Chapter 9
Selene
My apartment feels like a stranger's home when I finally return from the office.
Everything is exactly as I left it this morning—coffee cup in the sink, laptop still open on the counter, the shattered wine glass I never cleaned up from last night.
But I'm different now.
The woman who lived here yesterday was naive enough to believe in fairy tales.
The woman standing here now knows she's been sleeping with the villain.
I set my purse down with hands that want to shake and catch my reflection in the hallway mirror.
The diamond collar glints at my throat, beautiful and damning.
For over a year, I've worn it with pride, never taking it off even to shower.
His mark of ownership. His claim on me.
This collar gave me the motivation to transform myself, and now it feels like a chain.
I reach up to unclasp it, needing it off my skin, off my body, away from everything that makes me his.
But my fingers find only smooth metal and gemstones.
No clasp. No opening mechanism.
Because it locks. Of course it fucking locks.
The symbolism hits me like a punch to my gut.
I've been his prisoner this entire time, wearing his collar like a dog, marked as property without even realizing it.
The key is probably in his bedroom, in his safe, somewhere I can't reach without begging him for freedom.
I might laugh if I weren't so close to screaming.
I stumble to the kitchen, pour myself a glass of wine with shaking hands, take one sip, and immediately pour it down the sink.
My stomach can't handle alcohol right now.
Can't handle food, either, judging by the way it lurches when I even think about eating.
The collar feels tighter with each breath, like it's constricting around my throat.
A physical reminder that I belong to a murderer.
That every kiss, every touch, every whispered endearment was contaminated by blood.
My parents' blood.
I grip the kitchen counter until my knuckles turn white, fighting another wave of nausea.
Hours ago, I woke up in the arms of the man I love; tonight I'm planning his destruction.
The transformation should feel empowering. Instead, it feels like I’m dying.
But sometimes you have to die to become something else.
Something stronger, something capable of justice.
The box of my father's files sits in my bedroom closet like a shrine to the dead.
I've kept everything from his study—every note, every photograph, every piece of evidence he was building for his RICO case.
The police returned most of it after the investigation stalled, claiming lack of evidence and dead leads.
I've hoarded it like a grieving child clinging to toys that smell like a lost parent.
Tonight, it might save my life. Or end it.
I spread everything across my living room floor—police reports with details that still make me sick, autopsy photos I can barely look at without seeing their faces superimposed over the clinical documentation, my father's meticulous handwritten notes in the margins of legal documents.
His handwriting, neat and precise, documenting every piece of evidence he'd gathered against organized crime in the city.
One name appears over and over, circled in red ink: Wolfe.
My hands tremble as I pick up a legal pad covered in his writing.
At the top, underlined three times: Cassius Wolfe—priority target.
Below that, a timeline that makes my blood run cold.
Dates, locations, criminal activities.
Murders disguised as accidents.
Judges who refused cooperation and turned up dead.
Witnesses who disappeared before they could testify.
And at the bottom, in my father's careful script:
C. Wolfe has assumed increasing control of the organization following his father's retirement. Extremely dangerous. Has been murdering witnesses and potential threats to operation. Judges Romano and Kowalski likely targeted for refusing cooperation. I may be next.
I may be next.
He knew. My father knew Cassius was coming for him.
He knew he was living on borrowed time, yet he kept investigating, kept building his case, kept fighting even when he understood the cost.
I run my fingers over his words, these final thoughts of a doomed man.
Did he think about me in those last weeks?
Did he consider what would happen to his sixteen-year-old daughter when the monster finally came calling?
With trembling fingers, I flip through more pages.
Bank records showing massive amounts of money flowing through Wolfe-controlled businesses.
Photographs taken with long-range lenses of meetings in dark alleys, handshakes between criminals and city officials.
Witness statements from people too scared to testify but brave enough to speak off the record.
And there, paper-clipped to a surveillance report with a red "PRIORITY" stamp, is a photograph that makes my blood freeze.
It's grainy, taken at night with what must have been a powerful telephoto lens, but unmistakable.
