Eventually…I’d started looking forward to her visits.
She made me feel like I had someone who understood. Someone who wasn’t just paid to babysit me but actually gave a damn. We would talk about everything from nightmares to Broadway to what kind of wine paired best with vengeance. Spoiler: it was red. Always red.
I didn’t know what she reported back to Nik, but I didn’t care. He already knew everything about me anyway. I was an open book. And besides, I got the sense she didn’t know him very well either, even if she did know his type.
And strangely, she didn’t warn me away from him.
But despite all of the good things—the peace and quiet, the visits from Henri and Dr. St. Clair—the time alone was starting to take its toll. I wanted him to come home.
After cooling off and tidying up after my workout, I curled up on the sofa with my water bottle in hand, pulled one of Nik’s throw blankets over my legs, and flicked on the massive flat screen. The low drone of a local news channel filled the room. The headlines cycled through reports of police raids and anonymous tips leading to cartel arrests. Same story. Different day.
Over the past three weeks, I’d done everything I could to distract myself. I’d worked out until my muscles ached, cooked elaborate meals I barely had the appetite for, and read enough erotica to blush in my sleep. I’d even tried to hack into Nik’ssystem once, just to see if I could. I couldn’t. No surprise there. But nothing else could hold my focus the way the news did.
Ever since the night we’d watched The Sacrifice burn on live TV—and heard the mayor spew nonsense at his bullshit press release—I’d been obsessed. Not with the fire itself, but with everything that had come after.
Because something had shifted that night.
Something had been unleashed.
And I had a gut-deep feeling I knew exactly who was behind it.
Each day brought fresh headlines. High-profile businesses destroyed. Underground clubs wiped off the map. Executions carried out with military precision. The reporters tried to keep up, but the scale of the violence was staggering. Entire cartel networks were being dismantled outside the bounds of law enforcement—drug dealing, sex-trafficking, arms smuggling—all of them Central American, all of them tied to Delgado, from what I could tell.
And the thing that kept gnawing at me was the sheer amount of detail provided in each case.
The journalists had so many pictures. Receipts. Every attack was accompanied by a laundry list of horrors the cartel targets had committed against the people of the city—complete with screenshots, court records, classified documents, and surveillance footage. Someone had built a comprehensive case against each of these people before taking them out. Judge. Jury. Executioner.
And the police weren’t condemning it. Hell, some were even calling the vigilantesheroes.The DA wasinvestigating, but nothing ever came of it. The mayor was quiet now. Even the big politicians who’d initially cried foul had gone silent. No one was willing to stop the vigilante when the monsters being dragged into the light were real.
I’d started keeping track of things in the Notes app on my phone. I didn’t even know why. I just…needed to try to piece it all together. With each incident, each location, each victim, I learned more. The pattern was obvious to me now. Whoever was orchestrating it wasn’t doing this for power or publicity.
They were cleaning house.
And the rage fueling it?
It felt personal.
My eyes flicked to the screen, where a grainy cell phone video played on loop. A shootout in the Bronx. A cartel boss had been shot between the eyes, and three of his lieutenants had been found in a van, zip-tied and executed. The story had made the national news because of the high body count and the message left on the wall behind them in dripping blood:
NO MORE GIRLS.
The anchor rattled off some speculation, but I wasn’t listening anymore.
I’d seen the hatred in Nik’s eyes when he’d spoken of Ciro Delgado. I’d felt the violence simmering beneath his calm the night he’d carried me out of that hellhole. He hadn’t just killed men that night.
He had declared war.
And all this I was seeing on the news?
This war burning through the streets of the five boroughs like some kind of cleansing fire?
It was because ofme.
Because I’d been kidnaped.
Because I’d nearly been sold.
Because he hadn’t gotten to me in time to stop them from taking me.
