Prologue The Last Mercy #2
"For the scars upon my flesh that were all thanks to your selfishness.
" My hand rises, almost of its own accord, to trace the faint ridge of scarring along my collarbone where the rocks caught me during the fall.
A memento I can't remove. A permanent record of the moment my twin sister decided I was expendable.
"I'll walk this savage path and reclaim the empire you sought to ruin. The one I deserved to claim."
I straighten, pulling away from the wreckage of her face, from that single tear now tracking a slow path through the grime and dried blood on her cheek.
"And no matter the challenge ahead that I'll need to fulfill, the satisfaction of your end will push me onward to reclaim everything I wholeheartedly deserved."
She can't speak.
Can't form words without a tongue, can't produce sound without a voice box that's been rendered permanently nonfunctional.
But that eye—that single, defiant, terrified eye—screams everything her mouth no longer can.
Regret. Rage. A desperate, animal plea for clemency that she never once extended to me when she watched me go over that cliff edge with nothing but gravity and betrayal to break my fall.
Did you feel this?
When you pushed me?
Did you watch me fall and feel nothing, the way I feel nothing now?
Or did you feel relief?
Is that worse?
I rise to my full height and stare at her one final time.
My sister.
My twin.
The other half of a pair that was never meant to be divided but was shattered anyway by ambition and jealousy and a world that told us there could only be one.
There can only be one.
And it was always supposed to be me.
I lift my leg.
The kick connects with her midsection—solid, forceful, final.
The impact reverberates through my boot and up into my shin, and the chair tips backward with a metallic shriek against the concrete slab.
For one frozen heartbeat, it teeters on the edge, balanced between the cliff and the void, between existence and oblivion.
No sound comes from Vivian.
Not a gasp. Not a moan. Not even the faintest exhalation of air being forced from damaged lungs.
Silent.
The way the world thought I was when she pushed me.
The chair goes over.
I turn away before the descent is complete, my boots pivoting on stone with military precision.
I don't need to watch. I've replayed this moment so many times in my mind—during rehabilitation, during the months of learning to walk again, during every night I spent in safe houses with nothing but my rage and the phantom pain in my spine for company—that the reality of it is almost anticlimactic.
Almost.
Instead, I listen.
The wind carries the sound upward like a grotesque offering—the whistle of displaced air as the chair and its passenger accelerate through empty space, followed by the distant, wet crack of a body meeting rock.
Then the secondary impact as the ocean swallows what the cliff didn't destroy, the waves accepting their tribute with the same cold indifference they've shown to every broken thing that's ever been delivered to them.
It's done.
It's really done.
The silence that follows is absolute. Even the wind seems to pause, as if the world itself is holding its breath, waiting to see what comes next in a story that just lost its villain.
Except we both know the villain was never really her.
It was what this world made us.
What the Sinclair name demanded we become.
I reach into the inner pocket of my black jacket with steady hands and extract a cigarette—a habit I picked up during those early days of recovery, when the pain was so constant and so consuming that I needed something—anything—to anchor my focus to a single, controllable point.
The lighter takes two flicks to catch, the flame casting a brief, warm glow across my gloved fingers before I bring the cigarette to my lips.
I inhale.
Deep.
The smoke fills my lungs with familiar, acrid warmth, and I hold it there for a count of five before releasing it in a slow, controlled stream that the wind immediately tears apart and scatters toward the sea.
The nicotine settles into my bloodstream like an old friend—not comforting, exactly, but present.
Reliable. Consistent in a way that nothing else in my existence has been.
People will ask what happened to Vivian Sinclair.
They'll ask what happened to the woman pretending to be Victoria.
And the answer will be the same thing that happened to the real Victoria.
A tragic accident.
Case closed.
I look up at the sky.
The first droplet of rain lands on my cheek—a single, cold point of contact that traces a path down to my jaw like a tear I refuse to shed. The clouds have darkened since I arrived, their bellies heavy and low, pressing down on the world with the weight of everything that's about to be released.
Rain.
Of course it rains now.
Even the sky knows how to be dramatic.
More droplets follow—scattered at first, tentative, as though the storm is testing the waters before committing. They darken the stone beneath my boots, darken the shoulders of my jacket, darken the ash of my cigarette until I have to shield it with my cupped hand to keep it lit.
I close my eyes.
And for the first time in seventy-two hours—or maybe three years, or maybe my entire life—I breathe without purpose. Without agenda. Without calculating my next move or suppressing the correct emotion or performing the version of Victoria Sinclair that the situation requires.
I just breathe.
In.
Out.
The rain falls harder.
"This is the beginning of my final outcry."
The words leave my lips wrapped in smoke, offered to the storm like a prayer spoken in a language only the broken understand. They don't echo. Don't carry. Don't reverberate off the cliff walls or announce themselves to anyone or anything that might care.
They simply exist.
And then the rain takes them too.
Revenge was supposed to set me free.
Instead, it left me hollow.
A girl standing on a cliff with blood under her nails and nothing in her chest, watching the sky open up as if the heavens themselves are trying to wash away what she's done.
But some stains don't come clean.
And some ghosts refuse to stay buried.
I take another drag, letting the ember burn close to my fingers as the rain intensifies. Somewhere behind me, the ocean continues its assault on the rocks below, grinding bone and metal and chair into nothing with the same patience it uses to erode everything else.
There is only one path left.
Savage Knot. The heart of Knot Academy. The richest sector, the cruelest hierarchy, where Omegas are currency and packs are forged from violence, wealth, and absolute control.
If I survive until the Masquerade Ball, I'll be chosen by the most elite pack in existence and walk out of Knot Academy forever.
Freedom.
Or death.
At this point, I'm not sure which one I'm hoping for.
I flick the cigarette over the cliff—a final companion sent to join the wreckage below—and turn my back on the ocean, the rocks, the rain, and the ghost of the sister I just murdered.
My name is Victoria Sinclair.
Twin. Survivor. Monster.
And this story isn't over.
It's just beginning.