“Medical records. Appointments. Admissions. Treatments. Anything that might have their signatures. If they’re moving under the radar, they’re leaving a trail in the wrong hands, and that’s where we need to look.”
“Then let’s get on it,” Ezekiel says, rising from the table to stand with Danny and Billy-John, waiting at his side. We’ve been scouring the whole fucking world, it feels, and we’re making progress. Slowly, the names are being crossed off our database, dropping like flies thanks to our alliances, but none of them are Seraphine. We have allies in every state, territory, as well as internationally. Mercenaries who do the groundwork, the heavy lifting, relying on skills that years of training and their predecessors have taughtthem, because the powers who are in official control of all this are incompetent.
And I should be with them. I should be doing what I was trained to do and working right alongside them. Or even better, lurking in the shadows where no eyes can find me, ready to blow the head clean off the snake. Just like Titan taught me. With the other families on board, those skills are accounted for. Instead, I’m playing games with the families, doing a whole lot of talking, and not enoughfinding.
The air is freezing as we slip into the car, leaving Vaelric’s building behind. Danny and Billy-John take the front seats while Ezekiel and I settle into the back. The city hums around us, lights flickering and glistening off the snow and sleet, as we pass by the bustling nightlife. The streets my sister Katia and I used to call home. The city unwinds beneath the ice-cold tires, each turn carrying us deeper into the heart of the restless evening, and all I can think about is where the fuck am I going wrong? What am I missing?
“What’s cooking in that head of yours?” Ezekiel says, breaking over the sound of tires on asphalt. He knows I’m restless. He turns slightly, the streetlights shining over the faint stubble along his jaw, and his long black hair pulled into a knot. I let out a sigh. The first sign of uncertainty since Titan took me under his wing.
“I’m missing something. I’m either looking too deep into it, or not deep enough, and I can’t say I like being wrong.”
Ezekiel’s eyes lock onto mine.
“I’ve made just about every mistake there is to make when it comes to The Royal. I’ve lost people, opportunities, and chances that never return. You will too, and that’s the truth of it. But there’s one thing that kept me going, and that was the pure, unwavering need to take them down. That’s your weapon. Let it drive you. Guide you. You’ll find her, dead or alive.” He leans back into his seat, and I consider his words for a moment.
“The longer she’s out there, the greater the threat she becomes,” I murmur, though we already know what’s at stake and I know we both feel the weight of that truth. Seraphine could gather the remnants of her father’s corrupt regime, piece together what we bled to expose.
The lives lost.
The lives saved.
And the cruelest part about their reform would be that she, and anyone else in her pocket, would know that we’re looking, searching, watching, destroying, and making their rebuild fly even lower under the radar. They get smarter because they have to. Cockier because they’re still alive. But I hold on to the hopethat she will falter, and once she does, I will bring her in. Until that moment, I will not rest.
***
I scrub my hands raw, blood and grime, the scent of iron clinging stubbornly to my skin despite the harsh scrape of soap and water. We spent the night at an out of town location, filled with relentless questioning and death. I discovered that there was a facility beneath the streets, right under the bar Seraphine had disappeared into, which did not align with any existing city plan. I traced it, connected the dots, and learned that it was a cover-up, which seems like the most obvious avenue I had missed in the beginning. Those in high places like to play a game of smoke and mirrors, it seems.
It’s as if Seraphine erased herself. She has either taken on a new face, if the plastic surgical rooms in the underground facility were anything to go by, or she’s been shipped out of the country. There is no paper trail. No emails connecting to my theory. Nothing but my gut instinct that started festering when I searched the underground rooms myself. She is beyond the reach of even the most careful pursuit, and my mind won’t fucking settle.
The only reason anyone would change their face would be to hide in plain sight. Or maybe she was just paranoid that we’d find her no matter where she ran to. Something isn’t sitting right. David, the owner of the bar, swore he didn’t know where she was before I put a bullet through his skull, and let’s just entertain that to be true for a moment. Perhaps he thought that by not knowing where she was, it would keep him safe. But why go to all the trouble of helping herdisappearin the first place? Was it money? Did Seraphine promise him a huge sum? Did she have access to cash we haven’t accounted for? Who did David know that could perform such a task?
That’s where I need to look next.
