Then the video cuts.
I freeze. It’s as if some hinge inside me snaps loose. My heart stutters, my breath saws between my teeth, and all the anger I carried here melts into the kind of terror that turns grown men into children.
“She’s alive. For now.” Midnight slips the phone back into his jacket, casual as a man putting away a wallet. “That’s what you came for, right? A little hope? Just enough to keep you obedient?”
My jaw locks so tight that it hurts. Every word he says is like a hand squeezing my windpipe. “What do you want?”
He takes a step forward. The swinging bulb paints his face in slices—eyes, cheekbones, the faint edge of a scar near his mouth. He looks like violence in human form, polished and patient. He takes time with his words, as if savoring the taste of them before spitting them at me.
“You already know,” he says. “I’m running out of patience. We sent you in to get information. You said you had a way — they’d trust you, you could get close, you could get access. The bartender.”
Molly.
The word is a knife with a familiar handle stuck right in my heart. He doesn’t say her name — he doesn’t need to; they’ve made her a target, and they’ve made me the weapon.
“I’m working on it,” I say. I hear how desperate it sounds, even before the words die out.
“Working on it.” Midnight repeats it, slow, as if he’s tasting spoiled food. He doesn’t look angry — just bored, the way a lion is bored before it bites.
“I asked her out.” I drag the words up, each syllable a lead weight.
“And?”
“She said no.” The words taste like ash.
Midnight tilts his head, as if he’s examining a puzzle with a missing piece. “She said no?”
“She panicked,” I say, and now the panic’s in my voice, too. “She said she had homework. She ran.”
Midnight stares at me like I just confessed I can’t read.
“Homework,” he says flat. “Cute.”
“It’s not —” I stop myself. Explaining Molly to him would be like explaining gravity to a rabid bear. “She’s cautious. Guarded. I’ll get another shot.”
“You don’t have time for shots,” he says. Quiet. Certain. “You have time for results.”
My pulse hammers. “I’m doing everything you asked.”
‘Asked’ is being generous. Midnight doesn’t ask. Midnight determines what he needs, tracks down every weakness you have, and introduces himself by barging into your life with a smile and a ransom letter showing your little sister bound and gagged.
He moves so fast it almost feels like I imagined it. One second he’s eight feet away, the next he’s in my face, hand closing around my neck. He backs me into a stack of empty crates so hard the wood splits. His grip isn’t frantic—it’s measured, a demonstration of force. I can feel the heat of his skin through the collar, thumb pressed right over my jugular.
“I need you to listen carefully,” Midnight says softly. His breath is cool, his words almost kind. “The Sons of Sorrow didn’t pick you because you’re charming, or trustworthy, or even smart. We picked you because you’re a nomad, a nowhere man, a coin that spends easy because it’s never meant anything to anyone.” His grip tightens, not enough to choke, but enough to let me know exactly how it would feel if he wanted to. My vision sparks at the edges, the world tunneling down to the blue fire of his eyes. “You get close to the Twisted Devils,” he murmurs. “Through the bartender, like you said. But if that doesn’t work, you go through an ol’ lady who’s bored with her ol’ man and is looking for someone to fuck on the side. Or you use a prospect. Or one of their hang-arounds. I don’t care if you have to blow the fucking clubhouse dog, you get us what we need to know about their operation, or you find out what happens to your sister when I run out of patience.”
I choke out, “I’m trying.”
Midnight’s eyes are empty. “Try harder.”
He releases me, straightens the collar of my shirt, then shoves me backward. I stumble, coughing, throat burning. Midnight watches like he’s bored.
“You don’t do the job,” he says, “June pays the price. And I promise you, no matter what you can imagine, we will do worse to her. By the time she dies, she will not be human.”
The words land clean. Casual. Like her torture is just a fact of life.
Every piece of me wants to shake, to scream, to throw myself at him and beat him into the concrete floor until my hands are bloody, useless stumps.
But I see my sister’s face on that cellphone screen, bruised and begging.
