“Ja-James?” Mia’s voice was smaller than I’d ever heard it, fragile as spun sugar. “You’re… really… James? I’m… I’m not… imagining…?”
James wrapped his jacket around her like she might shatter at any moment. My legs finally remembered how to work and I crashed to my knees beside them. “Mia!” My voice broke on her name.
She turned to me, her face a brutal canvas of Herbert’s handiwork. “Andy?” Her voice was barely a whisper, cracked and raw. “You… you really came? From Vegas?”
“I would’ve crawled here on broken glass if I had to.” The words scraped my throat. “God, Mia, what did he—” But I couldn’t finish. The memories of what he was capable of choked me.
Matt’s hand gripped my shoulder, anchoring me to reality. “We’re getting her out. Now.”
Herbert’s voice sliced through the air like a rusted blade. “Andy? Holy fuck!”
My name in his mouth made me want to vomit.
“Little Andy? Christ, look at you!” He lunged forward, his eyes burning with a sick hunger that made my skin crawl. “I’ve been searching everywhere for you, boy. Come back where you belong. Both of you—my precious niece and nephew. Uncle’s missed you so much. Uncle will make everything right again.”
The world tilted sideways. Suddenly I was fifteen, trapped in that house where darkness had teeth and prayers went unanswered, where whiskey fumes couldn’t mask the stench of fear.
Matt appeared between us like an avenging angel, his fist crushing into Herbert’s face with a sound like splintering bone. “Touch him again and I’ll tear you apart with my bare hands. He’s mine.”
Herbert’s laugh—that same deranged sound that had haunted my nightmares for years—echoed off the walls. “Can you blame me? Look at him. That face, that body… No man alive could resist wanting to break something so pretty.”
Something inside me shattered—a sound like breaking glass in my skull. I watched, almost detached, as my hand moved of its own accord, sliding Matt’s gun from his holster. The weight of it felt foreign and familiar all at once, like a nightmare coming to life in my grip. I couldn’t even remember reaching for it, but here it was, heavy with dark promises.
“ANDY, DROP IT! NOW!” Matt’s voice thundered, but it felt distant, muffled by the roaring in my ears.
“Please… no…” Mia’s broken whisper cut through me like serrated steel, but I couldn’t stop. Not now.
“Look at what he did to you, Mia!” My voice came out twisted, feral. “He took everything from us. Our childhood. Our innocence. Our fucking souls.” The gun steadied in my hands. “And now I’m going to take his life. Slowly. Until these walls drip red with everything he owes us.”
Matt’s heat blazed against my back, his hand iron-gentle on my trembling arm. “Listen to me, baby. That rage burning in your gut? That need to make him suffer? I feel it too. But this kind of blood—this kind of killing—it changes you. Forever.”
His words ghosted across my ear, fierce and desperate. “Once you cross this line, there’s no coming back. And I won’t let himtake that from you too. Not your humanity. Not your light. Not while I’m breathing.”
I looked at Mia—my warrior sister, my protector, who’d thrown herself between me and monsters more times than I could bear to remember. Even now, her face a battlefield of bruises, she was shaking her head. Tears carved desperate paths through the blood and dirt on her cheeks. Still trying to save me, even when she was the one who needed saving.
The gun turned to lead in my hands, dragging me down as my knees betrayed me. It hit the concrete with a hollow sound that echoed my emptiness.
“I need him dead, Matt.” The words ripped from my throat like barbed wire. “I need him to feel every fucking second of pain he gave us. I need—” My voice shattered into pieces too jagged to speak.
Matt crushed me against him, his lips branding promises into my hair. “And he’ll pay. In blood and screams and begged mercies that won’t come.” His voice dropped to that lethal whisper that promised beautiful violence. “James and I will make sure he dies knowing true horror.”
Bruno and Tyrone materialized from the shadows, flanking Scott as he gathered Mia from James with reverent care. The two bodyguards hustled us out, their massive forms boxing us in protectively as we fled that chamber of nightmares that reeked of copper and fear and stolen innocence.
In the car, I held Mia close, both of us trembling like leaves in a storm. Scott and Eric flanked the vehicle like guardian angels in designer suits, while Bruno and Tyrone’s massive forms created an impenetrable wall between us and the warehouse. Their usually stoic faces were tight with barely contained rage—even they, who’d seen God knows what in their line of work, were affected by what they’d witnessed.
Then the sounds came. Muffled at first, then rising in pitch and desperation. Herbert’s screams—so different from the ones he used to draw from Mia and me in that house of horrors. Something twisted in my gut, a strange satisfaction warring with ancient terror. The monster was becoming the victim, and I knew James and Matt were extracting their pound of flesh with compound interest.
I should have felt sick. Should have been horrified. Instead, each scream felt like justice.
When the final gunshot echoed across the predawn sky, I closed my eyes. James’ men moved in swiftly, their black SUVs appearing like shadows, ready to erase all evidence of what had transpired. Matt and James emerged from the warehouse minutes later, their pristine suits somehow still immaculate, though their eyes held a darkness that spoke volumes.
James came straight to our car, opening the door. His face softened as he looked at Mia, and something in my chest loosened. This was it—the moment to let go. Mia wasn’t just my responsibility anymore. She had someone else to protect her now, someone who could do it better than I ever could.
“Come here, baby,” James whispered, and Mia practically fell into his arms, her sobs muffled against his chest.
I pressed a kiss to her hair, whispering, “I love you,” before stepping back. Matt’s hand found mine, steady and warm.
“Hotel?” he asked, like we were discussing breakfast plans instead of driving away from a revenge killing.
