I slip into the night, each step measured, silent, deliberate, the kind of movement honed by months of stalking men who thought shadows would keep them safe. The city breathes differently at this hour, restless and feverish, like it knows blood is about to be spilled. My destination pulls me forward with grim certainty—Blake Drummond, the second name on my list, as predictable as the tide and twice as foul.
Every evening at this exact time, Blake anchors himself in the back corner of the Velvet Crown. The place is a pit dressed up in neon lipstick, a club where broken promises flicker above the door in cheap pink lights, where the bass is so heavy it rattles bones and drowns out screams. Cigarette smoke coils through the air, wrapping itself around perfume and sweat until the whole place reeks of desperation. He thinks the noise and chaos make him invisible, that his filth disappears into the drunken haze of half-naked dancers, sweaty cash, and glazed-over eyes. But men like Blake can’t disappear. Not from me. I’ve always seen him. And tonight, I’ll make sure everyone else sees what he really is, too.
Blake’s crimes don’t creep in whispers. They stink of gasoline and rot, impossible to ignore once you get close. He’s made a fortune running product through these walls, drugs so potent they leave bodies in alleys, club bathrooms, and back seats of cars. I’veread the files, seen the crime scene photos—girls barely old enough to buy their first legal drink, veins lit up like fire, bodies crumpled as if they’d been discarded the second their use ran out. He doesn’t sell death. He packages it as magic; promises it will set them alight. When they finally fall—empty, twitching—he steps over the wreckage and never looks back.
But that isn’t even the worst of it. Blake deals in flesh as easily as he deals in powder. He lures them in with promises of quick cash, of opportunity, of being “seen” in his clubs—then funnels them through back rooms where they’re handed off like currency. Some crawl out broken. Others never walk out at all. And Blake just keeps grinning, keeps skimming the profits, keeps smearing his filth across everything he touches.
He thinks the Velvet Crown hides him. That the flashing lights and pounding bass blur out the edges of his sins. But tonight, the only thing blurring will be his vision when I take him apart. Piece by piece.
He’s slouched in his usual seat like a king on a throne built of lies, arrogance dripping from every lazy movement. His glass of whiskey sweats on the table, half-drained and surrounded by the stink of smoke and stale liquor. Two dancers cling to either side of him, but their eyes give them away—hollow, tired, desperate to be anywhere else. They’re props in his performance, bought and paid for like the rest of his life. His hand grips one girl’s thigh, fingers digging in so hard her skin will wear bruises by morning, while the other waves around a stack of cash as if it crowns him ruler of thispit. He thinks money makes him untouchable. Tonight, it will choke him.
The haze of smoke and neon hides me as I close in, the pulse of strobe lights slicing across the crowd like fractured lightning. Bodies press around me, swaying to the pounding bass, but I weave through them easily, a predator cutting through a herd. When I move, I move with purpose—sharp, direct, unstoppable. No hesitation. My blade flickers once under the lights, a flash of silver like a secret too quick to catch, before I drag it across the bag of coke waiting next to the table. White powder spills in a soft dusting straight into his drink, dissolving instantly into poison he’ll never see coming.
He doesn’t notice. Of course he doesn’t. His mind is too fogged by ego and decay, too busy drowning itself in whiskey and self-importance. By the time I’m behind him, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body, his hand is already lifting the glass to his mouth. The rim touches his lips, his throat tipping back, mid-sip.
That’s when I strike. My hand clamps down on his shoulder, hard enough to pin him, the blade of my presence cutting sharper than steel. With my other hand, I seize his jaw and yank his head back, forcing the glass upward. Whiskey floods his mouth, spilling over his lips, drenching the front of his shirt as I ram the rest down his throat.
He sputters immediately, choking and gagging, liquid burning its way down with no chance of escape. The dancers shriek, their screams sharp enough to pierce even over the bass, but the music swallows them whole, muffling their terror into the chaos ofthe club. No one notices. No one cares. In here, screams are as common as laughter.
Blake’s eyes go wide, bulging as the cocktail burns its way through him, the laced whiskey searing into his veins like wildfire. His body jerks, muscles spasming against my grip, but I hold him steady, forcing every drop of poison down. For the first time in his life, Blake Drummond isn’t in control. He’s choking on his own sins, and I’m the one holding the match.
I lean close, my lips brushing the shell of his ear, my voice slicing through his panic like a scalpel. “You thought you could poison everyone else, Blake. Sell them rot. Bury them alive in their own veins. How’s it taste now?” The words settle into him heavier than the liquor flooding his gut, cruel and deliberate, because I want them to be the last thing his disintegrating brain processes before the darkness swallows him whole.
His body jerks violently, convulsions tearing through him as foam froths at his lips. His limbs flail, knocking the glass from his hand, the sharp crack of shattering glass swallowed by pounding bass. Shards scatter across the sticky table and floor, glinting like tiny knives in the fractured neon glow. The lights above flash red, then green, then strobe, painting his twitching form in grotesque hues, like some carnival nightmare come to life. His hands claw weakly at his throat, his nails raking down his own skin, as though he could dig out the fire now ripping through his veins.
No one looks twice. No one moves to help. In this place, death is just another party trick, another high gone wrong. This isn’t an accident; it’s judgment. Justice.
His eyes roll back, whites flashing before they sink into shadow, his terror stamped across every spasm as his body seizes. The foam on his lips thickens, his breaths hitch and gurgle, until finally—mercifully—his head tips back against the booth, lifeless. The arrogance that once dripped off him like sweat is gone. The smirk that made me want to carve his face open is wiped clean. What’s left is nothing. A bag of meat.
