“Five.”
“Myko,”I hiss.
“Five armed men behind that door. And you were just going to open it like they’re offering royal liqueur and caviar?”
My fingers twitch around the rusty doorknob as I push it down, tapping into my mom’s powers. Before it’s even fully open, I hear weapons drawing—not guns. Rifles.
I grin as I kick the door open and five rifles snap up, aimed straight at my head. Not one of them wears body armor. Fedor doesn’t even bother keeping them alive.
No one will miss them anyway.
I raise my hand, fingers curling tight. One by one, their bodies drop, gasping for air. Weapons clatter to the floor around them.
They claw at their throats as I squeeze harder—until the last one goes limp and unconscious.
“You see?”I mutter.“That’s why we work. You warn—I kill. Now, are you going to keep pestering me the whole way in?”
I smirk, stepping through.
But despite what Myko thinks, I don’t let my guard down.
No more guards come rushing.
That means one of two things: either they’re terrible at protecting their darkest secret... or theyknewI was coming.
And they’re waiting.
Either way?
I’m ready to play.
Roran
It stopped.
The burning pain finally stopped.
I breathe through my nose, shallow and slow, because it’s the only way I still can. My face is wet—tears, sweat, maybe blood—I’ve stopped keeping track. My mouth is stuffed with a filthy rag, sour and damp and choking me. Ivan jammed it in when I wouldn’t stop screaming. I think I blacked out from it, not from the pain itself, but from the way it wouldn’t end.
And the worst part? I didn’t care.
Let him kill me. Just end it.
But he didn’t.
He dragged me out instead—right after getting a message that made him smile like he’d just won the fucking lottery—and chained me again, tighter this time, to some rotting chair on the second floor of this hellhole.
I sit there now, bound and gagged, staring out through a grimy, smudged glass window that overlooks the floor below. The Red Dock’s main storage room—lined with racks of emptydrug vials, still tucked neatly into their packaging like they’re ready to be shipped straight into someone else’s nightmare.
This whole place is massive. Way bigger than I ever imagined. Room after room, corridor after corridor—we passed so many I lost count. And now he’s left me here, like I’m a piece in some twisted play he’s staging. Watching. Waiting.
I don’t know what he wants me to see.
But I know it’s coming.
And I already feel my heart losing its rhythm.
Maybe he left me here because he didn’t know what to do with me. Maybe he’s waiting for the screaming to stop—for my body to just give in and shut down.
