Chapter 2
Seraphina
The morning after the gala always feels worse—the makeup scrubbed away, the mask still clinging to my skin like a stain I can’t wash off. The mask of opulence falling away the moment the sun rises.
Gone are the sequins and soft smiles. In their place: a sleek black blouse, tailored slacks, and a pair of low heels sharp enough to kill. No makeup, no pretense. Just me—Seraphina. A puppet trained to obey, now holding the scissors, already cutting her own strings.
Blackdawn International’s corporate offices sit on the twenty-third floor of a building no one ever questions. On paper, it’s a global logistics firm specializing in “asset acquisition” and “discreet transport solutions.” In reality, it’s a well-oiled empire of exploitation.
I enter through the private elevator, eyes scanning the mirrored walls.
My reflection stares back—calm and unreadable.
I mastered that look years ago, walking tightropes above pits lined with human ruin.
I’ve been climbing Blackdawn’s ladder since I was sixteen—every rung sharpened by Dominic’s expectations.
Five years at the top, two spent unraveling the empire from inside out.
The glass doors slide open into a corridor of silence.
Clean. Clinical. Soulless. Employees in designer suits and pristine heels move like ghosts—efficient, hushed, complicit.
I pass the intake wing first, where two men in security black hold a girl no older than twelve between them.
Her eyes are swollen. Her wrists are zip-tied.
I don’t flinch.
I made that mistake once—and he made sure it never happened again.
“Where is she from?” I ask without stopping.
“Eastern bloc. Came in last night through Rotterdam,” one of the guards replies.
I pause, pulling out my tablet and scanning the intake log. “Move her to Med 3. She needs a full exam. Don’t touch her until Dr. Marek signs off. And get her out of public view. She’s fresh. Not for the floor yet.”
One of the guards looks like he might argue, but my eyes cut to him like glass. He backs down.
In a room two doors down, voices rise—men discussing numbers and requests. I know the language too well: age ranges, appearances, compliance levels. Each word a price tag. Each silence a transaction. My name isn’t mentioned, but I hear Dominic’s echo in every syllable.
I step into my office—sparse and immaculate. Black leather, brushed steel, a wall of screens. From here, I coordinate deliveries, schedule viewings, and monitor what Dominic calls “the merchandise pipeline.” It’s my job to keep things seamless. Efficient.
It’s also how I feed intel to the outside world.
Each time I log a transfer, I copy it to a hidden drive. Each time I confirm a shipment, I scramble the tracking. Each time I smile for the cameras, I rewrite a little more of the ending.
At first, it was just for me—proof that I wasn’t crazy, that I wasn’t complicit.
But after a while, the files stopped gathering dust. I started passing them along.
Carefully. Quietly. To someone who said they could get them to the right people.
If those people exist, they haven’t made a move yet. But they’re watching. I can feel it.
I pull up the latest manifest. Ten new entries. Six girls, three boys, one marked “unclassified”—a category reserved for those deemed too broken or dangerous to assign without special handling.
My stomach twists.
I click the file. The image loads slowly. A boy. Seventeen. Blood on his collar. His intake notes are redacted.
“Noncompliant,” it reads. “Killed one handler in transit.”
I sit back, eyes narrowing. Noted.
A knock comes.
“Come in,” I say.
It’s Damon Vale—Blackdawn’s newest business associate. Mid-thirties, always overdressed, always watching. He walks like the floor owes him something, like every inch of this place belongs to him and he's simply letting the rest of us borrow it.
“Busy day?” he asks, flashing teeth that aren’t quite a smile.
“Always. ”
He steps in uninvited, trailing fingers across my desk like he owns it. Like he owns me. The scent of his cologne—bitter spice—clings too long in the air.
“I heard about your handling of the Prague shipment. Flawless execution. Your father must be proud.”
I keep my expression neutral. “Blackdawn runs on precision.”
He leans in closer, a deliberate invasion of space. “Still... I can’t help but think someone like you deserves more than this. These rooms. These tasks.”
I don’t move. “Meaning?”
His eyes drag slowly down my figure, full of suggestion. “There are other... services you could be providing. More valuable ones. To the right people.”
My blood turns to ice.
I stand, not abruptly, but with the kind of coiled calm that makes men reassess their choices. He steps back half a pace, but his smugness remains intact.
