1
RETH
My body wants it.
That’s the first coherent thought that claws its way through the wreckage of my mind. Before the bone-deep cold of the stone floor leeches into my skin, before the suffocating darkness presses against my eyes like wet cloth, before the stench of this room—old copper blood, bleach, piss, shit, and that sweet underlying rot that never quite leaves—there is only thewanting.
It lives low in my gut like a parasite with hooked teeth, spreading outward through my veins, wrapping iron fingers around my spine, squeezing the base of my skull until my vision tunnels and my teeth ache.
More.
I know exactly what she put in me. I felt the needle slide in. The familiar warmth that followed. Heroin cut with something worse, something she’s perfected over the years to keep her victims docile. My body doesn’t care aboutchemistry. It knows only the screaming absence of that warmth now. The void is chewing through me from the inside out, gnawing on every nerve ending, turning my blood to broken glass.
All it took was one goddamn hit, and now I’m sitting here with my skin crawling like I’m trying to tear myself out of it.
“Fuck!” I’m on my feet, legs shaking like a newborn foal. “Valeria!”
The scream rips out of me like I’m tearing my own throat open. It slams against the stone walls and ricochets back. I don’t wait for the echo. I’m already pacing—six steps, wall, six steps, wall—because that’s all this fucking box allows. Six steps and stone. Six steps and stone.
The motion does nothing to quiet the storm inside me. The craving and the rage have fused together into something molten, the same temperature, the same vicious hunger.
“Valeria, I know you’re watching, you sick, rotten, cock-sucking cunt!”
My fist explodes against the wall. Skin splits instantly. Blood sprays. The pain is sharp, honest, beautiful.
I hit it again. Harder.
Again.
Because the pain is the only thing cutting through the withdrawal and the grief and the black tar flooding my chest. My knuckles are already pulp. I don’t stop.
Mary is dead.
Mary isdead.
The memory won’t leave me alone. It plays on repeat behind my eyes like a snuff film Ican’t turn off.
Her body crumpled on the floor of that goddamn room. The fireplace poker—thick iron, still warm from the flames—stabbed through her throat at a brutal angle. Blood everywhere. So much fucking blood. It had poured out of her in thick, dark sheets, soaking her hair, seeping into the cracks between the floorboards. Her eyes were open. Wide. Surprised. Like even at the end she couldn’t believe that someone she loved like a mother could do this.
Valeria had stood over her, calm as ever, wiping a single red speck from her cheek with the back of one manicured finger. Then she’d looked at me and smiled like a proud mother watching her son take his first steps.
“Valeria!” I roar again, voice cracking like breaking glass, and look right at the camera set high against the ceiling in the corner, staring directly at it. “You evil, soulless whore. Open that door so I can rip your fucking spine out with my bare hands. Valeria!”
I grab the metal chair—the same one I’ve sat in while carving information out of men for her pleasure—and hurl it up at the goddamn camera with every ounce of strength left in my ruined body. It hits the far wall with a deafening crash, metal twisting, one leg snapping off and spinning wildly toward the drain in the center of the floor. The drain that’s swallowed more blood than most battlefields.
A maniacal laugh erupts from my lungs, something primal. Something completely wrong. “You better kill me, Valeria. Or I swear to God, I’ll kill you. And it’ll be slow. So fucking slow. I’ll peel your skin off with a goddamn potato peeler.” I pull my hands through my hair, tugging viciously at the ends, pacing. “I’m gonna split you open from cunt tothroat, tear your insides out and watch them steam in my hands. You hear that?”
I slam my shoulder into the reinforced door so hard something deep inside pops and shifts wrong. Pain flares white-hot through my arm, but I do it again. And again. Blood from my ruined hands streaks down the steel.
“Come in here! Face me, you gutless, pedophile bitch! I’ll rip your fucking heart out and make you choke on it!”
The viewing slot in the door slides open with a soft mechanical hiss. I’m against the goddamn door the moment her eyes appear—dark, flat, amused. Like she’s watching a particularly entertaining animal destroy its cage.
“Nazareth,” she purrs, voice dripping with that false warmth she’s always used like a blade. “You need to calm yourself, boy.”
“Fuck you!” I slam my fist into the door, not registering the way my flesh bursts open, then throw myself against the door again, screaming, fists pounding steel until fresh blood runs down my forearms. “You killed my sister. Your own grandson’s mother! Psycho cunt!”
“You were unwell that night,” she says softly, like she’s soothing a fevered child. “The things you think you remember?—”
