Chapter 9 Sterling
Sterling
Four days later
It took me a few days to look over files and finally get access to this lab. A few days too fucking long.
Normally, it’s easy. Gather intel, find the location, track a mark, and lift a badge off the moron. Then slip past the doors, take what I need, and vanish before anyone even notices I was there. In. Out. Easy.
But there was so much to read through—still so goddamn much—and this fucking lab’s locked down tight.
Nothing like I’ve ever seen before. Layers of clearance, surveillance, security stacked thicker than Clo’s lies.
I should’ve seen it coming. If it matters to her, it’s fortressed, which only means I’m burning it to the ground.
And I don’t give a damn what I have to do to make that happen.
The unlucky fucker under my foot thrashes one final time before I slide the knife deep and fast, slashing his throat, and finally ending his ugly, gurgling sounds.
He begged too loud for too long, desperate and whiny.
It nearly made my ears bleed. I shouldn’t have let him speak at all, but my mind wandered.
To Elle. I can’t stop thinking about her, about how much I miss her face, her voice, the softness she offered me without even knowing it. And how she’s suffocating under Clo’s fingers…
I think about how Elle’s thoughts are probably fogged by now, dulled by the Kys that Clo’s drugging her with.
And the worst part is Elle doesn’t even know it.
She probably thinks everything’s fine. That Clo’s care is real, that the voice she hears in her head belongs to her, not the woman tightening the leash.
Fuck. Frustrated, I press my foot deeper into the bleeding corpse’s shoulder and tug my blade free, wiping it clean with a cloth I don’t bother to toss. I’m getting sloppy. But I don’t care. Clo’s been building this empire from the inside out for decades.
If I can’t get to her directly right now, then I’ll tear apart her foundation. Lab by lab. Brick by brick.
The badge dangles from the dead man’s belt, streaked with red, slick with his blood. I snatch it and slip it into my pocket, my jaw tight. This was the easiest rat to track, and it still took too long, so many detours, so many risks. But I have what I need now for my next move.
I glance down at the mess. I don’t usually leave bodies behind. I hate messy work. I prefer precision, clean and calculated. But these past few days, I’ve been angry. Seeing red and only red.
Being away from Elle makes it worse. Knowing she’s drugged, misled, and under constant watch… Fuck. It’s unbearable. Even if Stanley’s with her—even if he won’t let anything break her beyond repair—it’s not enough. She needs to be with me.
I grit my teeth, forcing myself to move.
There’s no time to stand around, letting blood cool.
This would be faster with help. Damon, maybe.
He’s just as ruthless. But he’s unreachable, apparently too busy being the golden heir with his new bride.
And besides, he plays the long game. Blackmail, exposure, corporate chokeholds.
Quiet pressure, leverage, favors owed and called in.
There’d be fewer bodies, fewer stains, and fewer traces. But I’m not Damon.
I don’t have the patience for politics. I play both parts, the interrogator and the executioner. I play with knives, not contracts. So I do what I’ve always done. I hunt alone.
Unless you count Elle. She’s with me every time I close my eyes.
She haunts me in the best and worst ways, my mind often wandering into that fateful evening.
I can still see it like it’s in front of me.
I close my eyes at the vivid memory. Her hair catching the last light like fire, her dress fluttering like she belonged to the wind.
I didn’t know then how deeply she’d embed herself in my bones.
Now, I can’t breathe without the ache of missing her.
The lab sits deep in the city’s veins, clean and sterile for a place that holds Clo’s sick secrets.
I scout it for a few more hours. Wait for the schedule changes I’ve already memorized.
Track the movement patterns to confirm everything’s as planned.
Security’s airtight, but not perfect. So I kill the comms with a subtle deadening of signals.
Then I slip in under moonlight, moving like smoke, after I’ve locked all exits from the outside except for one—my way out, the only way out.
Inside smells like expensive antiseptic, hiding dirty secrets under artificial light. I drift through this sterilized underworld, letting the tension coil inside me, tight and ready. When I strike, I make it loud.
I enter the floor I know is the most secure. All their bodyguards are down and out cold by my hands. So I kick the unlocked door down, my mask on and my wire spun around one hand’s knuckles, the other gripping a knife.
I never could stand the noise that always follows. Their surprised gasps, shuddering breaths, and high-pitched screams. After the usual hysterics, the men panic, either praying silently or sobbing hysterically. I fucking hate it.
