Nathaniel doesn’t even look up from arranging his instruments. His gloves snap once as he smooths the syringe tray.
“That’s the vagus nerve engaging, Talon,” he says. “Parasympathetic shock. Perfectly predictable.”
“Parasympathetic my ass.” Talon grins. “That’s fear. That’s all.”
I stand between them, my pulse stumbling out of rhythm. Every scrape of leather, every rattle of the chair bolts, yanks me backward into that perfect suburban house where Mark decided I was not a wife, but a problem to be solved. My skin buzzes like it remembers the bruises before my mind does.
What am I going to do to him now that I have him?
Mark finally lifts his head enough that his bloodshot, dazed eyes catch mine.
Oh, the way recognition lands in them.
It’s even better than the first time. This time, when the visual registers in his head, there’s a staggered gasp. The denial cracked raw. He shakes his head once, hard, suddenly more a man who can’t sleep through a night without a nightmare than the tidy accountant he pretends to be.
“Housekeeping,” Talon chirps, and peels the tape off Mark’s mouth quick and cruel. Mark sucks air like he’s been kissed by a drain.
“You… you’re not— you cannot be—”
“Real?” I say. My voice is steady and not at the same time. “We’ve been there already, haven’t we, Mark?”
Cassian crosses his arms and leans against the generator casing behind me. Talon spins the crowbar. Nathaniel lifts a scalpel delicately, checking the light on its edge.
From the outside, if you could see them as strangers, not as mine, you’d think they were paid actors. Must be a theater rehearsal because ain’t no way there are guys who move like this in real life.
I drink it in, savoring how fear blooms in Mark’s eyes.
He pulls at the straps, uselessly. They don’t budge. His breath hitches.
“Jessica—she’ll—”
“She’ll what?” Talon interrupts, grinning sharp. “Call the cops? Sweetheart, she ran. All it took was some crows to get her to abandon you.”
“But don’t worry, she’ll call the cops and tell them about the embezzlements and the shell companies,” Nathaniel says. “I sent her an email. Screenshots, timestamps, the cute little LLC names you thought were clever.”
“You know what else we included?” Talon asks, smiling like the devil. “That one special account you had for the local mafia around…” He looks at me, lifts a hand, counts on his fingers. “...five years ago? I wonder what else happened around that time.”
Mark’s throat works. He looks from Nathaniel’s neat rows to Talon’s easy grin to Cassian’s winter-cold stare, then back to me. It dawns on him, finally, that I’m not the garnish here. I’m the plate.
“Who are you people?” he rasps. “Skye, tell them—”
There it is. Him, reaching for the life I used to wear, the one he burned out of me like it was nothing. It still tries to close around my throat.
“Don’t,” I tell him. “Don’t say my name. You don’t get the right to do that.”
I step closer until the toes of my shoes touch the chalk line Talon drew forvibe, as he put it. Mark’s gaze skitters to my feet like they’re a threat. I let him look. Let him think about how many times those same feet stood in his kitchen, or in his bedroom, or on his porch.
I watched him all this time.
“You had five years to apologize,” I say. “Five years to confess. Five years to walk into a police station and say my name to someone who would put ink to a record of it. Instead, you stole my house, married a stranger, let her gut my home and call it hers. And I watched you. Every step.”
He opens his mouth. I lift a hand. He shuts it.
“Huh.” A small smile ghosts my lips. “Look at you. Listening so well. So you could do that all along, couldn’t you?”
Power. Right now, I have power over him. Over my fucking demon. Something worse than the wraith. Maybe not for the world, but absolutely for me.
I step over Talon’s chalk line.
