Jack flinches, eyes wide, chest heaving. "I know," he chokes out. "I know she did. Inevermeant for her to get hurt. She’s the only good thing in this shitty world, and I dragged her into it."
My fists twitch. My vision blurs with rage.
“I should leave you in pieces,” I growl. “You gamble away your life, bury her in your mess, and now she’s gone. Gone because you couldn’t handle your own damn debt.”
He pushes back weakly, voice cracking with frustration. “You think I haven’t tried to fix it? I begged the cops, man. They looked at me like I was trash. Said maybe she ran off, maybe she wanted it. They don’t care. People like us, we’re invisible. Our lives don’t matter.” He sags in my grip. “But Erin matters. Shematters. She always did. I messed up everything, but not this. Please... please tell me you can help her.”
I don’t let go of Jack. Not yet. Because part of me still wants to shake him until his teeth rattle.
Then I glance around the apartment. The walls are bare, there are cracked linoleum and a couch that looks more like a relic than a place to rest. A single lamp flickers weakly in the corner.
No photos. No warmth. No real furniture. Just survival.
And it hits me.
They never had a chance.
Jack’s a screw-up, no question. But he’s twenty-four. Erin’s barely twenty-three. They’ve had to fight for scraps since the beginning. No one ever helped them. No one cared.
They were just kids when life buried them alive.
I loosen my grip on Jack’s shirt. Not out of forgiveness. But because I see something now—a bruised, desperate kid trying to protect the only person who ever believed in him.
“You’re a mess,” I mutter, letting go. “But at least you give a damn.”
He nods once, swallowing hard. “She’s all I’ve got. Can—can you find her? Please?"
When I answer, my voice is death. Steel.
“I will burn down the world if I have to.”
And once I’m done with Viktor, there won’t be a body left to bury.
11
ERIN
The first thing I feel is cold.
Not just the chill of the cement beneath my back, but something deeper, bone-deep. It crawls into me like ice water through cracked glass, seeping into my skin, thick and oppressive, like I’ll never be warm again.
My head throbs. My mouth is dry. My limbs are heavy and useless. There’s a harsh light overhead, flickering like a dying star, and everything smells like mildew, sweat, and cigarettes. It’s the kind of place where people disappear. Where screams go unanswered.
Then I hear it.
A slow clap.
“Well, well,” a man’s voice purrs. Smooth. Mocking. Slavic.
“Sleeping Beauty’s awake.”
I blink, vision blurry. My pulse pounds in my ears as the shapes blur and then solidify.
Viktor.
He steps into the light like a monster from a fairytale, one of the old ones, the ones where the princesses never wake up.
Blond hair slicked back like an oil spill, a grin too wide and too sharp, and eyes like glacial water, clear, cold, and empty. He’s dressed wrong for the room, his shirt fitted and rolled to show off tattoos that crawl like snakes along his forearms.
