“See?” Raven sounded pleased. “You always belonged to me. My little doctor. My legacy.”
He leaned closer, and for a second I was fifteen again—pressed against cinderblock walls while men laughed at the way my hands shook during my first incision.
Not this time.
As my eyes became accustomed to the dark shadows, I saw a new addition to Novak’s usually empty kill room—a tray of tools: scalpels, hypodermics, rib spreaders, bone saws, chest retractors, suction tubing, clamps, oxygen—the whole setup meant for carving a body open and keeping it that way.
Cold metal.
“Take out his heart,” Raven ordered.
“No—”
“Do it, El Doctorcito,” Raven said, eyes flat and dead, even as a manic edge clawed into his voice. “Or Iwillgo to your house, drag your sister and her beautiful children into this place, and I will have so much fun.”
For a heartbeat, I was the version of myself Raven had made. The version I swore I’d buried. Pain hit first, sharp enough to hollow my chest. Then the anger, rising fast and ugly, the kind that made my hands shake before I forced them to still. And underneath it—terror. The same cold terror from years ago, when one wrong move meant I lost someone I loved.
I shoved it all down. Every flicker of panic, every instinct to run, every memory trying to drag me backward. I became what I had to be—the thing Raven built, the thing that survived him once already. Not a boy. Not a victim.
A weapon.
And it hit me. Raven said he’d go to the house. That meant he didn’t know where they were right now, didn’t know where Rio and his partner had taken them? They were safe for now, and if anything happened to me, I’d made everyone promise to keep them safe. Had I earned enough from the people I’d asked to do that for me?
Levi said he was falling in love with me.
Stupid man…
A good man.
Mine.
The victim lifted his head when he heard me move, what was left of his face slick with blood. One eye gone, the other swollen shut, skin split and hanging in strips—Raven had carved him up for entertainment. He tried to speak, a wet rattle, and somehow managed a single word through the ruin of his mouth: “Please.”
His whole body trembled. Broken. Crying. Drowning in his own blood, he stared up at me as if I were the last thing standing between him and more pain.
I stepped closer. My hand hovered over the tray. Scalpel. Bone saw. Clamps. The tools Raven wanted me to use, and I picked up the scalpel. The man gurgled again—”Please”—and I leaned in, close enough that he could hear me even through the pain.
“Forgive me,” I whispered for his ears only.
Raven chuckled behind me; a sick sound edged with something gleeful and unhinged. “Look at you,” he crooned, delighted. “My little doctor, right back where you belong—removing hearts on command.”
In one fast, clean motion, I drove my blade into the victim’s neck and slashed his throat. He died instantly. No more begging. No more pain. No removing his heart as it took its final beat.
“No,” I said. I spun as his blood hit the floor.
Raven’s chuckle died, and his expression shifted—not furious at first, but disappointed, as if I’d failed a test for which he’d spent my whole childhood preparing me. Then the displeasure curdled into something colder.
“Get rid of the dead,” he snapped.
I backed away from the victim, and Raven’s men moved instantly, cutting the rope around the dead man’s body and dragging it off the chair. They tossed him into the far corner with the others like garbage, the dull thud of his skull hitting concrete loud enough to echo.
“Put him there,” Raven added, flicking his fingers at me and the now-empty chair. His men turned toward me next.
My hypodermic was ready, the scalpel slick with blood, steady in my hand. My pulse hammered, but my grip didn’t shake.
Raven started talking—words furious, unraveling into something unhinged. “You think you get to choose? You think you get to decide who dies inmyroom? You were mine. You weremadefor me to watch!”
The men reached me, and I darted back toward the surgical equipment, sidestepping them as my boots skidded through slick blood. One of them grabbed for my arm—the rush of air past my ear, the click of his teeth when he missed. The room reeled, sweat stinging my eyes, but something in me went cold. No panic. No hesitation. Just that brutal, hollowed-out calm born from too many nights in rooms like this one. The part of me Raven made—the part he’d never thought would turn against him.
