Chapter 34
The Trickster
M y tires screech as I cut across three lanes, horn blaring, heart hammering so hard I taste copper. The phone buzzes against my thigh for the fifth time in ten minutes—Nick’s name flashing, demanding answers I won’t give.
I grip the wheel tighter, knuckles bleaching white. I was too late for Ruby, but not this time. Not with Eve. The thought of her name sends another surge of acid through my veins, burning away everything but the need to reach her before I lose her too.
I nearly clip a taxi as I swerve through a yellow light. The driver leans on his horn, but the sound barely registers. My mind is already ten blocks ahead, already in that warehouse, already seeing what I might find.
The phone buzzes again. I silence it without looking, knowing Nick has figured out my lie by now. He’ll be mad that I tricked him into going to his own house, but I have to do this by myself. This was never his debt to pay.
A text from Ned still glows on my screen, words I’ve read twenty times since he sent them just after Nick left.
Ned: Shelby is taking Eve to where Ruby was killed.
Another car horn blares as I run a stop sign, the road blurring through the windshield. My breath comes in ragged gulps.
I can’t stop seeing it—my sister’s body slumped on the floor, the bullet wound that I put there. And now Eve… fuck, Eve in the same location, maybe in the same position.
“I’m coming,” I whisper, the words scraping my throat raw. “Hold on, Little Bride. Just hold on.”
My jaw aches from clenching, teeth grinding together so hard I taste enamel dust. Every red light, every slow driver, every fucking obstacle feels like a personal attack. The wheel creaks under my grip, plastic warping beneath my fingers as if absorbing the tension coiling through my body.
I slam on the gas harder, weaving between cars like they’re standing still. The meat district rises ahead, abandoned factories and warehouses jutting against the sky like broken teeth. This part of town died years ago, left to rot and rust while developers argued over its bones.
My throat closes at the memory of the last time I was here. My sister’s body going limp, her eyes glazing over. The thing that haunts me the most is the forgiveness I saw in her eyes as she died. Maybe even a fleeting glance of… I don’t fucking know.
I screech to a stop in front of the warehouse, tires skidding on gravel. The place looks worse than when I last saw it—windows shattered, metal siding peeled back like flesh from bone, walls crumbling inward.
Weeds push through cracks in the concrete, nature reclaiming what man abandoned. But it’s the same place. The place where Ruby died. Where Shelby has brought Eve to make her point.
I grab my gun from the glove compartment, check the magazine, and slam it home. The metal is cold against my palm, familiar and strange all at once. Then I’m out of the car, boots crunching on broken glass as I sprint toward the building.
A jagged hole gapes in the side wall—not a door, not a window, just a wound in the concrete where something tore through. I catch a flash of movement—a figure in the shadows, tall and angular. Shelby.
Her face is turned away, but I’d know that postur e anywhere. The way she stands, shoulders hunched forward like a vulture about to feast. My blood rushes hot then cold, primal instinct recognizing predator.
I duck low, using the broken wall as cover as I edge closer. She’s too focused on something ahead to notice me—something I can’t yet see.
“Shelby!” I shout, unable to contain the rage boiling over. My voice echoes through the empty space, bouncing off concrete and steel.
She whips around, eyes wide with surprise that quickly shifts to something else—something like triumph. Then she’s gone, melting back into the shadows of the warehouse interior.
I launch myself through the hole, concrete scraping my shoulder as I squeeze through. The darkness swallows me whole, my eyes struggling to adjust after the brightness outside. I take two steps forward, gun raised, senses straining.
That’s when I hear it.
A scream tears through the darkness—high and broken and filled with so much pain. Eve’s scream. The sound hits me like a physical blow, punching the air from my lungs. It reverberates inside my skull, through my bones, into the marrow itself.
Pain and fear and desperation distilled into a single, piercing note that splits me open from throat to gut.
“Eve!” Her name erupts from me as I plunge deeper into the warehouse, the sound of her agony pulling me forward like a hook buried in my flesh.
I burst through into the warehouse’s hollow heart, gun extended, every nerve ending raw. The stench hits me first—copper and rust and rot. Then my eyes adjust to the half-light, and I see Ned. He’s sprawled face-up on the concrete, arms flung wide like a broken puppet.
Blood pools beneath him, so much blood, black in the dim light, spreading in a perfect circle like spilled ink. His eyes stare upward, cloudier now than they were in life, seeing nothing. I don’t need to check for a pulse. My friend is gone, another body left in the wake of my failure.
