Page 177 of Hades

His voice had gone almost reverent.

“It was beautiful. Efficient. Self-sustaining. The Trick Pony was just one piece, one location. But the methodology, the infrastructure”— his voice had an awe to it that had the hair on the back of my neck standing up—“that was genius. You take vulnerable people. You break them. You use them. And when they’re used up, you disappear them into institutions or graves, and no one asks questions because the system protects you.”

Bile rose in my throat, but I kept my face soft. Kept my eyes wide and horrified in exactly the way he’d expect.

“Kronos learned it from them,” Zander continued. “Lucas Cooper. President of the Gods of Mayhem. He was younger than George and Devlin, but he was smart. He watched. He learned. He took their system and expanded it. Made it bigger. Better. More sophisticated.”

Indie’s words flooded my head. The abuse, the rape, the hypnosis that turned her into what she was today. Kronos was responsible for that.

“And I learned it from all of them,” Zander said. “From George. From Devlin. From Kronos. I learned that the beauty of the system is, it doesn’t matter if one man dies. The machine keeps running. The Society keeps protecting it. Another man steps in. Another generation inherits the design.”

He crouched down in front of me. Close enough that I could see the broken blood vessels in his eyes. The way his pupils were dilated. High on something. Adrenaline maybe, or drugs, or the power he thought he had.

“Kronos was working with me,” he said. “With Arizona. With Zephyr. We were going to take over the Federation. Consolidate power. Bring all the clubs under one umbrella where we could control everything. The trafficking. The guns. The drugs. The money. Everything.”

Arizona. Zephyr. Names I didn’t know but would remember.

“The Gods of Mayhem killed Arizona.” Zander’s voice went flat. Dead. “My brother.”

He stood up abruptly.

“They took everything from me. But the network survives. It always does.”

His voice rose with each word.

“They destroyed years of planning. Years of careful cultivation. Years of building relationships and networks and power structures.”

He was shouting now.

“They killed the future I was owed!”

I flinched, letting him see me shrink back in the chair. Letting him think his rage was working.

“So now they pay,” Zander said, his voice dropping back to something cold and controlled. “All of them. Zeus. Hades. Every brother who rode with them. Every person they love.”

He looked at me.

“Starting with you.”

I let tears stream down my face. Let my voice break. “Please,” I begged. “I didn’t... I didn’t do anything. I don’t even know these people. I just⁠—”

“You’re fucking Hades,” Dakota interrupted. “You’re his weakness. His soft spot. The thing that makes him human instead of the God he pretends to be.”

He pulled a knife from his belt. Long. Serrated. The kind designed to cause maximum damage.

“And when he comes for you, and he will come, because men like Hades can’t help themselves, I’m going to make him watch while I take you apart piece by piece.

“Then I’m going to kill every brother he brought with him. Burn the clubhouse. Destroy everything the Gods of Mayhem built. And when Zeus is the last one standing, when he’s lost everything and everyone he loves, I’ll tell him it was all because the Gods of Mayhem let Kronos die.” His voice dropped to something venomous. Zander crouched down again, pressing the flat of the blade against my cheek.

“You’re not a prisoner, Violet. You’re a message. A declaration of war. A promise that the system they tried to destroy is bigger than them. Stronger than them. And it will outlive every single one of them.”

The knife was cold. My skin burned where it touched. I could smell rust and oil and my own sweat. My heart slammed against my ribs. The zip ties cut deeper with every breath.

But I kept crying. Kept my voice small and broken. Kept my eyes wide and terrified.

Because Zander was pacing again. Talking. Revealing names and plans and conspiracies like I was already dead. Like none of it mattered because I’d never leave this warehouse alive to tell anyone.

His pupils stayed dilated even when he moved into the light. His hands trembled slightly when he wasn’t gripping something.