Wearing Damien’s face but smiling withhisteeth.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
DAMIEN
There’s blood on my knuckles, and I don’t remember where it came from.
My breath fogs against the cracked windshield as I sit in the car outside the last known address tied to the psychiatric files I found in the crawlspace. My phone buzzes in the passenger seat, screen lighting up with new intel from the contact who owes me too many favours.
Location pinged.
Abandoned psychiatric facility. Decommissioned 2008.
Privately purchased in 2014 under a false identity.
I already know whose identity.
N.
I grip the wheel until the leather groans.
The name isn’t real, but the footprint is—a string of dead ends and corrupted records that all lead back to one place: The facility where Raven was institutionalised.
The one where they said she made everything up.
I pull the car around the rusted gate and drive slowly up the cracked path.
The building rises in front of me like a grave—three storeys of crumbling brick and glass painted over in black. Barred windows. Sealed doors. But I can feel it.
She’s in there.
And so is he.
I kill the engine, pocket my knife, and step into the silence.
It hits immediately. Not the air—but theabsenceof it.
There’s something wrong with the way this place breathes.
Like it’s been waiting.
The front doors are unlocked.
He wants me inside.
He wants me to see.
I move fast and quiet, boots barely scuffing the dust-covered floors. I sweep through the entryway and stand in what used to be the main lobby but it’s changed.
The furniture stripped.
The walls repainted.
Now?
It’s a shrine.
Toher.
