Chapter 39
Raven
Time stretches like taffy in this windowless prison, each second marked by the relentless dripping of unseen water.
Even though my voice is nothing more than a hoarse whisper by now, I keep trying to scream for help. My wrists are slick with blood, raw from fighting against the handcuffs, but I keep pulling anyway.
What else can I do? Sit here and wait for whatever Finn has planned? Not fucking likely.
I’m on my ninth—or maybe nineteenth—attempt to dislocate my thumb when the door creaks open, and my heart slams against my ribs hard enough to bruise.
I tense, preparing myself for Finn’s return, for whatever sick game he’s playing. But it’s not Finn who steps through the doorway.
“Raven? Jesus Christ,” Adam Kearney whispers, his face draining of color as he takes in the sight of me chained to the table. His eyes, so similar to his brother’s yet so fundamentally different, widen with genuine horror.
“Adam?” I croak, disbelief making my voice catch. Is this a trick? Another layer of Finn’s twisted plan?
“Oh, my God, Raven.” He rushes toward me, hands trembling as he pulls out a set of keys from his pocket. “What the hell… who did this to you?”
“Your brother,” I spit, watching his face for any sign of deception. “Finn grabbed me outside the hospital, drugged me, and chained me up here like a fucking animal.”
Adam’s hands shake so badly he drops the keys, cursing as he fumbles to retrieve them from the concrete floor. “No, no, no. This can’t be happening.” He finds what looks like the right key and tries to fit it into the lock on my handcuffs. “I swear to God, I didn’t know. I had no idea he would—”
“It didn’t work,” I say as he tries another key, the metal scraping against metal. “That one doesn’t fit.”
“Shit, sorry.” He tries a third key, then a fourth, muttering apologies with each failure. His anxiety is contagious, making my heart race even faster.
“What are you doing here, Adam?” I demand, not sure I should let my guard down just yet.
“I just… I knew something was wrong. Finn’s been acting strange for the last year or so. Secretive. Angry. But this…” He shakes his head, genuine distress written across his features.
Finally, the fifth key slides into the lock with a satisfying click. The handcuffs slide open, and I nearly sob with relief as blood rushes back into my hands, bringing pins and needles of pain.
“Hang on,” he grunts, tearing fabric from the sleeve of his shirt.
“Do you know where we are?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady. While he’s preoccupied doing that, I quickly pat the pocket where my knife should… yep, it’s still there. “How far from the city?”
“We’re in an old storage basement under one of our warehouses,” he replies as he finally gets a strip of fabric free. “Here.”
I take it from him and wrap it around my wrist as well as I possibly can, not speaking until he holds a second one that he secures around my other wrist.
“We’re on the east side, so only like twenty minutes from downtown,” he clarifies.
I frown. “How did you find me?”
Adam shakes his head. “I followed him when he said he was coming to check inventory. He’s been disappearing for hours lately, and I wanted to see what he was up to. I don’t know… something didn’t feel right.”
“We need to get out of here,” I insist, forcing my legs to cooperate as I stand. “Now. Before he comes back.”
“Of course. My car’s outside. I’ll take you straight to the hospital, and we can call the police from there. I don’t understand what’s happening, but—”
The door slams open with such force it bounces against the stone wall. Adam whirls around, pushing me slightly behind him in a protective gesture that’s as instinctive as it is futile.
Finn stands in the doorway, his face a mask of cold fury that transforms his familiar features into something alien and terrifying.
“I fucking warned you to stop following me,” he says, his voice unnervingly calm as he addresses his brother. There’s no emotion in it. No anger, no regret. Just a flat statement of fact.
Adam raises his hands, stepping forward. “Finn, what the hell are you doing? This is kidnapping. You can’t just—”
The gun appears in Finn’s hand like it was always there, an extension of his arm. “I warned you over and over,” he snarls. “But you never fucking listen to me.”
As soon as he says the last word, his finger pulls the trigger.
Pop!
Adam’s head snaps backward, a neat hole appearing in the center of his forehead. For a suspended moment, nothing happens. Adam remains standing, his expression frozen in surprise, a single drop of blood sliding down between his eyebrows like a grotesque third eye.
Then his knees buckle, and he crumples to the floor like a puppet with cut strings, the keys clattering beside him.
