Chapter 18
Zira
I ran my hands over the rifle, the metal cold under my fingertips.
The view of the banquet hall from the top of the supplies shed was like observing another world.
The men in black and white suits streaming inside.
Their women with timid faces, dressed in vibrant colors to highlight their sacrificial status.
My body filled with tremors, knowing that I couldn’t change my mind now.
I had to stop thinking so much about the future.
I had to be more like Hazard and do exactly what I wanted, even if he died.
At least I was more generous than he usually was; I had warned him about what I was planning to do.
Hazard’s pistol and my father’s stolen engraved handgun lay on the roof in front of me, like a dark omen.
Both of them had been gifts from Hazard.
Hazard was in the banquet hall. Somewhere.
The windows were exposed, showing off the beginning of the night’s festivities.
Beatings. Trickles of blood. Artistic cuttings.
It was always the same. And yet, I had walked through those halls, parading myself in white, as if I truly thought I had a chance at becoming a member. As if I could change things.
Hazard was right. I was never going to be in the Syndicate legitimately. This was all I had.
Luckily, Desmond Callen and Finn Carter were not at the Masquerade tonight, so they and their wives would be safe.
I always needed access to pharmaceuticals, and it was never bad to have an assassin who owed you.
With what I had planned, I needed at least some people on my side, and those couples had proven their worth to me.
But I needed Hazard on my side.
No. I had to do this, even if Hazard died tonight. I had warned him, hadn’t I? He would run before it was too late, and if he didn’t, that was his own fault.
I curled my fists, watching a window where a man dressed in black took a sacrifice from behind while the other men took turns caning her backside.
Her skin was painted in streaks of purple and red, but my vision glazed over her.
Her pain, my pain, Hazard’s pain, all of it would mean nothing unless I did something.
I had to lock those doors somehow and burn everyone alive.
Clear out the scorched earth and make way for a new generation.
But I must have been going soft, because I couldn’t accept that idea without concerns bubbling up anymore. If I killed the sacrifices and staff with the members and initiates, it made me too much like the men I hated. Selfish. And fucking predictable.
Again, Hazard was right. I always claimed that this planned carnage was about my mother and changing the future, and yet, it wasn’t that at all. It was because I hated being dismissed.
But if we all died tonight, at least there’d be no more suffering.
I had hidden explosives everywhere earlier that day.
Tucked inside of some of the dungeon furniture.
Hidden in the walls. In the ballroom. Everywhere I could find.
I couldn’t lock the doors without being caught, but I could watch the chaos unfold, and cross my fingers that my father was near one of my bombs.
I didn’t care how much damage I did or didn’t do, as long as he died.
A fit of laughter broke out in a room as the men took turns face-fucking a woman. Tears ran down her face. I held a device in my hand. With one click, it would detonate, and they would all be gone. At least, most of them would. A few might escape. If they were lucky.
My fingertip ran over that button, a tingling sensation growing inside of me. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t make myself press that button. Couldn’t let myself finally do what I had always wanted.
Because I couldn’t kill Hazard.
One of the windows caught my eye. My father, in his classic black mask and suit, stood in the farthest room with two guards next to him. Hazard was in a traditional suit, accentuating his masculine frame. God, he looked good dressed up like that. It was like a cage keeping him locked inside.
But then I noticed his mask—the same bull skull as before—and his work boots, dirty, scuffed, and brown.
He might have been dressed up in a black suit, but he still didn’t care about the social decorum of wearing all black, and I loved that about him.
I loved him.
I tried to pull myself away from staring at their window, but it was true. As much as I wanted to hate him, I never could. He didn’t see the fake persona I put on for others. He didn’t see the abused daughter who could never do anything right.
He saw me. Flaws and all. Saw the selfish, power hungry side of me, and saw the little slivers of light I had left. And Hazard still wanted me to kill him, so that I could kill my own father before he did.
I tilted my head as the two of them talked. It was a heated argument. A knife gleamed in the back of Hazard’s pants, but he never grabbed it. A sex machine was to the side of them, right by the guillotine. They had options, but they didn’t take any steps forward.
