"Get some sleep, Val," I say, my voice rough. "You look like you're one breath away from shattering."
She nods, still not looking up.
"And Val?"
She finally meets my eyes, her gaze haunted.
"Whatever you're hiding... it's going to come out. Secrets always do. You'd be better off controlling when it happens before it destroys what's left of us."
I watch her for a moment longer—the way she stands, the way she refuses to give in—before I turn and walk into the shadows of the hallway.
8
VALENTINA
The dream startsthe same way. It always does.
Rain.
Cold, relentless, industrial rain soaking through my silk dress, pasting the fabric to my skin like a second layer of guilt. The alley is a maze of slick cobblestones and deeper shadows that seem to breathe, to watch. The air tastes of garbage, ozone, and impending violence—metallic and sharp on my tongue. The distant bass of the club thumps against the walls like a heartbeat that doesn't belong to me, that can't save me, that's too far away to matter.
Marcus backs me against the brick. The rough stone scrapes my spine, each individual point of contact a sharp bite of pain that grounds me in this nightmare. His hand is on my throat. Not squeezing yet. Just resting there. A heavy, hot brand of ownership that makes my skin crawl, that promises worse things coming.
"Come on, baby," he purrs, and his breath is whiskey and rot, so close I can taste it. "Don't make this harder than it needs to be."
I try to shove past him, hands flat against his chest, pushing with everything I have. But he is a wall of granite. Immovable. His other hand snaps up, pins my wrist above my head with bruising force. I am trapped. I am small. I am nothing.
"I’ve seen you around the Cartel," he sneers, and his voice drips with something dark and hungry. "You’re such a fucking tease.”
"Let me go." My voice is underwater. Distant. Weak. Not my voice at all but the voice of someone drowning.
He laughs. It echoes, bouncing off the wet walls, multiplying, becoming a chorus of mockery that fills the alley until there's no room for air. "I don't think so. You think being Cast’s bitch sister makes you untouchable."
His hand slides down from my throat. Lower. Violating. Assuming. Taking liberties he has no right to.
I can't breathe. The world narrows to a pinprick of terror—his hand, his weight, his breath, the rough brick cutting into my back. Everything else falls away. The rain. The music. The world. It's just this moment of violation, this moment where I know with absolute certainty that if I don't do something, I won't survive this night.
Then—the pipe. My fingers find it without thought, scraping across rough brick until metal meets skin. Rusted iron abandoned against the wall, leftover debris from some long-forgotten construction project.
I grab it. The cold bites into my palm, shock of temperature cutting through the fear-fog. It's heavy—substantial in a way that grounds me, makes this real when nothing else about this moment feels real. My hand closes tight around the makeshift weapon, knuckles going white.
I don't think. Can't think. There's only instinct, only survival, only the desperate animal need to make it stop.
I swing.
The sound. God, the sound. Wet. Crunching. Final. Like a melon dropped from a height, like bone giving way under metal, like everything wrong in the world condensed into a single moment of impact.
Marcus's eyes go wide. Shock eclipses the lust, the cruelty, the confidence. Then, the light goes out. Just—goes out. Like someone flipped a switch.
He drops like a stone.
Blood blooms across the wet concrete. Dark, thick, viscous. So much blood. It spreads too fast, a dark mirror reflecting nothing, mixing with the rain in pink rivulets that swirl toward the drain. I stand over him, the pipe still vibrating in my hand from the impact, watching the life drain out of Xavier's brother. Watching and unable to look away. Unable to process what I've done.
I feel nothing. No horror. No regret. No satisfaction. Just the cold rain beating down on my head and the weight of the metal in my hand and the static emptiness where emotions should be.
Then the dream shifts. Logic dissolves like sugar in water.
Xavier is there. Standing in the mouth of the alley. He wasn't there a second ago but now he is, like he materialized from the shadows. He looks at the body—his brother's body, Marcus's body sprawled and broken. He looks at me. His face is blank. Empty. All the warmth I know, all the fire, just—gone.