I took their radios next.
No calls went out.
After that, everything broke open.
The shotgun handled the ones who got too close. The rest I handled however I had to. It didn’t happen clean. It didn’t happen in order. It happened fast and loud and angry.
People ran the moment the first blast echoed through the hall. Some tried to hide behind tables. Others sprinted toward the exits.
The doors locked automatically when the system triggered.
They only trapped themselves inside with me.
None of it slowed me down.
I scan the room one more time and finish counting.
Thirty bodies. Maybe more.
A man slumps against a banquet table near the wall. What is left of his face is unrecognizable, skin split, bone showing through in places. I remember him because I made him bite the wooden table first. I remember pressing his mouth down until his teeth met the edge. I remember the sound when they shattered. Then I kicked. Again. And again. I didn’t stop when he dropped. I stopped when there was nothing left to give.
Another body lies on its side a few feet away, throat opened by the jagged edge of a champagne bottle. I remember the sound more than the movement. The wet gurgle. The frantic hands clawing at nothing. The bottle breaking in my grip. I remember stepping over him and using what was left, shoving it into someone else’s eye socket, pushing until it resisted, then pushing harder until it did not.
Luke stands near the wreckage, hands clasped behind his back, posture relaxed, like he is walking through a private gallery curated just for him.
“Beautiful,” his eyes bright, almost reverent. “You finally stopped pretending.”
I step over a body without looking down.
He smiles wider, teeth flashing white against the red-streaked light. “You see it now? This is who you are when you stop lying to yourself.”
I don’t answer. I’m too busy taking inventory.
Two bodies near the bar have shotgun wounds blown clean through their backs. Exit wounds the size of fists. One of them slammed forward hard enough that his face shattered a glass display. Teeth and crystal litter the floor beneath him. Another lies facedown, spine twisted, blood pooled so thick it looks black. I remember the recoil. I remember not lowering the gun afterward.
A woman in a designer gown is slumped against a pillar, throat gone. A man near the stage is missing an arm below the elbow. I don't remember taking it, only the sound he made when he realized it was no longer there.
They deserved it.
Every one of them.
These people were not innocent partygoers. They were donors and facilitators. Predators wrapped in money and charm. They smiled at galas and preyed on people like Brooke. Like my mother.
I step forward and then I hear it.
Victor Voss drags himself across the floor, leaving a wet trail behind him as his body struggles to move through the blood he has already lost.
His expensive suit is torn open and soaked through, the fabric clinging to him in heavy, dark patches. One arm hangs useless at his side while the other trembles so badly he can barely pull himself forward. His face is swollen and split, his eyes nearly closed beneath bruised, broken skin.
He looks small now, stripped of everything that once made him untouchable.
He no longer resembles the tech billionaire genius he claims to be.
Victor Voss is the richest member of The Collective, and his money funds half the monsters in this room while his influence keeps people like them protected when bodies start piling up.
His daughter was Amber Voss.
My brother’s lovesick little lapdog. The one who killed Mila. The one who betrayed Brooke and put a knife in her.