I grab the first man closest to me and slam his head on the steel counter with a crack that silences the room. The body falls. More panic follows. I let it.
The rest of them turn my way, eyes wide in disbelief, or freeze entirely, hoping lack of movement will mean I won’t pay them any attention and spare them.
They’re hoping for a way out. I know why.
It’s not just because I’m some threat or some goon in the night.
I’m wearing my mask, and it means something.
My mask is drenched in red, carved like a nightmare, grinning with sharp teeth. All of it gunning for their end.
It’s how they know me, because criminals know that the mercenary wearing this mask only shows up when it’s too late.
Their guilty, scared reactions only tell me one thing.
They know what they’ve done, what they’ve been doing, and that’s why they know they can’t escape me.
If they try, they’re the first ones to die.
Someone whispers it. “The goblin…” The word trembles through the air like a curse.
One stumbles. Another grips the counter like it can save him. A third is already praying to a god that won’t answer tonight.
I step forward. “Hands.”
No feet move but their arms fly up. I grab another one by the collar, slam him against the wall, and press the tip of my blade under his jaw.
“Kys,” I growl. “Tell me everything you know.”
“…kiss?” he stammers after a shaky breath.
I tilt my head, blade pressing deeper, making him gasp.
Another corrects him, hissing in shudders, “Kysergic Synesthesine. He means the compound.”
“Oh—the pills,” the one under my blade mutters.
“What’s in them?” My voice is lower now, cold and cutthroat.
The silence lasts too long for my liking. I cut into the man’s neck, earning a terrified whimper. And then, one speaks.
“They’re prototypes!” he shouts quickly, then forces his words through obvious trembling, “S-Synthetic psychoactives. We, uh, started with lysergic acid as the base. Then we, um, fused it with neuro-adaptive compounds. It influences memory and can rewrite it, s-sir.”
He swallows, looking nervous, while someone else speaks, at least with a semblance of guilt. “It’s memory-tampering…and long-term conditioning.”
I don’t respond. I can’t when rage is building in my chest like a wildfire.
They may be nervous now, guilty even. But it’s all too fucking late.
They’ve helped deal the damage that’s ruined this town, this state, and if I know Clo well, she’s already distributed this on a global scale.
But none of that matters at all. What’s more vital to me is that Clo’s been drugging Elle, to make her forget and replace what’s real.
I lean in, pressing the knife hard enough to draw a bead of blood. “How much and how often’s the dose needed for full effect?”
“Depends,” another answers. “Some are on daily doses. Others, less often, with reinforcement through scent, suggestion, or routine.”
The words hit me. Reinforcement, routine. Elle drinking tea. Clo telling Elle to slow down. It’s all part of it. She’s not just trying to own Elle. She’s trying to take over her.
I turn the blade slightly, and let the weight of silence crush them.
I’ve always played this sick game with blood on my hands.
Close enough to feel it, to be the killer that sees the piles of bodies.
But tonight, I’m not just playing this game.
I’m going to start burning the board, even if it’s this little corner for now.
There’s no turning back anyway, because I’ve seen Elle’s eyes.
I’ve seen the way they were beginning to fade.
Those surgically blue eyes, somehow dulled by what Clo’s feeding her, thick with confusion that doesn’t belong to her.
A horrible feeling she doesn’t deserve to feel, or to lose herself in.
That’s what I’m fighting now. And the men who help make it possible won’t get mercy.
“Who runs distribution?” I ask, knuckles white around the collar of the man in my grip.
His mouth presses close, then opens. “I don’t—I just—the formulas—”
My blade presses to his throat. More blood beads.
“I don’t know!” he gasps. “Please, I swear!”
I slam him down and move to the next. He’s older, more afraid, maybe wiser. He’s already nodding, stiffening with his eyes open and alert at me.
My voice comes out as a low growl. “Who distributes?”
He openly sobs. “It’s a-all encrypted, sir! We only have access to specs and results!”
Clever, Clo. Even your monsters don’t know whose leash they’re on. I swing a tray into his ribs. It lands with a crack. He crumples with a choked cry.
I ask more questions. They have fewer and fewer helpful answers. None of them are giving me what I really need. They’re terrified and useless. So fine, I’ve made them freeze in fear, so I stun them into silence. Then drench the lab in fuel.