My fingers itched to snap his wrist. I didn’t. But I imagined it—tendons tearing like wet paper, the sound of bones fracturing under pressure. Just one clean twist and the smug look would vanish forever.
“I think you should go.”
He smirks like he’s just been told a joke. “Just a suggestion. But you’ll find I’m not easily dissuaded, Seraphina. You’re a rare thing in this world. A beautiful, dangerous contradiction. And I always get what I want.”
He turns toward the door, then glances over his shoulder. “Your father and I will be speaking again soon. I imagine your name will come up.”
I wait until the door shuts behind him before I let myself breathe.
Another name to add to the list.
Another monster who thinks I’m his to tame.
I turn back to the screen, the boy's intake file still glowing against the dimmed backdrop. Seventeen. Blood on his collar. Redacted notes. A handler dead. There’s more to his story—there always is. And if there’s even a shred of something human left to salvage, I need to know.
I tap into the internal database—not the interface used by admin staff, but the one buried beneath it, coded with layer upon layer of encrypted firewalls.
I helped design it. Dominic never questioned my knack for systems, only demanded I use it for the benefit of Blackdawn.
He never considered that it could be turned against him.
The boy’s alias is listed as “Unit K-21.” His real name is scrubbed. Typical for high-risk intakes. But there’s a ghost trail. One file not yet erased—a single medical scan flagged for abnormal vitals during transport.
I open it.
The image is grainy, low resolution. Chest X-ray. But in the corner of the scan is something they missed—barely legible text inked just above the boy’s ribcage. A tattoo, small and amateur: A.W. and a date.
A name? Initials ?
I search external channels, cross-referencing Blackdawn shipping logs with intake dates and missing persons reports. It’s risky—outside access is monitored. But I’ve danced with fire before.
Ten minutes later, I find him.
Kieran Ward. Seventeen. Reported missing from a juvenile detention center in Chicago six weeks ago. Arrested for assaulting an officer during a raid on a known trafficking ring. The boy had been trying to smuggle out two girls stashed in a back room. He took a bullet to the leg and kept moving.
They called him unstable.
But I read the interview transcripts buried in the court documents—he didn’t trust the police. Said they were in on it. Said “men in suits” came to collect the girls before backup arrived. He screamed it in the hospital until they sedated him.
Now he’s here. In a different kind of prison.
And he killed one of Blackdawn’s best handlers in transit.
I stare at the screen, heat blooming in my chest—not from fear.
Hope.
Maybe I’m not the only one with blood on their hands and rebellion in their bones.
I encrypt what I’ve found, saving it to the hidden drive beneath my desk. If anyone saw this trail, they'd assume the file was corrupted. But I know the sequence to decode it. I created the cipher myself .
Before I can move on, my tablet pings. A message from Dominic’s private channel.
Dinner tonight. Mandatory. Dress accordingly.
Which means a masquerade of civility with men like Damon. A parade of puppets pretending this empire wasn’t built on broken backs.
I set the tablet down, jaw tight.
One foot in the cage.
One hand loosening the bolts.
The car arrives at exactly six o’clock. Black, sleek, silent. Like everything else in Dominic's world.
I ease into the back seat, my phone tucked away, lips painted in the deep crimson he prefers. My reflection in the tinted window stares back at me—flawless, composed, someone else's daughter entirely.
The driver doesn’t speak. They never do. It’s protocol, but sometimes I wonder if it’s just easier to ignore me. Easier to pretend I’m just another asset being moved. The silence stretches, heavy and impersonal, and I sit with it like I’m supposed to—still, obedient, unseen.
The restaurant is one of Blackdawn’s “legitimate” fronts—Michelin stars, velvet booths, vintage wine. A curated illusion of wealth untainted by violence. But I know the cost of every crystal decanter on the table. I’ve itemized them against the bodies that paid for it.
A hostess in a black satin dress leads me to the private room in the back.
The room is quiet but stifling, like the air itself is laced with something unspoken.
Dominic is already seated at the head of the long table, flanked by two men I don’t recognize and Damon Vale, lounging like he belongs there.
Of course he’s here.
“Seraphina,” Dominic says, rising just enough to make it look like he respects me. “You’re late.”
“I’m precisely on time,” I reply, sliding into the empty seat beside him.
He says nothing, but his gaze lingers just a little too long—calculating. We’re both always calculating.