But I can’t stop for him. Can’t mourn. Can’t think. Because there, in the center of the warehouse, is Eve.
She hangs suspended from a rusted hook, arms stretc hed painfully above her head, toes barely grazing the floor. Her dress—something tattered and wrong—hangs in shreds around her thighs.
Her skin is split open, each lash bleeding, crimson rivers running down her body. Shelby stands behind her, arm already pulled back, whip unfurled. Her face distorts, and her features twist into something feral and hungry.
As I watch, the whip arcs through the air, its crack splitting the silence a heartbeat before Eve’s body jerks with the impact.
Red floods my vision. Something primal rips through me, tearing past bone and sinew, a roar building in my chest that I swallow back.
My finger is already tight on the trigger. I’ve killed before. I’ll kill again. For Eve, I’ll burn the world down and salt the ashes.
“Shelby!” The name tears from my throat, raw and ragged.
Eve’s head snaps up, eyes finding mine across the space between us. There’s dried blood on her cheek, but it’s the recognition in her gaze that guts me—the way relief and terror war across her features in a single, fractured moment.
“Jack! Run!” she screams, voice broken with desperation. “She’ll kill you!”
Run? The word doesn’t compute, doesn’t register as anything but static. Run from what? From Eve? From the woman who’s carved her open? Something hot and dangerous floods my veins, scorching away hesitation, burning through restraint.
“Let her go,” I growl, advancing, gun trained on Shelby’s head. One clean shot. That’s all it would take to end this. One bullet between her eyes and Eve would be safe.
Just as I pull the trigger and release the bullet in the chamber, Shelby moves. In a blur of motion, she lunges sideways, fingers clawing into Eve’s hair, yanking her close. Using my wife as a shield. Using her like a fucking prop in her sick revenge fantasy.
“No!” I roar, agony ripping through me.
Time stretches, warps, fragments like shattered glass. I see it all in excruciating detail—the flash of the muzzle, the jerk of recoil against my palm, the spray of blood. But not from Shelby. From Eve.
My wife’s body jerks, a sharp, surprised gasp esc aping her lips. Her gray eyes widen, meeting mine across the space between us.
“No.” The word is more breath than sound. “No, no, no, no…”
My brain fractures, reality splintering around me. This isn’t happening—it can’t be happening. Not again. Not Eve. Not by my hand.
Fuck.
Ruby’s face superimposes over Eve’s in my mind. History repeats itself with cruel precision. Something breaks inside me. Something fundamental holding me together snaps like a wire pulled too tight.
The roar that tears from my throat isn’t human. It’s the sound of something feral and wounded, reverberating through the warehouse rafters, shaking dust from the beams above.
“Eve!” Her name is a prayer and a curse and a plea all at once. “Eve, look at me. Open your eyes. Please. Please…” She doesn’t move. Doesn’t lift her head. Just hangs there.
I killed Ruby. I killed Valentine. And now I’ve killed Eve—the only person who saw through the monster to the man underneath. The only one who made me feel something beyond the rage and grief that’s consumed me for months.
“What have I done?” The words scrape raw from my throat, barely audible. “What the fuck have I done?”
Shelby’s laughter cuts through my agony, high and brittle. She steps out from behind Eve’s suspended form; the whip dragging behind her like a serpent’s tail. Blood smears her face, her hands, her clothes—Ned’s blood, Eve’s blood. She wears it like war paint, like proof of victory.
“Exactly what I wanted you to do,” she says, voice cold with satisfaction. “How does it feel, Jack? To destroy the thing you love most? To watch the light leave her eyes? To know it’s your fault?”
My vision goes red. Then black. Then red again, pulsing with each thundering beat of my heart. I can’t speak. Can’t breathe. I can’t think beyond the animal need to tear Shelby apart with my bare hands. To make her suffer for every mark on Eve’s skin, for every drop of blood shed.
Blood runs down her arm, dripping steadily onto the concrete. Drip. Drip. Drip. My world is ending one drop at a time .
“Why?” The question tears from my throat, raw and guttural. I need to know. I need to understand what twisted her into this monster standing before me.
“Why Eve? Why like this? What the fuck is this about?”
Shelby’s laugh is like cracked glass, sharp enough to cut. “You still don’t get it, do you?” She stalks in a half-circle, whip dragging behind her. “John!” she screams, the name echoing off the walls. “John Simmons! Does that name mean anything to you, Jack?”