Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
REMI
D enny’s Diner looked like it had seen better decades. Paint peeled from the weathered wooden exterior, curling like dead leaves. Above the entrance, a neon purple sign flickered erratically, missing an N, so it read De_ny’s instead.
The bell above the door jangled as I stepped inside. Rain running in rivulets down my face, soaking into my hoodie. Small puddles pooled around my boots on the faded black-and-white checkered floor.
The place smelled like stale coffee and grease—comforting in a way I didn’t expect.
It wasn’t empty, but it was close. A couple of men sat at the counter, hands curled around steaming mugs. Thick beards. Dirty jeans. Flannel jackets. Either passing through or lying low, trying to disappear into the cracks of the world.
In the far booth, a group of college kids picked at baskets of fries, their laughter too loud for the quiet space. The hum of life vibrated through this place, low and steady.
“Take a seat, darlin’. I’ll be over in a minute.”
The woman behind the counter didn’t even glance my way. Gray hair twisted into a messy bun and her grease-stained apron that looked like it used to be white had the Denny’s logo across her chest. She fit the diner like she’d always been here.
I shrugged, heading for the booth in the far corner—the one where an overhead light had burned out, leaving it cloaked in shadow. It felt safer there, out of sight.
The red leather was cracked and split at the seams, but it was dry. I slid into the seat, my weight deflating the cushion beneath me. Shrugging off my soaked jacket, I draped it over the opposite bench and then pulled my sketchbook from my bag.
The plastic menu was laminated to the tabletop, edges curling with age. The selection wasn’t bad, typical greasy diner food.
The thought of food made my stomach roll. I hadn’t eaten since last night, not the slightest bit hungry, but I knew I needed to eat. I just… I had to at least try.
“What can I get ya, darlin’?”
I looked up.
The waitress smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners. “You’re new.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“You here for Deveraux? Heard it’s good.”
“Yeah.” That had been the plan. Before everything fell apart. Before I realized that I had nowhere to stay. The scholarship covered tuition but not food. Not a roof over my head. The fifty bucks in my pocket wouldn’t last long. I’d need a job—fast.
“Do you need a minute?”
I blinked, confused. “What?”
Her lips twitched. “To order, honey.”
“Oh.” My face warmed. “Uh… coffee and cheesy fries.”
“Great choice, hun.”
She held out her hand. “I’m Doll.”
I hesitated. I wasn’t a fan of physical contact. People were too hot and their skin too soft. Touch repelled me. Still, I forced my hand into hers for the briefest shake before retreating.
“I’ll bring it over in a sec,” she said, either not noticing or not commenting on my discomfort. “If you need anything, let me know.”
“Sure.”
The shadows felt heavier as she walked away. They felt like home.
I flipped open my sketchbook to a blank page—crisp white, like fresh bone stripped of flesh. My pencil hovered for a moment before my gaze wandered across the diner, taking in the shifting crowd.
The energy had changed. The group on the other side of the diner had grown.
The latest additions were not college kids. They sat like kings in their own space, backs to the walls, eyes tracking movement like hunters. Men in their mid to late twenties, but the weight they carried aged them beyond their years. Something clung to them—a darkness, an aura of violence and control that made the others give them a wide berth.
They weren’t just passing through. That’s when I noticed the discarded newspaper on the table across from me. I snatched it up, flipping it open in search of rental listings or shelters—anything that could tell me where I’d be sleeping tonight. But it was the bold headline that caught my attention:
WHISPERS OF WAR: DEMARCO VS. GALLO—WHO WILL FALL FIRST?
What the hell was that supposed to mean? Everyone knew cities thrived on corruption, built on a web of lies so thick it was impossible to untangle. But this?
A feud between influential families?
Something darker?
Was the underworld on the verge of war?
Would the streets run red until only one side remained standing? Or was it a case of mutually assured destruction? Images flicked through my mind like a twisted fantasy of darkness. Hiding in the shadows, watching death and destruction first hand. Guns or blades?
A clatter of porcelain snapped me from my thoughts. “I wouldn’t pay too much attention to that,” Doll said, setting my coffee and fries down beside the paper.
I glanced up. “Do you know anything about it?”
She hesitated for half a second too long. “There’s not much to say,” she murmured. “Just don’t get lost in the shadows.”
“Huh?”
She shook her head, brushing it aside. Subject closed. “I got a text from Arti,” she said instead. “Told me you were coming by. Said you’re looking for a room?”
“Something like that.”
Doll’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Brielle is a selfish bitch.” She placed a hand over her chest. “You didn’t hear that from me, but it’s better to stay away from her and her family.”
I scoffed. “Kinda hard when she’s my aunt.”
Her eyes darkened. “Family isn’t defined by blood, kid.”
I tipped my head slightly, watching her. This was the longest conversation I’d had with anyone in months.
“Or at least, it doesn’t have to be,” she continued. “Find your people. Your person. Then you’ll know what family truly is.”
