Dotted through the charts were faces—masked and maskless, pulled from black market feeds or captured by her own hand. The Serel family’s masks dominated the wall: the President, his wife, daughter, and two sons. Every face of that family was punctured by a knife, a dart, a sharpened bit of rebar, and in the eldest son’s case, a thick red X.
Brooker Serel had been murdered. No one in the outer rings knew how or why, but one day he was on-screen completing live executions, the next his funeral was being broadcast. It didn’t take long for Greyson to step up and take his brother’s place as the Heart’s Executioner, which didn’t surprise Shadera. She knew how deeply the Serel family enjoyed the shedding of innocent blood.
Her lips curled into a cruel smile as she stared at the wall and chucked another dagger toward Greyson’s masked photo. Soon, bothsons of Maximus Serel would be dead, and he would have no male heir to run his poisoned little kingdom, when Shadera killed him next.
She crossed to the wall, traced the path from the Cardinal’s service tunnels up to the base of the Heart, and marked a fresh access point she’d scouted months ago on the map. If the patrol schedules held, the tunnels would be dead from midnight to three a.m. More than enough time for her to get in unnoticed. Once she made it into the Heart, she’d climb the elevator shaft out of the maintenance tunnels, then split for the Serel residence tower. It was a suicide run for anyone else. For her, it was the only kind of job she accepted.
A heavy sigh passed over Shadera’s lips as her tattooed arms slipped from her jacket, the black metallic ink shimmering against her brown skin. She shrugged out of the leather and draped it over the metal chair that sat in front of the desk pushed against the wall.
Her eyes dropped to her skin as her fingers slid across the ridges of a newly healed scar on her forearm. She had a lot of new scars, but this one she earned lifting a package scanner from a Veyra officer. The job had been easy enough, she just hadn’t expected him to be so quick with a blade. In the end she got what she needed, and his body was slowly decomposing underneath chemical waste in the Cardinal.
Next, she moved to the set of six lockers in the corner of the large space as she unsnapped the holster wrapped around her waist and thighs. She never left home without both her favorite guns strapped to her body. A CZ 75 and a Sig P320. Both had been used to try and kill her, and both Shadera had used to kill their previous owners. There was a beautiful kind of poetry to that, she thought.
Her fingers wrapped around the lip of the first locker and pulled it open, setting both guns on the first shelf, and hanging the holster on a hook. She reached into the locker and snapped out the backing to reveal a hidden compartment, and a grin spread onto her lips. Herfist clamped around the handle of a slim black case. She pulled it out, walked to the desk, and set it on the surface before unlatching it.
Inside, nestled in black foam, was the newest member of her arsenal. A Veyra-issued nine-mil, with the Heart’s insignia etched along the barrel. Shadera had been waiting for the moment she could use this gun. Waiting for a contract she could make look like an inside job. The beauty of Greyson being the one that would receive its bullet, when he’d put the very same bullets into hundreds of those from the Boundary, was a special kind of karma.
She would make him kneel, she thought to herself, as she began to strip and clean it. She would say the same ritual words to him that he’d said hundreds of times before murdering innocent men and women.
Greyson’s father had used the very same make of gun when he put the bullet in the back of her parents’ heads, when she was only ten years old. And in the twenty years since that day, she’d been waiting for her moment to take something from him.
Chapter three
Ask No Questions
TheHeart’sEntertainmentDistrictran on blood and artifice. Every club and theater was a living organ in the city’s anatomy, pumping the elite through arteries of polished obsidian and gold-veined marble. On nights like this, the whole district shimmered with the pretense of pleasure—one-way glass and pheromone fog masking the rot beneath.
Greyson moved with the indifference of a man born into luxury, onyx mask fixed so tight it seemed part of his skull. The stares that clung to him in the club lined corridor were all protocol and predator. Dancers in their crystalline bodysuits hoping he’d open his wallet, masked patrons high on Boundary spice, too out of their minds to recognize him. He ignored them, or pretended to. Every gesture was observed, cataloged, and noted for use in future blackmail if needed.
Tonight, Greyson’s steps took him to the far end of the entertainment sector, an establishment dressed in platinum trim, playing shifting holograms of dancers whose bodies stretched and bled into one another with every pulse of the music. Above the entrance, sat a simple sign.
Thane.
Even in the Heart, only fools used family names for clubs—unless you were too powerful to care, or too dangerous to be touched.
Callum Thane wasboth.
The inside was a velvet womb, with shadows clinging to every corner. Low light accentuated the dancers on their platforms, and the masks staring up at them. Even for this early hour, the club was packed. There was always an uptick of business in Callum’s clubs the days after an execution, as if the elite needed to remind themselves that they were still alive.
Greyson pushed through the crowd, making his way to the back where stairs leading to Callum’s office sat. He didn’t need a meeting, didn’t need an appointment to see himself up. The two guards standing at the base of the spiral stairs didn’t bother scanning his biometrics as he approached, only stepped aside so he could pass.
He took the steps two at a time, hands pushed casually into the pockets of his black business casual attire, and watched as the large glass door slid open at his arrival.
Callum waited for him, perched in a leather desk chair, mask shimmering with gold and copper filigree. The rest of him was covered in a dark suit, the top buttons of his crisp shirt open to accentuate the deep brown of his tattooed flesh where necklaces hung against his bare chest. His ringed fingers tapped a restless code against the desk. He was always in motion, even seated. Excessive energy coiled under the practiced languor of a Heart-bred host. The air in the room tasted of smoke, expensive gin, and bleach.
“Grey,” Callum greeted as Greyson stepped inside the spacious office. He didn’t rise, just flicked two fingers in a lazy salute. “If you’re here to shut down my club, you’ll have to stand in line. Three Veyra have already come this week. But you can skip to the front.”
Greyson eased the door closed behind him, the lock whispering shut. He crossed to the drinks cart—neatly curated with an array of options—and poured two fingers of gin into a tumbler.
“Only three? I would’ve expected the entire militia with those private anti-scan rooms you just opened.”
“You know how it goes. Law makers never live within the law. Of course, they left satisfied, and I gained three more secrets to keep them off my back.” Callum winked at Greyson as he lifted his own glass to the slit in his mask.
Greyson huffed, it was as close to a laugh as he could muster. He set the glass down on the desk’s edge, and leaned over it, head lowered. For a moment, neither spoke.
Callum’s mask caught the light, fracturing it into patterns that crawled across Greyson’s hands.
“You’re not here for pleasure or shit talk,” he said. “Something’s wrong.”