I step out of my bathroom, and the early morning light is pale, spilling through the stained glass windows of my house. The air inside is cold, heavy with the scent of aged wood and dust. Shadows stretch across the floorboards, twisting over furniture carved with grim faces and strange, knotted shapes. The walls are lined with faded tapestries, their muted colors portraying funeral rituals and skeletal trees stripped bare by winter.
The ceiling arches high above, dark beams etched with ornate patterns that feel more sinister than decorative, and the staircase twists upward, like a broken spine, the wooden railing carved with hollow-eyed figures that I swear follow me everywhere I walk.Candles sit in unlit sconces, their wax hardened into jagged shapes, while the faint scent of incense fills the air around me. It’s an old mortuary. It’s perfect. It’s home—a monument to both memory and death.
Katia and I used to break into this place when we were just kids, when winter would sink its teeth into us, and there was nowhere else warm to hide. It sat far enough outside the city that no one bothered to come looking, and most people gave a wide berth to abandoned houses with a reputation for the macabre. Not us.
Back then, it was our refuge. We’d pretend the place belonged to us. After Titan took us in and I had money in the bank, I came back for it. Fixed what needed fixing, reinforced the bones so the roof wouldn’t cave in on me in my sleep. Brought the heating, the wiring, the pipes back to life, but everything else is exactly as it was. The graveyard behind the house hasn’t seen a new burial in years, which is one of the reasons I was able to get the deal over the line. Some places aren’t meant to change, and I intended to keep this one as original as possible. For sentiment, but also because nobody seems to ask questions where the dead are concerned and that suits me just fine, considering I kill for a living.
Outside, the white weight of snow gathers against the house, and I give myself a small, proverbial pat on the back for having the foresight to cover the newlydug graves with a tarp. I shrug into my coat and pull my gloves tight over my hands, the leather creaking softly as the cold seeps through the seams of the house. The door groans when I open it, sounding just how I feel, and winter greets me with a sharp bite to the lungs. The yard is quiet under the blanket of snow, and I won’t lie and say that I hate winter. I used to, but now that I’m not starving and almost freezing to death, there’s something refreshing about being locked away out here with a protective barrier that prevents anyone from driving by and interrupting my peace.
My blacked-out SUV waits near the treeline, and I make my way toward it, my combat boots crunching in the frost. The back hatch lifts with a dull mechanical hum, and inside lie the bodies of the crooked bastards who helped bury the real blueprints to the underground facilities and tunnels beneath bureaucratic signatures and quiet approvals. Tunnels that carried people beneath the city, slipping them out through the docks and the airports, before anyone in law enforcement could catch a scent.
Gatekeepers of forced silence.
Architects of forced escape.
Now they’re just dead weight in my car.
I grip the first one by the collar and haul him from the cargo space. His body drops into the snow with a wet, graceless thud, the impact driving a dull soundinto the frozen ground. For a moment, he lies there, half buried in the white, dark red stains blooming slowly through the powder as I lift his body by the legs, and drag him across the yard, and further into the trees. The snow resists at first, then gives, carving a slow furrow behind us. Blood and frost grind together beneath my boots. His head lolls uselessly to the side with every pull, leaving a bloodtrail everywhere.
By the time I drag him to the grave and remove the snow-covered tarp from the plot and the mound of dirt beside it, my heavy breath fogging the space in front of my face, a voice comes from behind me. I don’t turn right away. The grave waits open at my feet, the body heavy in my grip, snow drifting quietly into the pit as if eager to help cover the evidence. Only then do I glance back over my shoulder, knowing exactly who that voice belongs to.
My little ghost.
Standing there in a thin, threadbare cotton dress, much like the one she wore the last time she wandered into my woods, only now the hem drags through the snow, as if the winter itself had carried her here and laid her down before me. Her eyes drift from my face to the corpse held tight in my grasp, the dark spill of his blood seeping from the bullet hole in his temple, and dripping onto the snow in a crude, obscene filigree. Then, her gaze lifts, holding minewith a calm as still as water in an untouched lake, reflecting nothing, yet drawing me to it. Her lips, faintly crimson against the ghostly pallor of her skin, part in a subtle, knowing smile, and I swear the chill in the air tightens around my ribs.
