Chapter 4
KADE
This night should’ve been over already.
That’s my fucking problem.
It should’ve ended the way the good ones do—clean, fast, and quiet.
No noise. No scene. We should’ve already been back on our fucking bikes, headed back to the house, getting ready to spend another day blending into society like we actually belong there.
Like we don’t spend our nights hunting and killing girls who grab our attention.
It should've been easy.
I like the easy kills.
They may not be as “fun.” That’s Kross’s word.
He’s the type who gets off on this shit.
Gets a little extra thrill out of the unexpected.
He’d laugh like he’s the only person in the world who understands the joke.
But the ones that go exactly as planned, those are the ones I like because they’re simple.
Low risk. You get in, you get it done, and you’re gone before anyone knows anything even fucking happened.
That’s how you don’t get caught. How you keep your face off the eleven o’clock news.
You keep a low profile, you don’t make it a game, and you sure as fuck don’t chase a feeling.
You finish it.
Little miss track star should’ve been that. Quick, clean and then fucking finished.
By morning, it should’ve just been another night filed away—another body that wouldn’t be traced to us, and a reminder of how easy it is to get away with murder when you don’t fuck around.
Instead, I’m standing in the middle of a warehouse full of sweaty doped up idiots and bass so fucking loud my skull hurts.
I’ll give it to her though, bitch could fucking run, and she did. Of course she fucking did. They always do.
People like to pretend it’s bravery or desperation, but it’s just reflex.
Legs moving before the brain catches up.
Speed feels powerful right up until it doesn’t mean shit.
The chase doesn’t do anything for me. Control does.
You let them burn themselves out, watch the exits disappear, then you end it. Clean. Efficient. Over.
I expect the panic. The bargaining. The moment their breathing goes wrong and their eyes finally understand the math. Everybody gets there eventually, no matter how special they think they are.
She fought first. Tried to twist away. Tried to get clever. Standard bullshit. Noise. It all funnels to the same place in the end.
Unlike my brother, I don’t sit around replaying it afterward.
I don’t romanticize it or turn it into some fucked-up story I tell myself to feel something.
For me, the act is a release—short, contained, necessary.
It shuts my head up. Narrows the world down to one problem with one solution.
I’m good at it, and I don’t lie to myself about that.
What I actually enjoy is what comes next.
The quiet. The cleanup. Making sure nothing points back to us. No witnesses suddenly growing balls. No evidence waiting for some bored asshole to stumble across it. I like watching chaos get folded back into order and walking away like nothing ever fucking happened.
Invisible, and untouched. That’s the fucking payoff.
That’s how nights are supposed to go.
Kross lives for the mess in the middle—the reactions, the uncertainty, the way people fall apart when the rules stop protecting them. He stretches moments until they bleed, and I’ve spent most of my life making sure his impulses don’t turn into sirens and mugshots.
It works. It’s always worked. We stay breathing. We stay ghosts.
Then Aeri happened.
Which pisses me off almost as much as the rest of this goddamn night.
A witness. A variable. A goddamn complication with a mouth, a pulse, and a brain that didn’t do what it was supposed to do. She saw enough to cause panic in any normal person, and instead of breaking, she fucking laughed.
It wasn’t nerves, or shock either. Just this calm, entertained little laugh like she was watching something unfold instead of standing in the middle of it.
Like she wasn’t staring at two masked men with fresh blood still slick on their hands, but something interesting she hadn’t decided how to respond to yet.
That’s where it started to get under my skin.
Because then she had the balls to push it. Held eye contact longer than anyone ever has. Smiled like she knew exactly how far she could go and decided to step past it anyway. Like she understood the danger and chose to poke at it just to see what would happen.
I felt it immediately. The irritation flaring hot and sharp, my focus snapping tight, and my body going still in that way it does when something stops being theoretical.
When instinct clocks a problem before logic catches up.
My pulse kicked up despite myself, and that pissed me off almost as much as her grin did.
She wasn’t fucking scared, no, she was fucking daring us.
I hate how much attention that pulled. How my brain kept circling back to her like she’d tripped some wire she had no business touching. She didn’t act like prey. She stepped into it like she wanted the heat and the chase was part of the appeal.
