Chapter 21 Alejandro
TWENTY-ONE
Alejandro
No one stopped me from approaching. I knew this area well—I’d worked with Novak long enough to have visited on more than one occasion.
The outside door clanged shut behind me, then I walked the short distance to Novak’s kill room, waiting for the two men with Raven to let me in.
The room was bright, and in its center, a man was tied to a chair, broken and near death by the look of it.
“Finally,” Raven said. “This is the fourth one who’s nearly dying waiting for you to get here.” He gestured into the far corner where three broken bodies were piled as if they were nothing.
I didn’t turn away from Raven and his gun because showing my back was a weakness. Showing fear was worse.
“You came alone,” Raven said as the two men flanked him, just another iteration of the ones who’d followed him at the old águilas. “Good boy.”
“Touch my family,” I said, “and I’ll cut out your heart.”
He laughed. Same sound from years ago—when I’d been crouched in a corner watching a man tied to a chair, bleeding out while Raven told me to learn something. The man in this chair was alive, but barely. His face cut to ribbons—Raven had already had his way with this victim.
“You’re all grown up, El Doctorcito.”
“You’re uh… not looking so good,” I deadpanned, although my chest was so fucking tight it was getting hard to breathe.
Raven’s skin was twisted from the acid I’d poured over his shoulder, splashing his face, a knotted mass of scars he’d attempted to hide with a ball cap and the collar of a leather jacket popped up.
He stiffened, his temper flashed in his eyes, and he took a step toward me, but then he appeared to gather himself and stopped before gesturing at the broken man in the chair. “Go on,” Raven said, “keep him alive for me.”
“Who is he?”
“You never asked before.” He tilted his head as if he was confused—I wanted to stab his fucking eyes out. “Interesting.”
I stepped forward, breath held tight in my chest. No expression. No shaking. Only that cold prickle at the base of my skull—the old instinct to disappear into myself before anyone noticed fear. The kid he trained knew how to hide everything.
The man in the chair gurgled, begged through broken lips, his voice garbled, and I immediately went to stand next to him.
“See?” Raven sounded pleased. “You always belonged to me. My little doctor. My legacy.”
He leaned closer, and for a second I was fifteen again—pressed against cinderblock walls while men laughed at the way my hands shook during my first incision.
Not this time.
As my eyes became accustomed to the dark shadows, I saw a new addition to Novak’s usually empty kill room—a tray of tools: scalpels, hypodermics, rib spreaders, bone saws, chest retractors, suction tubing, clamps, oxygen—the whole setup meant for carving a body open and keeping it that way.
Cold metal.
“Take out his heart,” Raven ordered.
“No—”
“Do it, El Doctorcito,” Raven said, eyes flat and dead, even as a manic edge clawed into his voice. “Or I will go to your house, drag your sister and her beautiful children into this place, and I will have so much fun.”
For a heartbeat, I was the version of myself Raven had made.
The version I swore I’d buried. Pain hit first, sharp enough to hollow my chest. Then the anger, rising fast and ugly, the kind that made my hands shake before I forced them to still.
And underneath it—terror. The same cold terror from years ago, when one wrong move meant I lost someone I loved.
I shoved it all down. Every flicker of panic, every instinct to run, every memory trying to drag me backward. I became what I had to be—the thing Raven built, the thing that survived him once already. Not a boy. Not a victim.
A weapon.
And it hit me. Raven said he’d go to the house.
That meant he didn’t know where they were right now, didn’t know where Rio and his partner had taken them?
They were safe for now, and if anything happened to me, I’d made everyone promise to keep them safe.
Had I earned enough from the people I’d asked to do that for me?
Levi said he was falling in love with me.
Stupid man…
A good man.
Mine.
The victim lifted his head when he heard me move, what was left of his face slick with blood.
One eye gone, the other swollen shut, skin split and hanging in strips—Raven had carved him up for entertainment.
He tried to speak, a wet rattle, and somehow managed a single word through the ruin of his mouth: “Please.”
His whole body trembled. Broken. Crying. Drowning in his own blood, he stared up at me as if I were the last thing standing between him and more pain.
