Knotted by the Psychopath (Knotted By Cupid #2)

Chapter 1 A Dark Valentine

Chapter one

A Dark Valentine

Listening Companion:

Bohren it was a throne.

But what was the greater game?

That question was the professional reason I was here.

The real reason was darker, and I'd never admitted it to anyone.

I was obsessed with Rook

Knew way more about him than anyone.

Rook’s father was an Alpha. Big, loud, biologically dominant—and weak. He drank. He gambled. When he lost money, he took it out on his family.

By the time Rook was five, he’d already been to the hospital more than once. Broken arm. Split lip. Bruises doctors learned not to question.

His mother went a lot too—fractured ribs, concussions, injuries explained away as falls.

Everyone knew.

No one stopped it.

His father liked to beat him with a deck of playing cards. He called it teaching.

Later, Rook grew up and built his crew, naming them the Broken Court.

It was all other damaged people categorized in the four sections of a deck of cards—diamonds, clubs, spades, and hearts.

The diamonds earned the money to fund his mission of madness.

The clubs were the muscle. They helped him kill.

The spades staged the bodies or got rid of them.

And the hearts were the bunch that did the day-to-day things—cooking, cleaning, etc.

What will happen when I meet him?

I'd interviewed other serial killers in maximum security prisons. I'd sat across from men who had done unspeakable things and kept my voice steady, my hands still, my face professionally neutral.

This was different.

Those men had been contained. Finished. Their stories already written, their violence safely in the past tense.

Rook's story was still being told.

And I had the terrible feeling I was about to become a chapter in it.

Stay calm.

We entered Block D and I spotted a member of the Broken Court.

A club.

He had the symbol branded onto his forehead.

When he saw me, his whole body went rigid. Then he started bouncing—actually bouncing, like a child who'd been promised a present, and then his palms started slapping against the glass in a frantic rhythm. “She’s here!! She’s here!!”

I tensed.

My clinical mind tried to categorize it—hypomania, religious delusion, shared psychosis—but my body wasn't listening to my mind. My body wanted to run. My body remembered, on some cellular level, what it meant to be prey.

The club then began laughing and crying at the same time. "Glory to Rook! She’s here!"

I kept walking.

My hands had started to shake.

The next cell held a Diamond—a massive gamma with hands like dinner plates.