Unlike miss track star, when she ran, she ran the way someone runs when they want to be followed.
And because my brother can’t let go once something gets under his skin, and because I’m not about to let some fearless, mouthy girl crack open everything I’ve spent years keeping contained, we followed.
Not because she won.
Because leaving it there felt worse.
My eyes lock with the piece of shit standing toe to toe with me through the mask. I should’ve known he wouldn’t fucking walk away.
Mark, is already half-lit, grin sloppy, drink sloshing in his hand like he thinks he’s earned the right to be loud.
He clocks the mask and size, and despite the height I have on him, he’s got enough liquor flowing through him to think he stands a fucking chance of taking me on.
That confidence lasts about three seconds.
“Bitch doesn't know what she’s talking about,” he says, laughing like he’s sharing a joke. “She’s just pissed she couldn't keep a guy like me entertained. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a good fuck. Real enthusiastic. But trust me, that gets boring quick. Girls like her always do.”
Something in my chest goes cold.
He keeps going, because men like him mistake silence for permission.
“All that attitude? Just a phase. She plays dangerous, acts like she’s special, but she’ll spread them pretty legs easy enough once you get her high.” He shrugs. “You’ll see. You’ll get bored too buddy.”
I lean down until we’re eye level, slow enough that he has to feel it. Has to look up at me. I don’t rush. I want this to sink in.
“What it sounds like,” I say quietly, flat as concrete, “is that you couldn’t keep your fucking dick in your pants, and she clocked you for exactly what you are.”
His jaw tightens.
“So don’t stand here and run your mouth like she’s the problem,” I continue, voice dropping. “Whatever you two had is dead. You killed it. And with it, you lost every right you think you had. Now, you don’t get to touch her, to talk to her, to even say her name out loud.”
I lean a fraction closer, just enough.
“You don’t get opinions. You don’t get access. And if I hear you disrespect her again,” I add calmly, “I won’t warn you twice.”
I hold his gaze, unblinking.
“Walk away. Now. And consider it the only mercy you’re getting tonight.”
He snorts, chin tipping up as he looks me over like I’m something he can dismiss.
“What, you her new babysitter?” His eyes drag past me, scanning the crowd like he’s daring me to block his line of sight, like he still thinks this is a game he’s allowed to play.
“You gonna stand there all night pretending your little mask will scare me?”
He steps closer, crowd noise swallowing the space between us, his grin sharp and ugly, fueled by booze and misplaced confidence. “You don’t know shit about her. Or me. So maybe mind your fucking business.”
That’s when it hits me. Not anger, just certainty.
I don’t react at first. I let the silence stretch long enough that his words have nowhere to go, let him sit in it and realize he’s the only one talking. When I finally speak, my voice stays even, calm in a way that doesn’t invite debate.
“Let me repeat myself, because clearly, you’re too fucking dense to understand simple instructions the first time they’re given. You don’t get to talk about her,” I tell him. “You don’t get to think about her. And you sure as fuck don’t get anywhere near her again. Have I made myself clear?”
He laughs, loud and brittle, trying to pull attention back onto himself like that will save him. “Or what?” he says, jabbing a finger toward my chest, “You and your little cupid buddy gonna do something about it?”
I let him finish. Let him enjoy the sound of his own bitchy voice for another second.
Then I reach up and pull the mask off over my head.
The bass keeps pounding. Lights keep flashing.
Bodies keep grinding past us like nothing has changed.
But Mark’s face does. The grin dies halfway, his eyes dragging over my features as his brain scrambles to recalibrate.
This isn’t costume confidence or party bullshit anymore.
This is a man who doesn’t need noise to be dangerous.
I lean down until we’re eye level, slow enough that he has time to process it.
The tattoos across my face are close now—ink he can’t pretend he imagined.
The weight of my stare, flat and unimpressed, no anger to soften it.
No smile to misread. Just the kind of calm that only comes from someone who’s already decided how this ends.
“That’s it,” I say quietly. “Look at me, Mark.”
And he does. Because now he knows this isn’t a game he wandered into drunk and loud. He didn’t just run his mouth—he put his hands and his ego in front of the wrong man, in the wrong place, on a night that was already primed to go bad.