A tall figure in expensive clothes entering the back door of what the report identifies as Judge Romano's residence.
The timestamp shows February 3rd—eleven years ago, just hours before Judge Romano was found dead in his study.
But now that I know what to look for, I can see him clearly.
The height, the build, the predatory way he moves through the darkness.
It's Cassius. Unmistakably, undeniably Cassius.
My father had been building a pattern.
Judge Romano. Judge Kowalski, and then it would have been him.
This photo proves that my parents' murder wasn't an isolated incident—it was part of an elimination of judges who wouldn't cooperate with the Wolfe family business.
The notation at the bottom of the surveillance report, written in the detective's careful script, confirms what I already know:
Suspect observed entering via rear access at 11:23 p.m. Judge Romano's body discovered the following morning. No signs of forced entry.
He had a key, or knew how to get in.
Just like he probably knew exactly how to get into our house.
I sink onto my couch, staring at the photograph until the edges blur with tears I refuse to shed.
All this time, I thought the masked figure from my nightmares was some faceless monster, a boogeyman created by trauma and fear.
But he was real.
He had a name, a face, a life.
A body I've worshipped with my mouth and hands and desperate need.
The memories flood back now that I've stopped fighting them.
Details I'd repressed, pushed down into the dark corners of my mind where they couldn't hurt me anymore.
The killer's height—I remembered looking up at him from my hiding spot in the panic room, how he seemed to fill the doorway like some dark angel of death.
His build—lean but powerful, moving with the deadly grace of a predator who's never encountered anything he couldn't kill.
Exactly like Cassius moves through Hell, through his empire, through my body with that same lethal confidence.
His presence—even through the security cameras, I could feel the violence radiating from him like heat from a forge.
The same energy that makes everyone in Hell step aside when Cassius walks past.
The same aura that drew me to him like a moth to flame.
And his voice. God, his fucking voice.
I close my eyes and let the memory surface fully, no matter how much it hurts.
The killer had spoken to my father, just a few words before the gunshots that changed everything.
Through the panic room's speakers, distorted by fear and the poor audio quality, I'd heard, "You should have taken the money."
The same voice that whispers endearments in my ear during our most intimate moments.
The same voice that commands my submission in Hell.
The same voice that told me he loved me last night while his hands worshipped the body of his victims' daughter.
The same voice that's been lying to me every second of every day since we met.
My body had recognized him even when my mind refused to accept the truth.
That's why I was drawn to him so instantly at Purgatory, why I felt that immediate, inexplicable connection that made no rational sense.
Why something about him always felt familiar, like coming home to a place I'd never been but somehow knew by heart.
Because I had been there.
In the worst moment of my life, he was there, taking everything from me before I even knew it was his to take.
The sixteen-year-old version of me hiding in that panic room didn’t know his name or his face. But it carved a groove in me, and he spent years ensuring that when we finally met, I’d fall right into it.
I grab my phone with shaking hands, scroll to Michelle's number, then stop.
What would I tell her?
That I've been fucking the man who killed my parents?
The conversation plays out in my head:
Michelle, remember that research you did for me? Well, it turns out I've been sleeping with a serial killer. Oh, and he murdered my parents. Small world, right?
I'd lose everything.
My career, my reputation, any chance at a normal life.
I'd be seen as either a victim too stupid to recognize her own abuser, or an accomplice who helped him evade justice for years.
Neither option offers a future worth living.
I consider calling Emilia, but the thought makes me physically sick.
Sweet, innocent Emilia who still believes in justice and happy endings and the power of good to triumph over evil.
She'd try to save me, try to fix this, try to convince me to go to the police and trust the system.
The same system that buried my father's investigation.
The same system that let his killer walk free for years while I fell in love with him and begged him to hurt me.
The same system that would use me as bait to catch him, then discard me when the case was closed.
I start to dial the FBI tip line three times, hanging up each time before it connects.
What exactly would I report?
That I have evidence linking my lover to a nine-year-old murder?
They'd want to know how I got the evidence, why I kept it, what my relationship is to the suspect.
And then they'd want to use me.