She glanced toward the group of men at the far end of the diner, something unreadable flickering across her face.
“But take my word for it,” she muttered. “These streets aren’t safe anymore.”
I exhaled slowly. “Thanks, but I have nowhere to go.”
“There’s a shelter down on Clayburn Avenue. If they have space, they’re open until midnight.”
She grabbed a napkin and scribbled out a rough map. “Words can be forgotten,” she said. “Ask for Tilly.”
Before I could say anything else, she hurried back toward the kitchen—Where the cook was losing his shit in the kitchen over a table of high schoolers inhaling their weight in fries.
By the time I looked up, the diner had transformed. What had been nearly deserted was now buzzing with life—the heartbeat of the city thrumming between these walls. The diversity was staggering.
College kids. Strangers on the run. Workers just trying to make it through another night to rinse and repeat the following day. The noise rose like a wave, crashing over me, pressing against my ribs.
I wasn’t leaving anytime soon—not with the rain lashing down in thick sheets against the sidewalk. The streets beyond the glass were swallowed by darkness, and I wondered...
What secrets did they hold? Did the wind whisper the city’s nightmares to those who knew how to listen?
My pencil spun between my fingers, a quiet rhythm against the chaos in my mind. Blood. Bone. The fragility of life.
People mistook life for power, but power wasn’t in living—it was in taking. A bullet. A blade. A whisper of poison in the bloodstream. Life could be snuffed out in a breath, stolen before a scream could form. That was real power. To wield it. To control it. To decide.
I wondered what that kind of power felt like.
Would it be a slow burn, seeping into your veins, intoxicating? Or would it be instant, a spark of adrenaline, a rush so consuming it became impossible to stop?
The world faded as my pencil scratched across the page. Lines and shadows formed vertebrae, each delicate curve stretching into an exposed spine. Bone by bone, the skeleton took shape. Ribs jutted out, arching across the thick white paper, brittle yet unyielding as they formed from nothing.
Vines sprouted from the broken ground. They twisted between the bones, curling like hungry fingers, pulling the skeleton downward—back into the earth, back into the abyss. Like hands from hell, clawing to reclaim what had been lost.
There was beauty in death. A purity that life smothered and twisted, distorting it into something it was never meant to be.
The bones told a story, a struggle that reality lied to you about. The sharp lines carved into them, the fusion of the bone plates, were like little bread crumbs that bore the brutal truth. You could learn so much from them if only you took the time to look closely and piece them all together.
“That’s not something you see every day.”
My pencil halted mid-stroke. A slow, creeping sensation of awareness trickled down my spine. His voice was a rasp of gravel, sliding over me like a blade against my skin. I looked up, locking onto dark green eyes that held too many secrets. Even lost in shadow, they seemed to see me in a way no one ever had.
My heart skipped—not in fear, not exactly. Intrigue, maybe?
“Or maybe it is…?”
There was something in the way he said it, an unspoken weight behind the words. A test. A challenge. A flicker of amusement ghosted across his features, but his stare remained steady, searching. The diner had quieted, all waiting to see what would happen next.
Without breaking eye contact, he reached out. A single tattooed finger dragged my sketchbook across the table, slow and deliberate. He turned it toward himself, releasing me from the intensity of his gaze—but not from its effect.
“You like art?”
“You don’t?” I shot back, my voice steadier than I expected.
His mouth curved, something unreadable in his expression as he settled into the opposite side of the booth. When he finally looked up again, the dim light caught in his eyes—green laced with flecks of metallic gold. Hypnotic. Dangerous.
“Certain types.”
A cryptic answer. A warning? An invitation?
His attention dropped back to my sketch. I watched as his fingers traced the lines—not touching, just hovering—a breath away from the penciled ribs and twisting vines. The way he studied it was almost reverent, like he understood the darkness woven between the lines.
Like he recognized it.
Now that he was distracted, I took my chance to observe him in return. Jet-black hair, a close fade shaved at the sides, the outline of a tattoo barely visible beneath. The longer strands on top were wild, like he’d spent hours running his fingers through them in frustration. Stubble framed a sharp jaw, lips that looked too soft for someone so unnerving. A silver ring pierced his nose, a delicate chain hanging from one ear with an inverted cross.
The contrast of sharp, masculine lines and something almost… sinisterly beautiful.
Tattoos crawled up his hands and disappeared beneath the sleeve of his black leather jacket, the fabric pulled back just enough to hint at more ink covering his arms. His left wrist was adorned with a silver chain, and the fingers of his right hand had thick rings on them. Adornment or armor?
“The force required to carve bone like that… mmm.”
I stiffened. Had I heard him right? He hadn’t meant to say it aloud, had he? It was more of a thought, slipping past his lips unbidden. His fingers flexed against the table, but he didn’t correct himself.
Instead, he asked, “Do you only draw?”
I hesitated. “What do you mean?”
He made a slow, deliberate gesture with his hand, the thick silver chain around his wrist catching the light. “Do you work with other… mediums? That’s the word, isn’t it?”
