Worse than failed.I made it worse for everyone.For her.For Eddie.For everyone stupid enough to get caught in my orbit.
My brilliant plan, all of it smoke and mirrors.
The phone screen swims in front of me.I lower it, gripping the refrigerator door handle with my free hand.
Eddie is gone, suspended and facing termination.The woman is hospitalized, beaten worse because we made her abuser feel cornered.Red Hands still hunts, probably closer than ever now that he’s successfully removed my detective from the board.Vincent still breathes.
And I’m standing here in a gas station at the ass-end of nowhere, queen of absolutely fucking nothing.
My phone buzzes again, and this time I look.
It’s a text from James:You all right, Prayer?
I stare at the words, feel the concern bleeding through the pixels.James, who killed for me.Who planted evidence for me.Who watches me through hidden cameras because his devotion has no concept of boundaries or normal human limits.
My Fist, still loyal, still lethal, still mine.
But what good is a weapon without a mind to wield it?What good is any of it when every move I make leaves ruin in my wake?
I hover my thumbs over the keyboard.What do I say?How do I explain this cascading disaster?
I type back:Fine.
A lie.The oldest lie in the feminine arsenal.No woman who says she’s fine is ever actually fine.But lies are all I have left tonight.Lies and guilt and the growing certainty that I’m in over my head and drowning fast.
I pocket the phone and force myself to move.Back to restocking.Back to the mindless rhythm of minimum-wage-plus-fifty-cents survival that feels like an insult after everything else.Like the universe is mocking me.
You thought you were special?You thought you were building something?Here, stock nasty-ass energy drinks for $7.75 an hour and shut the fuck up.
Somewhere out there, Red Hands is watching, waiting, circling closer now that my detective is gone and off the case.
Somewhere out there, Vincent smiles his smug smile, his wife probably still clutching my photographs, drowning in betrayal while he thinks untroubled thoughts.
Somewhere out there, a woman lies in a hospital bed, broken because I thought I could fix her world with a severed hand and some planted evidence.Because I played god and got it wrong.
And here I stand, the hunter and the weapon, the woman who came to this town with a burning need for revenge.
Except I’m not hunting anymore.
I’m the prey.
And the worst part—the part that makes my teeth grind together as I shove Monster drinks onto the shelf with more force than necessary—is that I did this to myself.
My choices.My plans.My reckless, arrogant belief that I could control the chaos.That I was smart enough, careful enough, ruthless enough to win.
I thought I was building a court, a kingdom of monsters loyal to me, but really I was building a pyre.
And now it’s burning.
The weight of every mistake I’ve ever made presses down like a hand around my throat.
Outside, the villains are regrouping.
And inside this fluorescent cage, so am I.
Because this isn’t over.
It can’t be.