I wanted chaos. A fucking show. But instead, Hazard was talking like a civilized person.
My heart grew with warmth and pride. He was stalling, wasn’t he? He was waiting for me to make my entrance.
Taking Hazard’s pistol with me, I walked through the side entrance without a mask on, wearing black pants and a tight black shirt. A few members gawked at me, but I disappeared into the room with my father and Hazard, locking the door behind me.
Hazard’s eyes held me, a knowing expression covering his face.
Neither of us wanted to do this alone.
“Zira,” my father said. “We thought you’d never make it. To make it official, why don’t you get on that machine, and Hazard and I will take turns with the guillotine remote. You can be his sacrifice tonight—”
I shot the guards in the face, their bodies falling to the ground in silence. My father’s jaw dropped. The Masquerade continued on as usual. The other members must have thought those bullets had finally killed me.
My father gawked. Hazard spit on the floor, and my father sneered at him.
“Do something,” my father demanded. But Hazard didn’t move. “Son?”
“I’m not your son,” Hazard growled. Then he elbowed my father in the face, then punched him, sending his body barreling to the floor.
Blood gushed from my father’s nostrils, dripping over his mask. Hazard pulled off the bull skull. “We only have a few minutes before he wakes up.”
“Then do it,” I said.
“Kill him?”
“Yes.” I shoved my hands forward. “Go on. Do it.”
Hazard narrowed his eyes. “You want the board, right? If I kill him, then the rest of the Syndicate will take over and you won’t have any say in the new leadership. But when he wakes up, I’ll be gone, and you can claim that you saved him from me.”
I rolled my eyes, hiding behind my sarcastic expression, when inside, I was burning with warmth. Even after all of the awful things we had said, he still wanted to help me.
“You were right,” I said. “I was never going to get on the board anyway.”
“But if I’m still on the board, I can help you get on the board. That’s what a king does for his queen.”
I huffed through my nose, the sweetness of the gesture almost sickening, but nice too. In another lifetime, maybe the board could have worked out like that.
My father stirred, and this time, I kicked him in the face with the toe of my boot, and he wheezed in pain. Hazard laughed, and that casualness stirred something inside of me.
It must have been love. I liked making Hazard laugh.
Hazard quickly straddled my father and pistol-whipped him until he was knocked unconscious again.
“Let’s kill him together. You’ve got any ideas?” I asked.
“Fuck yeah, I do.”
Hazard was like a manic artist, cutting through my father’s clothes, then lifting the top half of the lunette to place my father’s neck in the head hole of the guillotine.
“For you, my love,” Hazard said. He held out a padlock with a single key.
I quickly latched it around the ring, locking my father’s head in the device.
I slipped the key into my back pocket, then the head hole choked my father to consciousness.
He gargled, then got on his hands and knees, struggling to stand.
“What is the meaning of this?” my father yelled. “Get me out of this thing!”
After years of being raped and tortured and dismissed and belittled all in the name of a secret society that he loved more than he ever loved me or my mother, I should have said how much I hated him, but instead, I angled my head at the sex machine, ignoring his cries.
“You know what that is?” I asked Hazard, motioning at the sex machine. My father’s wails and screams were incoherent. Hazard lazily kicked his stomach, getting him to shut up.
“Dildo?” Hazard asked.
“Not just that,” I said. I showed him the controls in the back of the machine.
“These are your typical settings, right? Fast. Slow. Shallow. Deep. But this one—” I pointed at a red button with a black dot in the center, “—this one penetrates you deeper and deeper until it impales you with a dildo and the metal rod.”
Hazard’s smile grew, reminding me of a wolf, and he kissed my lips, shoving his tongue inside of me. My insides blazed like a furnace, and I wanted to get this over with so we could enjoy each other.
But I wanted to enjoy the murder too. We both did.
“You’re an evil genius,” Hazard said, shouting over the screams.
I winked. “Care to do the honors?” I asked, gesturing at the sex machine.
Hazard shook his head. “You have to do it,” he said. “This is all yours, Zira.”