I am the hand of judgment, the blade of vengeance, the voice they will hear in their last moments. The one person who carries both the right—and the obligation—to pass sentence on the monsters who destroyed us. Their days of hiding behind power and fear are done. Every scream, every tear, every ounce of suffering they inflicted on us has been tallied, carved into my bones. And I will be the reckoning that makes them pay.
Though the guys carry their own sins, their own failures, I know they carry the right to vengeance too. I’ve blamed them, hated them, cursed their names in the quiet—but deep down, I know they bleed just as I do. They lost Reign—their sister, their triplet at birth—to the same monsters who stole our childhood. That bond, that piece of their soul, was ripped from them in the same way mine was. Her laughter, her fire, her life—snuffed out and used as another pawn in our fathers’ games. Her blood stains their hands just as much as mine, not because they wanted it, but because they couldn’t stop it. Because we all failed her.
For all the fractures between us, for all the jagged edges of betrayal and lies that keep slicing us open every time we get close, I can’t erase that truth. It’s carved too deep into who we are. The pain doesn’t belong to me alone. It belongs to all of us, and it’s the one thread that still binds us, no matter how violently we’ve been pulled apart.
One day soon, we’ll have no choice but to stand together. Because that’s the only way this ends—with unity sharp enough to cut through the empire our fathers built on our blood. We’ll have to take every broken piece, every shard of trust, and braid what’s left ofus into something new. Something stronger. Something unbreakable. And when we do, when we finally put aside the personal grudges that have chained us down for years, we’ll become the weapon they never saw coming.
With that weapon, we’ll tear those bastards down to the point there’s nothing left but bones and ash. Until their empire burns and the world forgets their names, all that will remain is the echo of their screams and the truth we carve into the rubble.
Until then, Rowan and Emerson can keep Ronan pinned, keep his stitches intact, and keep him breathing while I’m gone.
But tonight belongs to me—to the fury that burns hotter than the blood in my veins. To the blade that feels like an extension of my hand, forged from every scar and sleepless night. To the hunt that has been simmering inside me since the first scream I swallowed, the first tear I forced back. The shadows are mine, the silence is mine, and every heartbeat pounding in my chest drums out the same rhythm—vengeance, vengeance, vengeance.
My rage is a living thing, wrapping around me like armor, sharper than steel, heavier than grief. It drowns out doubt, silences fear, and leaves nothing but focus in its wake. Every step I take is deliberate, guided by the fire that refuses to die. The world has taken too much from me already, but tonight I’ll take something back. Tonight, I decide who bleeds.
Let them try to stop me. Let them think they can stand in my way. Anyone who dares to step into my path will learn exactly what I’ve become—what they made me. A survivor. A weapon. A stormthat doesn’t forgive and forget. Tonight is mine, and I will carve my name into the dark with their screams.
Tonight’s list is three deep, and for once, I let myself linger on it. Usually, the names blur together—just another string of bodies to add to the pile, another round of scum who thought they were untouchable. But not tonight. Tonight, I savor them. Roll them across my tongue like poison I’ve been saving for years, let them sink into me as though I’m carving each letter into a gravestone that’s already waiting. Every syllable is a promise, every name a countdown.
Vince Toller is first. A greasy dock rat with a paunch belly and dirt under his fingernails, the kind of man who thinks he’s clever because he skims a few extra crates off the books. He laughs too loud, drinks too much, and walks around with the swagger of a man who doesn’t realize he’s disposable. A parasite feeding off the scraps of bigger monsters. He thinks nobody notices, but I do. I notice everything. And tomorrow, when he doesn’t show up to collect his cut, the bigger monsters will notice too.
Then there’s Blake Drummond. Even his name makes my teeth itch. The kind of guy who belongs in a cheap suit with a sleazy grin, running product through clubs like he’s the king of the underworld instead of a middleman with delusions of grandeur. His hair is slicked back so tight it looks like it hurts, and that smirk—the one that says he thinks every woman in the room is an easy mark—makes me want to smash his face into a mirror just to see the arrogance crack. He’s nothing but a nuisance, a puffed-up pawn, but pawns serve a purpose. When they fall, they trip the board.
They’re not powerhouses, not legends in this empire, but their disappearance will leave a mark. A hole in the network. A fracture in the façade of control our fathers have spent decades polishing. People like Vince and Blake are the gears in the machine—small, ugly, easily replaced, but when two gears go missing at once, the whole thing grinds slower. It makes noise. It draws attention.
Their absence will sting. It’ll ripple up the chain and remind the men at the top of the food chain that their empire isn’t unbreakable. That every empire falls eventually. And I’ll be the one chiseling away at the foundation, one body at a time.
The last name on my list is different. A special treat. The kind that doesn’t make my heart race, but slows it to a steady, lethal rhythm. It sharpens me, steadies my grip on the blade I’ll be burying in his flesh. Trent Malloy. Emerson’s father’s right hand, the shadow that’s lingered too close to all of us for far too long.
I’ve been watching him for weeks. Every move, every glance, every too-long stare in Kimber’s direction. He pretends it’s protection, a loyal soldier guarding the boss’s daughter. But I know men like him. They don’t guard. They circle. Stalk. They wait until the perfect moment to strike. His presence alone would have been enough to earn him a place on my list, but then the wiretap came in.
It was Bryce’s voice, cold and deliberate, slicing through the static like a knife. A red alert buried in calm tones, but it set every nerve in my body on fire. Bryce promised Trent guardianship of his youngest—Kimber. Guardianship. The word itself was poison, bile rising in my throat just hearing it. Kimber wasn’t a ward to beprotected or a daughter to be cherished in their eyes. She was a bargaining chip. A possession. A prize being transferred from one set of filthy hands to another.
The part that makes me sick? It wasn’t random. Bryce didn’t hand out power without reason. He said it was because Trent had a big job coming up, something significant enough to warrant such a “reward.” But he never slipped into the conversation about what that job was. Not one detail. And that silence was louder than any answer could’ve been. Whatever they’re planning, whatever’s waiting on the horizon, it’s big. Dangerous.
My rage nearly cost me everything in that moment. My hands shook hard enough that I almost crushed the recorder, vision bleeding red as every instinct in me screamed to end him—right then and there. To drag him into the street and carve the truth out of him before the exchange could ever happen. Because there’s only one reason men like Trent Malloy want guardianship over a girl Kimber’s age, and it has nothing to do with keeping her safe.
The recording didn’t just confirm my suspicions—it etched them in stone. Drew a line I can never cross back over. Trent thinks he’s untouchable because he’s useful, because he’s loyal, because he knows too many of Bryce’s secrets. But tonight, usefulness won’t save him. Tonight, I stop him from circling. Tonight, I make sure Kimber never ends up in his hands.
One of the smartest things I ever did was learn how to crack databases. It turned bureaucracy into a weapon—custody paperwork rerouted, approvals fast-tracked, every safeguard sealed tight with no loopholes left for them to claw back. Once the wheels startedturning, the police would have no choice but to follow through, no matter how loud Bryce screamed.