I stepped closer. My hand hovered over the tray. Scalpel. Bone saw. Clamps. The tools Raven wanted me to use, and I picked up the scalpel. The man gurgled again—”Please”—and I leaned in, close enough that he could hear me even through the pain.
“Forgive me,” I whispered for his ears only.
Raven chuckled behind me; a sick sound edged with something gleeful and unhinged. “Look at you,” he crooned, delighted. “My little doctor, right back where you belong—removing hearts on command.”
In one fast, clean motion, I drove my blade into the victim’s neck and slashed his throat. He died instantly. No more begging. No more pain. No removing his heart as it took its final beat.
“No,” I said. I spun as his blood hit the floor.
Raven’s chuckle died, and his expression shifted—not furious at first, but disappointed, as if I’d failed a test for which he’d spent my whole childhood preparing me. Then the displeasure curdled into something colder.
“Get rid of the dead,” he snapped.
I backed away from the victim, and Raven’s men moved instantly, cutting the rope around the dead man’s body and dragging it off the chair. They tossed him into the far corner with the others like garbage, the dull thud of his skull hitting concrete loud enough to echo.
“Put him there,” Raven added, flicking his fingers at me and the now-empty chair. His men turned toward me next.
My hypodermic was ready, the scalpel slick with blood, steady in my hand. My pulse hammered, but my grip didn’t shake.
Raven started talking—words furious, unraveling into something unhinged. “You think you get to choose? You think you get to decide who dies in my room? You were mine. You were made for me to watch!”
The men reached me, and I darted back toward the surgical equipment, sidestepping them as my boots skidded through slick blood.
One of them grabbed for my arm—the rush of air past my ear, the click of his teeth when he missed.
The room reeled, sweat stinging my eyes, but something in me went cold.
No panic. No hesitation. Just that brutal, hollowed-out calm born from too many nights in rooms like this one.
The part of me Raven made—the part he’d never thought would turn against him.
He was wrong.
Twice.
I made it to the table, grabbed the nearest tray, and swung it.
The edge caught the first man’s chest—ribs cracking under metal—and he went down hard.
The second lunged, but I drove my hypodermic into his throat, ramming the plunger with my thumb enough for a quick dose.
The fast-acting paralytic cocktail hit hard; his eyes rolled back as he collapsed, and I followed up with a stab to the throat, and he died choking on his own blood.
I stayed moving, fast, vicious—kicking the first man in the face before he could rise, stomping down until he went still.
Always keeping their bodies between Raven and me, using them as shields, obstacles, anything that bought me time.
Raven’s eyes were on me—wide, shining, almost proud for half a heartbeat.
Then the pride snapped into something jagged.
His mouth twitched, the manic edge slipping, and for the first time, I saw it clearly: fear.
Real fear. Of me. Of the boy he’d molded into a weapon and suddenly could no longer control.
His grip on the gun tightened, knuckles whitening, breath hitching as if he couldn’t decide whether to shoot me or run.
Then he laughed—high, cracked, a sound that didn’t belong in a human throat.
“Look at you,” he hissed, voice shaking with something close to awe.
“My perfect little monster thinks he can turn on me. You can’t walk away from what you are!
” He took a step back, gun on me. “I made you. I broke you. I built you. And you still belong to me—right down to the blood on your hands.” I wasn’t going to reach him before he shot me; he was too far away, six feet maybe, and I made a show of wiping the scalpel on my shirt and then making deliberate motions to pocket it.
“Everyone should have a favorite scalpel,” I murmured, and his eyes tracked the movement.
My fingers brushed Jamie’s small, smooth burn disc.
I’d wanted to get out of here alive. I wanted to save my sister, Bradley, Molly, and I’d wanted to get to know Levi more, see if there was any part of me I could rescue.
But if I was going to die, then I don’t know how the fuck I’d do it, but I’d take Raven with me.
Raven mistook my pause for obedience. “On your knees.”
“No.”
He fired at the floor between my legs, the round sparking off concrete and spraying grit. He was shaking with adrenaline and glee now—not enough for anyone else to see, but I saw it. “Move,” he said. “On your fucking knees!”
“I’d rather die,” I said, channeling every broken part of me into defiance.
“That can be arranged,” he snapped and tightened his stance.