Chapter 26 Open the Flood Gates
TWENTY-SIX
OPEN THE FLOOD GATES
LYLA
Mark is on the ground.
Sprawled in a pool of his own blood.
The warehouse is dark, cavernous, the air thick with rust, rot, and something far worse.
Flickering fluorescent lights buzz overhead, casting erratic shadows across the concrete.
His breath comes shallow, lips trembling around words he’ll never get to say.
His green eyes are wide with pain—but there’s something else. Acceptance.
“No, no, no—Mark, stay with me,” I sob, pressing hard on the wound in his stomach, but the blood keeps coming, hot and slick between my fingers. Too much. I can’t stop it.
His fingers twitch, gripping weakly at my sleeve. His lips part, but all that escapes is a choking gasp, a desperate, dying sound. “Lyla,” he manages, voice barely a whisper. “Run.”
I shake my head, tears streaming. “I’m not leaving you! Just—hold on, dammit! You’re gonna be fine, I promise.”
A laugh cuts through the darkness. Amused. Cruel.
The sound slithers down my spine like ice. The air shifts behind me, a presence looming just out of reach—vile and all-consuming.
“Such devotion,” da Vinci muses, his voice a velvet-coated blade. “You always were his little shadow, weren’t you?”
My breath stutters. Terror crawls through my limbs.
“Funny thing about shadows,” he continues, stepping closer, voice dipping into something almost gentle, almost mocking. “They fade in the dark.”
Pain explodes through me. White-hot agony as cold steel tears through my back and bursts from my chest.
I gasp—no sound. Only a wet, choking noise as the air is ripped from my lungs.
My eyes drop.
The blade glints—gleaming, slick, soaked in red. My red.
My blood.
My hands twitch at my sides, still sticky with Mark’s, useless now. Numb.
I can’t move. Can’t breathe. The world lurches sideways, warping into a nightmare haze.
Time slows.
My pulse pounds in my ears—fast, erratic, fading.
Then I feel him.
His breath ghosts against my skin, warm and wrong. I want to scream but my body won’t obey.
His voice is soft. Almost tender.
“I win.”
I jolt awake, gasping, the scream lodged in my throat. Sweat drenches my skin, my heart slamming hard enough to crack ribs.
I bolt upright, breath ragged, ears ringing with the phantom echoes of the nightmare.
So much blood.
Jacob’s already there. His hands find me—firm, gentle, steady.
“Lyla,” he says, voice rough from sleep but calm. Solid. “You’re safe. I got you.”
He holds me like I’m worth protecting, and I’m sitting here with blood on my hands, waiting for the moment he realizes it.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to banish the image of Mark choking on his own blood. It clings anyway.
Jacob says nothing else. He just pulls me into him, one hand cupping the back of my neck, massaging slow circles. His other hand glides up and down my back.
“Talk to me, Trouble,” he murmurs, voice soft enough to slip past my defenses.
I want to lie. I want to shove the nightmare into a corner of my mind and lock it there. But tonight I’m done carrying it alone.
I trace absent patterns across his chest, centering on the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.
“My partner’s name was Mark Valentine.”
The name hits me like an avalanche I’ve been outrunning for years.
I don’t deserve this safety, not when Mark’s dead and buried by a system that never gave him peace. At least Mark knew what he’d signed up for. They don’t.
Jacob’s arms tighten like he can feel the weight, the guilt, the self-loathing I can’t shake.
It would be so easy to tell him now. Rip off the bandage, show him the rot underneath. Explain the marks, the clues, the notes I’ve left behind.
But first, he needs to understand why.
Why I would risk them.
Why I couldn’t stop chasing this ghost.
Why I couldn’t let it go.
If he knows that, maybe he can forgive the rest.
“I’m here,” he says, voice like gravel and warmth, something to hold on to when the world spins.
I breathe in deep, clinging to his scent. Letting it settle me. Letting myself believe, for one second, that maybe I’m not too far gone.
“We worked together for three years,” I say. “Mark and I. Hunting serial killers. The worst of them. Monsters hiding behind everyday faces.”
Every name. Every scene. Every body.
“But no matter how bad it got, we always caught them. Because it was Mark and me. Always together.”
My fingers dig into his skin like a tether. He doesn’t speak, but I feel him shift, grip tightening at my waist. A silent I’m here.
“Until he showed up.”
The name sticks in my throat.
“Da Vinci,” I whisper. It tastes like poison.
“He abducted, tortured, and murdered his victims in ways so grotesque, so deliberately twisted, that law enforcement didn’t realize it was the same man at first. Every scene looked like a different killer.
” My throat tightens, nausea crawling up it, but I push through.
“By the time they connected the dots, thirteen women were already dead.”
Silence swells between us.
“They were all between twenty-five and thirty-three.”
Another beat.
“All blond. All blue-eyed.” I force the words out. “Just like me.”
A muscle tics in his jaw. His grip on my waist hardens, not to restrain, but like he’s trying to hold me together.
“The sad part?” I press into him, chasing his warmth. “The bureau only got involved when he sent a letter.” I can still see it, delicate script describing atrocities.
“He wanted attention. Said we were missing the ‘art.’ Described the killings like masterpieces.” My breath shakes. “He wanted us to see him. To know that even with a task force on his heels, he could still make people vanish. After Mark and I joined the case, he . . . noticed me.”
Jacob stills. “Noticed how?” he asks, voice low.
“He started writing directly to me. Addressing every note by name. Every taunt, every new murder—‘gifts,’ he called them—for me. He’d write, ‘I thought of you the entire time,’ or ‘Hope you admire my work up close.’ He was fixated.”
Jacob’s arms lock like steel, his body a shield.
