I lunge forward, slamming my head against the dashboard. Hard. The plastic cracks. The pain is a dull thud, not nearly enough to distract me from the rot in my soul. I do it again. Thud. “She’s my wife,” I moan, the word tasting like ash. “She’s my fucking wife, and I’m sitting in a heated SUV while she’s being prepared like a sacrifice. I should have been faster. I should have known. I shouldhave killed Viktor the first time I saw the way he looked at her.”
“Peter, get a grip,” Hook says, his voice low, but I can hear the strain in it. He’s gripping the wheel so hard the leather is screaming. “Grief won’t kill the men in that house. Only rage will.”
“I don’t have rage anymore!” I shriek, turning to him, my face a mess of blood from the dashboard and tears. “I have nothing! I am a ghost! I’m watching my life get shredded in real-time and I can’t… I can’t breathe, James. I can’t fucking breathe without her. If she dies in that house, I’m not coming out. Do you hear me? I’m staying in the fire.”
I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone, thumbing the tracker app one last time. The red dot is stationary. It’s mocking me. It’s sitting right in the centre of a black void on the map.
“She’s right there,” I whisper, my voice dropping to a terrifying, hollow calm. “She’s right there, and she’s probably so high she doesn’t even remember my name. She doesn’t remember the kitchen, or the way the bed feels on Sunday mornings, or the way I kiss her neck when she’s annoyed with me. He took it all. He erased me from her head with a syringe.”
I look at my hands. They’re shaking so violently I can’t hold the phone. I let it drop into the footwell.
“I’m going to kill everyone,” I say, and this time, there’s no screaming. There’s just a cold, dead certainty that settles over me like a shroud. “Not just Viktor. Not just the buyer. Every guard, every driver, every person who took a cent of that fifty million. I’m going to makethe forest red, James. I’m going to make it so bloody that God won’t even look at this place anymore.”
Hook doesn’t say a word. He just pushes the needle past a hundred and ten, the trees outside becoming a solid wall of emerald ghosts.
The estate gates appear in the distance, wrought iron and stone, illuminated by flickering torches that look like funeral pyres. They’re wide open. An invitation to a wake.
I reach for my gun, the metal cold and familiar against my palm. I don’t feel the staples in my side anymore. I don’t feel the rain. I just feel the weight of the ring in that house.
“I’m coming for my wife,” I whisper. “And I’m bringing hell with me.”
Hook doesn’t slow down. He doesn’t even shift his gaze. He just reaches out with his good hand, adjusts the rearview mirror like he’s checking for a stray hair, and then grips the steering wheel until the leather screams under his palm.
“Tactics are for people who intend to survive the night, Peter,” Hook says, his voice back to that terrifying, melodic silk. “And frankly, I’ve always found stealth to be a bit… impolite. If we’re going to a funeral, we might as well provide the music.”
He floors it.
The SUV roars, the engine howling as we bridge the gap between the gravel road and the iron gates. The torches on either side of the stone pillars flicker wildly in our wake, casting long, jagged shadows across the hood.
“Hold onto your soul,” Hook quips, a dark, manicglint in his arctic-blue eyes. “It’s about to get a bit bumpy.”
We hit the gates at eighty miles an hour.
The sound is catastrophic. It’s not just metal hitting metal; it’s a symphony of destruction. The wrought iron buckles, snapping off the stone pillars with a screech that sounds like a titan screaming. Shrapnel flies, a piece of the gate’s decorative scrollwork punching clean through the windshield on the passenger side, missing my head by less than an inch. Glass explodes into the cabin, a thousand diamond-sharp shards raining down on my lap, cutting into my hands.
The SUV doesn’t stop. It plows through, the bumper tearing away as we bounce over the wreckage and onto the long, winding driveway of the estate.
“See?” Hook says, glancing at the gaping hole in the windshield as the rain begins to lash inside the car, soaking the dashboard. “Now we have better ventilation. Much more atmospheric.”
“You’re a fucking lunatic!” I yell, shaking the glass off my arms, the adrenaline finally overriding the grief, turning it into a cold, hard spike of purpose.
“I prefer the term ‘enthusiast,’” Hook replies. He swerves the car around a bend, the tires spitting gravel and mud.
Ahead, the estate rises out of the dark like a jagged tooth. It’s a massive, gothic pile of grey stone and black glass, every window glowing with a sickly, yellow light. Guards are already pouring out of the front doors, their tactical lights cutting through the rain, searching for the source of the noise.
“There’s the welcome committee,” Hook murmurs,his tone almost bored. He reaches for his rifle with his good hand, steering with the surgical steel of the hook hooked over the bottom of the wheel. “Look at them, Peter. All that training, all those expensive suits, and they’re about to be turned into fertiliser because a broker wanted a commission.”
He looks at me then, and the wit vanishes, replaced by a vacuum of cold, blue hunger.
“I want them to know it’s us,” Hook says, his voice dropping to a whisper that carries over the roar of the wind through the broken glass. “I want them to hear the name Hook and the word Husband and I want it to be the last thing they ever process. We aren’t here to negotiate. We’re here to remind them why the dark is something to be feared.”
He slams the brakes, fishtailing the SUV so it slides broadside toward the front steps, creating a makeshift barricade.
“Out,” Hook snaps.
I don’t wait. I kick my door open, the rain hitting me like a physical blow. I roll out onto the gravel, my gun up, my heart a rhythmic thud of Wendy-Wendy-Wendy.
The first guard reaches the SUV, his rifle raised. Hook doesn’t even use his gun. He lunges over the hood, the surgical steel of his hook catching the light of the torches as it arcs through the air. It’s a clean, wet sound as the metal finds the guard’s throat.