I straighten, watching him for one more beat, making sure the poison did its job. My voice drops into the only eulogy he deserves, soft enough that only his corpse hears it. “Two down. One to go.”
Then I disappear. Sliding into the crowd, hood drawn low, swallowed by smoke and neon. To them, I’m no one. Just another shadow in the chaos. No one notices the man slumped in the booth, already forgotten, his empire ended in the same place he poisoned countless others. His reign of rot is over, and I’m already moving toward the next.
Chapter Five
Rowan
It feels like I’ve been on my knees in the middle of my sister’s bedroom for hours, even though the clock on the wall insists only minutes have passed. Time bends here, warping under the weight of the past I can’t undo. The carpet is shredded, the furniture splintered from Ronan’s earlier fury, fragments of wood and fabric littering the floor like remains. The carnage digs into my knees, sharp and unrelenting, but I don’t move. I can’t. My body is a monument of stone, too heavy to shift, too consumed by the storm inside me. It feels as though every drop of blood I have has drained into my chest, pooling there, pressing down until I can’t breathe, until even the thought of drawing air is a punishment I don’t deserve.
My hands hang useless at my sides—trembling with rage, twitching with guilt too big to hold. My fists ache to swing, to break something else, to bleed the violence out of me, but there’s nothing left to destroy that will erase what’s been done. The room already wears the scars of Ronan’s grief, his devastation carved into every overturned object, every shattered picture frame. All that’s left is me—on my knees, staring at ghosts no one else can see.
It’s like staring down the barrel of a gun, waiting for the trigger to be pulled. Only this weapon doesn’t fire bullets—it fires memories. Mistakes. Sins. Each one slamming into me harder thanthe last. The sound of Reign’s laughter in this very room, followed by the silence that smothered it forever. The hollow look in Berkley’s eyes when I raised my hand to her, when I became the monster I swore I’d never be. My father’s voice, whispering poison into my ear, twisting grief into obedience. Each memory lands true, carving a scar deeper than steel and etching failure into my bones.
There’s no hiding, no softening the truth. I failed her. I failed them both. My sister, Reign—my blood, my triplet, my other half—she trusted me to protect her, to shield her from the monsters in our house. Instead, I let them in. Let our father and our uncle touch her with their filth, let them corrupt her innocence, taint everything she was, until the light I’d grown up alongside was crushed beneath their weight. I wasn’t there when she needed me, and then I let them murder her, burying her truth beneath a lie they fed us like poison. I told myself I didn’t know. That I couldn’t have known. But deep down? Did I? I saw the cracks. I just didn’t want to face them. That makes me just as guilty.
And Berkley…fuck, Berk. My girl. The girl who had always been fire and loyalty, laughter and rebellion. I hurt her with my own hands. Became the blade my father sharpened, the weapon he forged from all my rage and grief. I let him turn me into his puppet, his trained monster, and I unleashed that monster on her. Every strike I dealt, every backhand, every time I forced myself to stare her down while I demanded answers she never owed me—I was him. I wasthem. I was the very nightmare I swore I would never become.
The worst part isn’t even the violence. It’s the betrayal. Because she looked at me, and she still saw Rowan—her Rowan—buried somewhere underneath the fury and the fists. And I proved her wrong every time. I proved her wrong until she bled. Until her body wore my sins. Until she had no reason left to look at me and see anything but another monster. And that truth sears deeper than any blade ever could.
I can almost hear them now—my father, my uncle—their laughter thick and cruel, a sound that slithers into your bones and festers there. It echoes in the back of my skull, a phantom chorus that won’t shut up, taunting me with every choice I made, every line I crossed. I can see their smug faces, mouths twisted into grins that drip poison, eyes gleaming with the satisfaction of victory. I know they’re mocking us. Mocking me. Marveling at how easy it was to break us; how simple it was to bend us until we snapped into the perfect shape for their game.
How the fuck did we fall for it? How didIfall for it? I replay it over and over—every moment I swallowed their lies like they were gospel. They played us with precision, carving us open with loss, then stuffing the wounds full of their version of the truth until we didn’t know what was real anymore. They dangled guilt like a leash around our necks, pulling tight whenever we dared to question. Painting themselves as the only anchors we had left, the only foundation after the fire tore everything else away, and we let them. We let them poison us.
They used our devastation like clay in their hands, molding us into weapons they could wield, soldiers who would march blind into their war. They blinded us with grief, twisted our love for Reign and Berk into shackles, and made us believe the narrative theywanted us to. A narrative that kept their hands clean and left us drowning in filth. They fed us just enough truth to make the lies palatable, just enough evidence to seal the cracks in our doubt. We swallowed it whole, choking it down until it became our reality.
Now, the taste of it makes me sick, bile rising in my throat at how easily we were played. How easilyIwas played. I can still hear their laughter, like they’re sitting in the shadows of this room, grinning while we unravel, while the truth finally rots its way to the surface.
Now, kneeling here, I’m swallowed by the ghost of my sister—but not in some untouched shrine. No, this place is wreckage, a graveyard of what used to be hers, torn apart by Ronan’s rage and left scattered across the floor like bones. Her perfume still lingers faintly in the air, but it mixes now with the sharp sting of splintered wood and torn fabric, clinging to the dust that rises from the destruction. The photos that once sat neatly on her dresser or hung on the walls are strewn across the carpet, glass shattered, frames cracked. Reign’s smile stares at me from the rubble, her eyes frozen in time, accusing even in their silence.