The medic doesn’t offer a warning. He reaches into the wound with a pair of long, silver forceps.
I seize. My spine arches off the table, the muscles in my neck roping until they feel ready to snap. The soundof metal scraping against my own bone echoes in the small room—a wet, horrific clicking that makes my stomach turn. I can feel the lead bullet, flattened and jagged, lodged deep against my third rib.
I don’t scream.
I bite down on my tongue until the taste of my own blood fills my mouth, my jaw locked so tight I can hear my teeth grinding. My knuckles are white where I’m gripping the edges of the table, my fingers denting the rusted tin.
“Steady,” the medic mutters. He gives a sharp, violent tug.
A guttural, choked-back animal sound escapes my throat as the bullet is ripped free. It clatters into a metal tray with a ringing ping that sounds like a death knell. Blood geysers up, hot and thick, splashing onto Tahlia’s tactical vest and my own face.
“He’s going into shock,” Tahlia says, her voice flat, though I see her eyes widen just a fraction as she looks at the amount of blood.
“He’s fine,” Hook drawls, stepping closer, his hook glinting under the bulb. “He’s fuelled by ego and bad intentions. Keep going.”
Next comes the needle. I feel every single puncture. The medic sows my flesh back together with thick, black silk thread, pulling the skin taut until it burns. It feels like he’s embroidering a map of my own failures directly into my chest. I stare at the ceiling, my vision fracturing into a thousand white sparks, and I think of Wendy.
I think of her in that white dress. I think of the way she looked at me when she said she loved me. Every timethe needle pierces my skin, I imagine it’s the price I have to pay to get back to her.
One stitch for her tears. Two for the blood on her lace.
Three for the bastards who took her.
By the time the last knot is tied, I’m drenched in a cold, oily sweat, my chest heaving with shallow, agonising breaths. I’m a patchwork of scars and fresh embroidery, a broken king held together by spite and black thread.
Hook steps over, looking down at the handiwork. He reaches out with his hook and taps the red-glowing ring on my finger.
“You’re a stubborn son of a bitch, I’ll give you that,” Hook says, a hint of genuine dark respect in his tone. “Now, get up. The tracker is pinging a warehouse on the South Side. If we move now, we might find her before they start breaking the pieces they can’t sell.”
I roll off the table, my feet hitting the floor with a heavy, unstable thud. I stumble, my hand catching the edge of the metal, but I don’t fall. I look at Hook, my eyes burning with a lethal promise.
“They won’t break her,” I rasp, the words tasting like iron and vengeance. “Because by the time I’m through with them, there won’t be enough of them left to hold a hammer.”
Wendy
The world is a blur of rough concrete and the smell of stagnant water. I am not being led; I am being harvested.
They have me by the ankles, my body dragging across the grit of a basement floor that feels like it’s made of ground glass. The silk of my wedding gown—the dress Peter bought to mark me—is shredded, a useless, filthy rag that catches on every rusted nail and jagged stone. I am too weak to kick, too hollowed out to scream anymore.
“Get the chains,” a voice grunts, a shadow in the dark.
Rough, calloused hands hoist me up. I am stripped of the lace, the white fabric torn away in violent, clinical jerks until I am left bare, shivering in the damp, freezing air of the cellar. My wrists are jerked high, the gold shackles Peter put on me clashing against heavy iron rings bolted into the weeping stone wall.
I hang there, my toes barely grazing the floor, mybreath hitching in broken, jagged gasps. The only light comes from a single, naked bulb swinging on a frayed wire, casting long, monstrous shadows that dance across my ribs.
Then, the heavy steel door at the top of the stairs groans open.
The sound of his footsteps is slow. Deliberate. Each strike of his leather soles against the concrete is a death sentence. He moves into the light, and the air in the room seems to turn to ice.
Viktor.
He’s dressed in a suit that costs more than the lives of the men guarding the door—deep charcoal, perfectly tailored, a stark contrast to the filth of the basement. He doesn’t look like a thug; he looks like a patriarch. He looks like the devil’s favourite son. He stops a few feet from me, his dark Italian eyes roaming over my body with a clinical, terrifying lack of heat.
“So,” he murmurs, his voice a deep, gravelly baritone that carries the heavy, melodic lilt of the Old Country. “This is the little doll that broke the King of Chicago. I expected a titan. Instead, I find a bruised piece of porcelain.”
He steps closer, his presence suffocating. He smells of expensive espresso and old blood. He reaches out, his fingers cold as a morgue slab, and tilts my chin up.
“It is such a shame, mia cara,” he sighs, his thumb tracing the line of my throat where Peter’s hand had been only hours before. “To see such a beautiful thing wasted on a boy who plays at being a man. Peter… he was always too soft. Too sentimental. He thought a gold ring could hold what only fear can master.”
