She blinks once. I see something flash through her eyes, but it’s there and gone so fast, I can’t interpret it. She simply nods and crosses the space to sit across from me on the couch.
“My family,” I start, and the words taste like bile. “They all live in Brooklyn. That’s where I grew up. My parents. Grandma, Grandpa. My aunts. Uncles. They are all there. And they are all in the business.”
“The mob?” Willow asks, sharp as always.
“Not quite,” I say, and it feels wrong; every bone in my body is yelling that it’s wrong to be sharing this critical information. I’ve kept it under lock and key for a decade now. “We weren’t mob bosses. We were the cleanup crew. The middlemen. The shadows the real monsters cast.”
I shake my head and look out the window. “You know how in movies, bodies just disappear? That was us. Drag a guy out of atrunk, bleach the pavement, make sure the neighbors don’t ask questions. My uncle could wrap a corpse faster than most people wrap Christmas presents.”
The neon light catches in Willow’s eyes, sharp as blades. She’s seeing me. She’s hearing every word. And I can’t stop now.
“But it wasn’t just cleanup. There’s money in a corpse if you’re willing to be creative.” I drag a hand down my face, remembering. “They’d harvest organs. Black market. Kidneys, livers, hearts—anything still usable. Sold them out the back door of funeral homes, passed them to surgeons who didn’t ask too many questions. I watched my aunt pack lungs into a cooler like leftovers once. Said they’d go for thirty grand, easy.”
Willow’s mouth twitches—revulsion or fascination, maybe both.
“We spied too. Kids like me got sent to hang out on corners, listen in diners, run messages. By the time I was thirteen, I was a courier. You don’t forget the smell of warm cash soaked in blood.”
I lean back, stare up at the ceiling. My chest feels tight. “It was a family business. You didn’t say no. You didn’t leave. You grew up, graduated from errand boy to the guy holding the knife, or the gun, or the cooler. That’s all there was.”
For a second, I see it—the version of me who stayed. Dead-eyed, standing over a body with a bone saw. My mother proud. My father nodding approval.
“The crazy thing is my family isn’t even Italian. Or Irish, or even Russian,” I say with a humorless chuckle. “We’re straight up, one-hundred-percent Norwegian.”
I scrub my hands over my face, the past trying to crawl straight out of my skin. “I knew where it was going. Jail. Dead. Or worse—living so far down the rabbit hole I wouldn’t recognize myself anymore.” I shake my head. “I didn’t want to be theirmonster. But with everything I knew? There was no leaving. Not alive.”
Willow sits on the other end of the couch, her arms wrapped around herself like she’s holding in the cold I just dragged into the room.
“So, I faked it.” The words taste like blood and whiskey. “I staged my own death. Made it messy. Car crash on a bridge. I made sure the fire was big enough to take care of any real evidence of who was really in the car. It was some guy who OD’d on the sidewalk right in front of me. I make it good. Convincing. I made it so that my parents never questioned the body. They just assumed I was another casualty of the life.”
The Strip’s glow flickers across the glass. Willow’s face is illuminated, cast in perfect shadows, a goddess being told a dark tale.
“I ran,” I say simply. “With nothing. No family. No friends. No one to trust.” My throat tightens, but I force it out. “And the first thing I stumbled into? The first way I saw my way out of the city? A traveling circus.”
I almost laugh again. “How cliché is that? A fucking circus. It wasn’t glamorous. Not some Moulin Rouge fantasy. It was cheap tents and bad food and worse pay. They let me sleep in one of the trucks in exchange for hauling gear. But they never cared to ask for information. They took the first name I blurted out to them—Kade, and didn’t question it. They just took me in because I was strong and willing to work.”
If she doesn’t believe one bit of this story I’m telling her, I wouldn’t blame her. The entirety of my life has been one big, “you’ve got to be kidding, right?” But it’s not. Iwish. But it isn’t.
“Growing up, I was that weird kid who was into magic. Other guys were playing baseball and riding their skateboards, but I was the one practicing card tricks and figuring out how to stuff scarves up my sleeves,” I say, cringing at the admission. “Youknow how many girls in high school told me that magic isn’t sexy?”
“Boy, were they fucking wrong,” Willow says with a wry smirk. “I bet you every damn one of them follows Saint Shade.” And it takes every ounce of strength for me not to get down on my knees right now and eat her out to show my appreciation for this perfect woman.
It takes me thirty full seconds to get control of the grin on my face. I literally have to cover my mouth with my hand, turning my beet-red face to the ceiling. “Willow, you…”
“I know,” she says simply with a Cheshire smile.
I let out a hard breath, trying like hell to find my cool again. It’s gone. It’s long fucking gone. But I still try.
“After I joined the circus, I really, really wanted to be the magician. I was good at it too. But they already had one, and he hated me on sight.”
I flex my hands, remember the calluses. “So, I started working with the acrobats. That’s what was open. I spent years burning and bruising myself on ropes and bars until my body was the only thing I trusted. Flying through the air became the only time I felt free. No one could touch me up there.”
Willow shifts on the couch. But it’s closer, not farther away. Her face is unreadable, but her eyes never leave mine.
“After a few years, I stepped out of the circus when we landed in Vegas,” I continue, voice low now, meant only for her. “Built Saint Shade from the ground up. The mask, the persona, the secrecy—that wassurvival. If my family ever saw my face again, if they knew I was alive…everything I built would burn. There’s a reason I was fucking terrified when you saw my face and put together that I am Saint Shade. My life depended on it.”
My eyes rise to meet Willow’s. There’s so much there. Trust. Openness. She’s listening to every word, and she isn’t judging me. My Dagger Kitten, my pretty little justice. “The last fewweeks, Willow…” I brush my knuckles along her cheek, hoping, praying that she never runs. Because I wouldn’t survive. And so, I have to do this. Now. She deservesallof the truth. “You get me in a way no one ever has. And you deserve to know the truth.” My chest feels like it’s splitting open. I don’t breathe until I say it: “My real name isn’t Kade Arden. It’s Lucky Torvik.”
The silence that follows is a noose. And then Willow—perfect fucking Willow—smiles. Soft. Almost fond.