Warm wetness splatters across my face and chest—Adam’s blood, I realize with horror. My mind refuses to process what just happened, sticking like a broken record on the image of his body falling, falling, falling…
I don’t realize I’m screaming until I feel my vocal cords tear with the force of it, a primal sound that doesn’t even sound human to my own ears. The room tilts sideways, and my vision narrows to pinpricks of light surrounded by encroaching darkness.
Adam’s dead. Finn killed him. Shot him in the head right in front of me without a second of hesitation or a flicker of emotion.
His own brother.
Blood pools around Adam’s body, spreading across the concrete floor in a growing crimson circle that inches toward the table legs. The metallic smell fills the room, replacing the musty dampness with something far worse—the unmistakable stench of violent death.
I stare at Finn, unable to look away from the monster wearing a human face. His expression remains unchanged as he tucks the gun into his waistband, as casual as if he’s just completed some mundane task instead of murdering his own flesh and blood.
“You…” The word comes out as barely more than a breath. “You killed him.”
My stomach heaves, acid burning the back of my throat. This isn’t happening. This can’t be real. But the body on the floor tells a different story. The blood on my face is real. The monster standing before me with a gun and eyes like empty holes is real.
And I’m still here, trapped with him in this nightmare. As soon as that thought registers, I lunge toward the open door, adrenaline overriding everything else. For one heartbeat, one breath, freedom seems possible.
The narrow hallway visible beyond the doorframe, the sound of distant machinery offering proof of a world outside this blood-soaked room. Then Finn’s hands are on me, fingers digging into my arms with bruising force as he yanks me backward.
I fight, all nails and teeth and desperate strength, but it’s like struggling against a machine. There’s no give, no hesitation, just an implacable force dragging me back to that table.
“No! Let go of me!” I scream, twisting in his grip, my heel connecting with his shin. He doesn’t even flinch.
“Enough,” he says, the word sharp and cold as he shoves me back into the chair. My hip catches the metal edge of the table, pain blooming bright and hot along my side.
I watch in horror as he retrieves the handcuffs, heedless of the blood seeping toward his shoes. Adam’s blood. His brother’s blood. I keep seeing that neat hole appear in Adam’s forehead, the surprised look frozen on his face as he fell. I can’t stop shaking.
“You’re a monster,” I spit as Finn uses the handcuffs to secure me again. This time, he only cuffs one of my hands instead of both. But he tightens it further than before so the metal bites cruelly into my skin. “Your own brother—”
“He wasn’t my brother.” Finn fastens the second chain with brutal efficiency. “Not by blood.”
There’s something about the way he says it—flat and dismissive—that chills me more than his violence. Adam’s body lies just feet away, eyes still open, staring sightlessly at the ceiling while blood pools beneath his head like a grotesque halo.
Finn steps over him without a second glance. He pulls up the second chair, the legs scraping against concrete with a sound that sets my teeth on edge, and sits beside me.
The casual normality of the gesture makes my stomach churn and my panic rise from a casual million to at least a trillion.
“You know,” he begins conversationally, leaning back in the chair as if we have all the time in the world, “I’ve been planning this for a very long time.”
I stare at him, unable to reconcile this cold-eyed stranger with the professional I’ve been working with for weeks. Was any of it real? The client meetings, the approvals, the casual chats about pyrotechnics and marketing?
“Planning what?” I manage, voice hoarse from screaming. “Kidnapping me? Murdering your family?”
“My family,” he repeats, a bitter smile twisting his lips. “That’s the interesting part, Raven. The Kearneys weren’t my blood. They were just… placeholders. Temporary guardians who raised a wolf among sheep.”
He leans forward, his eyes boring into mine with unsettling intensity.
“My real name, the one I was given at birth, is Salvador Greco.”
The name stirs something inside me. Like a memory that wants to break free from the recesses of my mind. “Fascinating,” I say, aiming to sound aloof, but my abused throat makes it come out like a croak.
Finn—no, Salvador—smiles, the expression never reaching his eyes. “Look at you trying so hard to pretend you haven’t heard that name before.”
“Who’s pretending?” I volley. “I’ve never heard your name before outside of teen vamp dramas. And those Salvatores were—”
“No,” he interrupts me sharply. “Not Salvatore. Salvador.” He enunciates the two names slowly. “And I don’t expect you’ve heard my first name. It’s my last name that’s ringing a bell, isn’t it, Raven?”
Greco… Greco… and then it hits me like a physical blow. Greco. The Sicilian family that once ruled Cleveland before the Russos took over. The same family that…