A shiver runs down my spine, not from fear, but from the way he holds me. The way he absorbs my unraveling without flinching, like he wants to carry the rot so I don’t have to.
I bury my face against his shoulder, breathing him in. Without a word, he shifts, pulling the blanket over us in one motion, wrapping us in a cocoon.
“He can’t get to you,” Jacob murmurs, voice firm against my ear. “Not now. Not ever.”
If only he knew the truth.
“What we didn’t know,” I whisper, “was that he wasn’t just some lone psycho.
He was part of something bigger. A network—an underground ring of serial killers.
They helped each other vanish. Hid each other’s tracks.
We weren’t hunting monsters, we were chasing ghosts.
Always one step too late. And every crime scene,” I go on, hollow, “was like looking in a mirror.”
Jacob’s thumb sweeps my cheek, the softness cracking something deep inside me.
“Ten more women died because of me,” I choke out. “Years of chasing him. Obsessing. Losing everything for one man. And I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stop him.”
The tears come hot and silent.
“I failed. Over and over again.”
It would be so easy to tell him now. To let him see all of it. Both outcomes—understanding or exile—feel cleaner than this limbo.
Jacob kisses my temple like he’s pressing courage into my skin.
“We almost had him,” I whisper. “New Orleans. A year ago. Our informant said the artist was in town. We were so close. I didn’t wait for backup. I didn’t think. I had to end it. I shouldn’t have pushed for us to go in alone,” I rasp. “But I was tired of waiting.”
Tired of staring into the lifeless faces of women he destroyed and seeing my own reflection. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was reckless. Obsessed. Selfish. We split up. Mark took the front. I took the back. We were going to trap him between us. But he knew. He always knew.
“Our informant didn’t know he’d been compromised. Da Vinci used him to feed us exactly what he wanted.”
My stomach twists. “We found what was left of him the next day.”
His organs were strung across a rusted chair like some twisted art installation.
“Mark and I walked right into the trap. Mark was on the ground. Trying to hold himself together. His hands pressed to his stomach, but he was bleeding out, and there was nothing I could do. I was too late. And da Vinci—”
I see it again, sharp as the day it happened.
“He was already halfway out of the room. Paused at the door, looked back at me like it was a joke. He winked. Blew me a kiss. All he ever wanted was my attention. To tear away every person I cared about until he was the only thing left. Mark was still alive. Barely. And I—” The words crack.
“I almost left him. I almost chased after that monster and left my partner to die alone.”
Jacob lifts my chin. “But you didn’t,” he says, certain.
“I didn’t. I stayed.” I tried to stop the bleeding. I begged him to hold on. But we both knew.
“His last words—he made me promise to tell his wife he loved her. To tell their unborn child to be good and that their daddy loved them very much.”
The sob rips through me, jagged and uncontrollable. Ten years of it in one breath.
Jacob holds me tighter, absorbing the pain.
“The crime scene team found a note in Mark’s jacket. From him. Addressed to me.”
“What did it say?”
“See you soon. I carried a copy every day. Waiting to shove it down his throat.”
“How did you find him again?”
“Luck. I was sent to confirm whether a woman’s murder in Virginia matched his signature.” Her body was posed, carved, displayed like some grotesque masterpiece.
“Before I could meet with local PD, the outbreak hit. Two months later, there he was. Walking down Main Street with a group of men. Joanie and I tracked him. Stayed in the woods, off-grid, until we reached the prison.”
If it hadn’t been for Joanie, I’d have stormed in guns blazing. She grabbed my hand, wouldn’t let go while I rage-sobbed in the woods.
“What I didn’t expect was to find more of them.”
Thirty men—armed, organized, coordinated. They moved like soldiers. Predators.
“For three days, we watched. Tracked shift changes, memorized guard rotations. Then on the fourth day, he appeared. A prison bus rolled in. Eight people shoved out—four men, four women. Broken already. Huddled like animals waiting for slaughter.”
He prowled around them like a wolf. Grinning. Taking his time. He yanked a brunette by the hair, dragged her face into the light, stared like she was a trophy.
Then he pistol-whipped her. Dropped her like garbage. The others followed suit—each one picking someone, dragging them inside.
“They never came back out. Not until two days later. At sunrise, they dragged what was left into the yard and set them on fire.”
They cheered. Laughed like it was a celebration. The flames lit up the sky. I can still smell it—burning hair, skin, bone. I clutched a tree like it could hold me together. Joanie threw up behind me. They were laughing.
“Something in me snapped. Everything went quiet. I stopped thinking like a fed. If I had to be a monster to kill one, so be it. I would end them all, even if it killed me to do it. As long as da Vinci burned with them, it’d be worth it.”
Mark had a family. I have rage. Nothing left to lose.
Jacob cradles my face. “You don’t deserve to die. That monster did this. Not you.”
I want to believe him. But monsters wear human skin—and mine still fits too well.
“You tried to stop a killer,” he says. “You acted because you knew another woman would die if you didn’t. Another family would be shattered.”
The words ease the barbed wire I’ve wrapped around my heart.
“He’s gone because you didn’t give up,” he murmurs, then kisses me. The guilt returns, coiling around my ribs and sinking deeper than ever, turning the kiss into ash. I can’t keep risking them for my plan. No more clues. No more notes.
I just want this. I want Jacob and this crazy bunch of people to be my family. I want to spend nights wrapped in his arms, enjoying my life for once.
Jacob slows the kiss, pulling away suddenly. His arms tense, eyes boring into mine.
“Lyla?” His voice is too calm. Controlled.
“What is it?”
“The woman you were supposed to investigate. Right before the outbreak. What was her name?”
“Sheila Tatters,” I say. “Why?”
He goes still. His hand clenches against my spine.
“Sheila Tatters was my fiancée.”