I tap the unlit cigarette once on the bar. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”
“This won’t make anything right. I’m aware of that. But it might let me breathe without choking on her name.”
“Peace is for people who don’t want to remember. Revenge is for those who can’t forget.”
Behind us, laughter swells from a corner booth, a woman’s giggle rising above the low hum. Ice clinks, glasses meet, jazz drifts. And beyond these few feet of dark wood and blood-stained intention, the world keeps turning.
Holloway scrubs a trembling hand over his mouth and chin. “How will you do it?”
I turn just enough for him to meet my eyes—cold, unflinching. “I choose the method by the weight of what they’ve done.” My mouth tightens with a flicker of something darker underneath. “The worse the sin, the blacker the end.”
“As it should be.”
He reaches for the Scotch, fingers curling around the glass, but it doesn’t make it to his lips. Halfway there, he stops. The tremor in his hand gives him away. Then he sets it down, untouched, and stands.
His voice slips out, rough and low, almost a whisper. “Thank you.”
I lift the cigarette, turning it once between my fingers. “Go home. Remember your angel the way she was, and I’ll be in touch.”
He gives a tight, broken nod and walks away.
Tonight, a man across town is already dead. He just doesn’t know it yet.
Monsters like Silas Rourke survive because no one looks too hard.Money buys silence. Power buys obedience. People convince themselves girls like Lila Holloway were reckless, stupid, asking for it. And the system folds every time. Favors. Lawyers. Threats. It keeps them insulated and untouchable.
Until they meet me.
I pull the bag into my lap, thumb brushing the edge of the photo. I don’t look at the cash. I don’t need to. I slide the photo out, letting my eyes fall on her face. She reminds me of someone I think about a little less these days. Not because she matters less, but because it hurts too much.
The old rage stirs under my skin—not the burning kind, not the kind that eats you alive. No, this is colder. Older. Black, not red.
The scars on my hands itch. The ones I see, the ones I don’t.
Justice isn’t real. Vengeance is. And men like Grant Holloway—broken, desperate, drowning in guilt—need men like me.
Silas Rourke believes he’s invincible inside his empire of blood and drugs and working girls.
He’s wrong.
I’m coming for his throat.
Chapter 2
Laurette Devereux
It usedto be easier to want him.
There was a time when his hand on my thigh would’ve sent the butterflies in my stomach into a frenzy. Now we’ve fallen into habit, muscle memory pretending we’re still us.
Maybe that’s normal at this stage of our relationship.
I saidyesto this because I was tired of sayingno. I’m hoping this can fix whatever has faded between us. Perhaps asking me to do this is Jon David’s way of still fighting for us.
And I don’t want to be the one who gave up first.
“You’re quiet.”
Jon David’s grin flashes in the dim light of the dashboard as we pull down the long gravel drive. His hand slides higher up my leg. “Are you nervous, baby?”
