Blades of Obsession

Prologue

BLADE

Three Years Ago

“Kill him or I’ll kill you.”

A gun is pressed to my temple, its cold barrel a grim reminder that whether the trigger pulls is entirely up to me.

The gaze of the man on the other side is cold and calculating as he delivers his ultimatum, voice dripping with malice. The weight of what he’s truly saying comes crashing down on me. I’m trapped, cornered by forces beyond my control.

When I don’t respond, lost in the maze of my thoughts, a punch with brass knuckles slams into my gut, propelling me off the chair and onto the hard concrete floor.

It’s cold and stinks of mold in this room.

“I’m not supposed to be an assassin. I’m a hacker,” I spit out, clutching the bruise forming on my stomach.

“Look, kid,” the man starts. “I picked you to take over my position when I retire for a reason. You’ve done excellent so far in your tests. After two days in this cellar, with my best men on the job, you still haven’t waved the white flag. Your last job is to simply kill a man, that’s easy enough, right?”

I shake my head, my voice hoarse and raw from everything he’s put me through. “I’m not a killer. And you’ll never make me one.” Blood spits out of my mouth with each word I speak, the bitter taste of iron lingering on my tongue.

He takes a few slow, eerie steps towards me and crouches down until we’re at eye level. “We’ll see about that,” he whispers, a sadistic smirk curling his lips.

A sharp whistle chimes in the air, and moments later, three large dudes who could cosplay as sumo wrestlers enter the room, stepping before me.

They each wield a distinct weapon that I can just barely see in the dim light. The guy on the left grips a rope in one hand, a butcher knife in the other. The middle guy has a shovel, and the last one has a heavy metal bat with spikes jutted from its surface.

It’s obvious this isn’t their first rodeo—their movements are practiced, coordinated. The cruel smiles on their faces tell me they enjoy what they do. Torturing souls for a living.

I close my eyes and prepare for the worst.

Two Days Later

“ Okay! Okay! ” I scream, my body convulsing as another nail drives into my thigh, the nail gun shredding through muscles and nerves.

They’ve finally broken me. The walls I built, the armor I swore I’d never let crack, shattered. Splintered into a million little pieces, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get them back together to be whole again.

I swore I would never do this. Never let this organization corrupt me. They drove my dad to be an alcoholic. But I’m stronger than him, I swore.

I swore.

The man snaps his fingers, signaling the other man in a black mask to retreat from the relentless nail gun attack. “That’s enough, Harvey!”

I’m depleted of energy, starved, my body a canvas of slashes and wounds from every weapon imaginable—some of the weapons even altered to be more deadly. Who the fuck thinks to sharpen the edges of a shovel and use it to hack away at human flesh?

It’s barbaric.

Between clenched teeth and ragged breaths, I manage to say, “Give me the fucking information.” Usually, no one would dare speak to him this way, but I’m way past pleasantries and holding my tongue.

This is it.

Once you make your first kill, you can never go back.

It’s too late though, I’m blinded by revenge. That fucker, whoever he is, is going to pay for everything I’ve endured these past four days. And then some.

“Good choice,” the man says. “We’ll get you cleaned up and—”

“Fuck that,” I interrupt, snatching the paper from his hand with the little energy I have left. “Drive me to my car, now .” Rage courses through me, burning hotter than the pain of my wounds. I have never wanted to hurt someone more in my life than I do right now, to gain back some control. To be the one on the giving end.

The man claps his hands like this is some sick game. “Brave, straightforward, demanding, resilient. I knew you’d make me proud.”

Five Days Later

I throw the Manila envelope filled with proof of my mission, and it hits the desk with a small thud. My bloody fingerprints cover the outside like a scene in a crime TV show. He makes you leave them, so he has evidence to extort you with if you fall out of line.

He carefully examines the images inside with an amused grin. “Five days? This kind of mission takes two. You need to be quicker next time.”

“I had something extra for him,” I reply, my voice monotone and flat—just like what I feel right now. An empty shell.

“I see. His family too.” He whistles in surprise, clearly not expecting me to go after the guy’s wife and kids, too. I said the fucker would pay, and I stayed true to my word.

Instead of responding this time, I give a slight nod.

“A very good job. You just changed your life forever, kid,” he beams. “Welcome to the elite side of the Serpents. Anything you want, it’s yours. You no longer answer to anyone. Except for me, of course.”

“Fuck you, John,” is all I manage to say as I limp through the doorway and leave his office. And I mean it with everything I have left in me.

It’s sick.

The need, the craving to do it again.

He orchestrated everything, knowing once you get your first taste of a kill you can’t stop at just one. I understand how serial killers feel now. There’s a high, like right after sex or drugs—the exhilaration rushes through every fiber of your being. And it becomes an itch, your brain bugging you to make it feel that way again.

What kind of fucked-up person have I become?

Before I even make it back to my car, I get a call from my bank in Mexico, confirming the quarter of a million dollar deposit. This one must’ve been important to him, that’s over double the amount we initially agreed on.

“Sorry Mr. Moretti, but we have a new policy. Recipients of transfers over one hundred thousand must sign a paper and perform a security check in person before it’s completed.”

Fuck. I glance over at my beat-up black Toyota and let out a sigh. The border is hours away, and I’ve always hated driving—especially long distances. Ever since I was thirteen, when my drunk dad made me take the wheel for him. I crashed, and we nearly lost not only our lives but the family with a baby in the car we hit.

And I’ve never liked driving ever since.

Maybe that guy’s offer isn’t sounding so bad after all. Turning around on my heel, I head back into his house. Inside my head, I’m screaming at myself to just go—just leave and never talk to him again. The money and the power don’t really matter if you lose yourself in the process of it all.

Except I don’t listen, and I find myself entering his office again because maybe there’s something else I need, something I don’t want to admit out loud.

“Back so soon?” he chuckles.

“You said I’d have a Serpent on campus who would be my henchman, including driving for me?” When he nods, I continue, “I know a set of twins who are members. I want both. And when you say they’ll do whatever I ask them to, you mean it?”

“Done,” he agrees. “And yes.”

“And I’ll take over your position as president when you retire?”

“That is the plan.”

“But why, though? Why me? You don’t even know me.”

That’s the question I’ve been asking myself since the first day we were in that concrete room. I was a nobody, yeah, I was a part of the Serpents but I was supposed to be a hacker with barely any ranking. Nowhere near elite status.

Two guys blindfolded me while I was walking out of my Computer Tech class and brought me to him. At the time, I didn’t know him from a can of paint.

“My son, Noah, died. The man you just killed, killed him. My son was supposed to take over my position, so now you are. I hand-picked you, you should be proud—that’s an honor. Now, it’ll be hard. You’ll spend the next ten years wishing you didn’t agree. But, I’m going to use that time to make you a great leader.” He keeps smiling like this is the best thing in the world to him.

But his statement tells me what, not why . Why me?