Dusty’s face goes gray. Wheezing for breath, he nods, frantic.
Not-Kade finally releases him and shoves him toward the chair. When Dusty looks up, confused, I growl at him, “Pull your pants up, and sit.”
Dusty coughs violently, and for a second, I think I’m not going to get the chance to deliver justice. He’s just going to die on the spot, strangled to death by Kade. But as he wheezes, he does indeed pull his pants up. He doesn’t get them done back up though before he collapses into the chair, trembling. His eyes flick between us, wide and terrified.
Kade plants himself right behind Dusty, hands on the wooden back, looming. “Go ahead, Willow.” His voice is low, dark, but steady. “Finish what you started. I’ll make sure he doesn’t move.”
I blink at him three times. He’s deadly serious. Like this is normal. Like this is just date night, and we do this every Monday.
Dusty whimpers, “You’re both out of your fucking minds.”
Kade leans down so close his breath skates along Dusty’s ear. “You have no idea.”
I bite back a grin, fighting the thrill that rockets through me. “You’re a menace,” I mutter to him, grabbing my deck of cards.
He flashes me a grin, sharp and unrepentant. “What would you do without me?”
Probably be halfway through my ritual by now,I think. But with him standing there—massive, dangerous, protective in a way no one’s ever been for me—I don’t say it.
I sit at my own chair and shuffle my deck, the wood grain of the table waiting like a heartbeat beneath my hands.
My hands are steady because they have to be. My breath is a metronome: in, out. In, out. The wood under Dusty’s palms is warm from the day, its grain like a river I can read by feel. Three cards jump from the deck as I shuffle, one by one, as if they’ve been waiting all day for me to call them forward—The Hierophant Reversed, The Page of Cups Reversed, and The Tower.
“This one’s about power,” I tell him, voice light, almost teasing. “Authority turned rotten. Someone who pretends to help but really just likes control.” His expression slackens. He’s starting to get what’s about to happen.
I lay down the next—the Page of Cups, reversed. “And here’s our ‘charmer.’ The man who has twisted affection and manipulation into one monstrous cancer.” I smile, soft andsure as my eyes slide to The Tower. “And this one… this one’s my favorite. It’s about collapse. Truth hitting like a match to gasoline. Everything you’ve built coming down in flames.” I meet his eyes, hold them there. “Looks like your luck’s about to change, Dusty.”
Dusty gives an uncomfortable laugh, like he thinks this is all just plain stupid. But it curdles as the energy in the room goes colder, and he realizes he is in real danger. Kade’s presence is an immovable fact behind him; he stands like a promise made of muscle. There’s heat radiating off him, danger and protection braided together, and I find myself steadied by it.
“Place your hands flat,” I tell Dusty. My voice is a scalpel held by someone who’s practiced. He hesitates for a moment, but he smacks them down instantly when Kade literally growls from behind.
My hands slide under the table. I meet cool steel as I find the daggers. The grips fit perfectly into the palms of my hands.
A wicked smile curls on my lips as I strike.
My daggers slam through his flesh and bone with a crunch and thump. They drive straight through his hands and embed themselves in the wood.
This might be my favorite part.
Dusty screams and yanks back violently, only the steel causes more damage. Blood pools onto my table rapidly.
I don’t pretend for a second that this is about justice in the courtly sense. This is personal. This is every girl who showed up at his doorstep asking for rent and left with her dignity stripped. This is every complaint ignored, every joke that covered a bruise, every quiet text deleted for fear of being labeled a Karen.
“You took desperate and hungry women and made them do disgusting things,” I say, the words cold. My lip curls as I watch him struggle against my daggers. “You used your shriveled dick as a negotiation tool. You used the keys in your hand as shacklesaround women’s lives. You told girls their bodies were the price of a roof.”
“That’s not how it happened!” Dusty screams. He yanks back, and a spurt of blood hits him in his own face like a cumshot. It’s wickedly satisfying. “It was consensual, you fucking bitch!”
Blood is not a neat aesthetic. It is a loud, messy thing that smells like iron and truth and humiliation. It beads, it runs, it lives for a second as proof that the world is not as clean as the brochures promised.
“You stole safety,” I tell him. “You sold security, and you sold shame.” My voice has no tremor as I press onward. “And you’ve gotten away with it for eight years. But it ends tonight. I’ll see you in hell.”
Not-Kade steps out of my way as I rise from my seat, grabbing the black plastic bag from beneath the table as I do.
“What?” Dusty asks in panic, his eyes the size of dinner plates as he watches me rise, as he sees the plastic. “No, I?—”
I’m done hearing his excuses. I yank the plastic over his head, and I cinch it tight around his neck, cutting off the possibility of any air leaking in. He sucks in a breath, and the plastic instantly concaves into his mouth. My muscles flex as he yanks back, slamming his head against my chest. The cuts in his hands deepen, and there’s the sound of bone splitting.
Dusty screams, but no sound really escapes since there’s no oxygen for him to suck in or bellow out.