Something about the way he said it sent a shiver through me. “I take photographs, too.”
“Nothing… real?”
I shook my head, uneasy now. Instinct told me to take my sketchbook back, but when I reached for it, he held it in place with just a finger.
“I’m no sculptor.”
“That’s a shame,” he murmured, leaning back in his seat. “Nothing like the real thing.”
The real thing? He couldn’t mean actual bone, could he?
The thought burrowed under my skin, sinking its teeth into the deepest, darkest part of me—the part that had always wondered. How much pressure would it take to carve into bone without shattering it? How would it feel beneath my fingers? Would the blade vibrate up my arm as it sliced?
“Art takes many forms.”
His voice was velvet, but the edge beneath it was steel. He finally released my sketchbook, and I wasted no time closing it, tucking it safely into my bag. He didn’t stop me. Just watched.
“You’re new.”
“So I’m told.”
“You staying with family?”
I exhaled sharply, scrubbing a hand down my face. What was this—an interrogation? “No. My plans have changed.”
“So where then?”
“That’s a work in progress.”
A slow nod. He flexed his fingers again, drawing my attention to his rings. Thick. Heavy. Not just for decoration.
Doll appeared beside us, placing a to-go cup in front of him with a wary glance in my direction. She didn’t say a word. Just turned on her heel and left without looking back.
His chuckle was quiet. Hollow.
“I’m here to finish my degree at Devereux University,” I found myself saying, as if filling the silence would make it easier to breathe. “Forensic anthropology. Got a scholarship.”
Something flickered in his expression at that but was gone before I could name it.
He leaned back, settling into the seat like he owned it. Like he owned the room. And maybe he did, because the second he walked in, the diner had shifted. The space around us was different now.
“You know… this is my table. No one sits here.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed his drink, and my eyes followed the movement without thinking. My body reacted before my mind could catch up. Heat coiled low in my stomach, warming the blood in my veins.
Confusion rippled through me at my body’s reaction. I didn’t react like this to people. I could appreciate beauty across any gender—always had—but I’d never felt it like a spark against dry kindling before. Never like this.
He placed his cup on the table with a soft thud, his smirk curling slow and cruel. “You’re different.”
A statement. A realization? A warning or maybe a threat.
He didn’t wait for a response as he slipped out of his seat fluidly. Muscles coiling and bunching under the straining material of his jacket. A ripple passed through the diner, conversations fading in his wake as he sauntered to the door.
At the front, the table of men stood as he approached. Their movements were sharp, practiced. Not just deference but discipline. They flanked him, moving in sync as he stepped outside, and the night swallowed them whole as they melted into the shadows.
With them gone, the silent moment shattered. Air rushed back into the room, but the weight of their absence lingered. Then—I felt it. A subtle but undeniable shift. Every gaze turned in my direction as they studied me like an exhibition. Recognition or fear flickered across their faces. Faces that had smiled at me before now judged me.
I was no longer just the boy in the dark corner. No longer invisible. Something had changed. They might not have understood why, but instinctively, unconsciously—they recoiled.
Marked me as an outsider, someone whom they should keep their distance from. As one, they built their walls up and turned back to their private conversations.
“Top-up?” Doll’s voice cut through the tension, her coffee pot poised.
I nodded. “Sure.”
As she poured, her voice dropped to a whisper, like she was sharing a secret rather than a warning. “Be careful.”
I raised a brow.
“He’s not like everyone else.”
I tilted my head. “Neither am I.” The words left my mouth before I had time to process them.
Doll’s expression flickered—understanding? Concern? She reached out, her fingers barely grazing the air near my shoulder. I flinched.
She hesitated, then pulled back. But her voice hardened. “Maybe not. But you’re not like him.” Something in her tone tickled the back of my mind; it was more than caution. Conviction maybe? A warning.
Before I could press her for more, I exhaled, mentally exhausted. “Mind if I stay and draw?”
She paused, and all I could hear was the sound of my heart beating in my ears. Her features smoothed, the practiced ease returning along with the smile on her lips. “’Course, darlin’.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my wallet for the cash to pay—I didn’t have much— but she waved me off.
“On the house. Something tells me you need it more than I do.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but she silenced me before I could.
“You don’t mind loading the dumpsters for me at the end of the night, that is?”
A trade. That was fair. “Of course not.”
Satisfied, she moved through the diner, slipping back into routine—orders taken, drinks refilled. The world around me settled, falling back into rhythm.
I was quickly forgotten by the other patrons as I disappeared back into my own world. I pulled my sketchbook free and let the pencil glide over paper, coaxing the image to life—fractured bone, splintered under pressure. Swirling shadows, curling into the vines, stretching from the page as if they could reach out and pull you in.
I pressed harder, the graphite deepening, darkening. Everything else faded as I added flecks of blood glistening in the unseen light. There was only art and a feeling that, somehow, the shadows were watching.