He landed hard, his body crumpling like a broken doll.
I stood in the doorway, looking down at him.
“Tell everyone,” I said. “Tell them what happens when you come for me.”
He didn’t answer. Just lay there, gasping, bleeding, dying.
I stepped back inside and locked the door.
The stocky one was still unconscious, his head resting in a pool of his own blood. I walked over to him and checked his pulse. Still alive. Barely.
I pulled out my phone and texted Priest.
Two bodies at the shop. Clean it up.
His response came back within seconds.
On my way.
I slipped the phone back into my pocket and looked around the shop. Broken glass. Blood on the floor. The smell of gunpowder and fear hanging in the air.
I should have felt something. Regret. Anger. Disgust.
But I didn’t.
I feltalive.
The violence had fed something in me—something dark and hungry and necessary. The precision of it. The control. The way their fear had tasted in the air, sharp and metallic.
I’d spent the day creating beauty, making people smile, and pretending to be something soft.
But this—this—was what I really was.
And I would send anyone who forgot it straight to God.
I walked to the back room, washed the blood off my hands in the sink, and waited for Priest to arrive.
By the time he got there, I was calm again. Controlled. The hunger satisfied.
For now.
Priest arrived with three cleaners—men who knew how to make bodies disappear and blood vanish like it never existed. I didn’t need to give instructions. Priest knew what to do.
“I’m heading out,” I said, pulling my keys from my pocket.
Priest looked at me, his expression unreadable. “You good?”
“Always.”
He nodded once. “I’ll lock up when we’re done.”
“Call our glass man to repair the cases. I don’t want my staff to know anything went down.”
“Bet.” Priest nodded.
I left him there and walked out the back entrance to where my car was parked in the private lot. The night air was cool against my skin, carrying the smell of magnolias and the distant hum of Magazine Street traffic.
I slid into the driver’s seat of my Audi, started the engine, and pulled out onto the street.
