Chapter 3 #3
She smiles. The smile that says she expected this answer and ordered it like room service.
“One day you'll stop saying that, Nazareth.
And we'll both know it's not because you changed your mind.” She swirls the champagne, watching the bubbles rise.
“It'll be because you ran out of things to protect.”
Rage erupts, and I storm toward her. “We had a deal.”
“I know. And you know me, I’m nothing if not a woman of my word.”
I almost laugh.
“I won’t go near your precious Sophia Sinclair as long as you keep your end. But you're so quiet lately.” Her gaze doesn’t leave mine. “Not the old quiet. This is different. This is someone who's decided to behave. I'm not sure I trust it.”
I say nothing, sheath the karambit and step back.
“You seem settled.” She uncrosses her legs. Recrosses them. The slit parts and reforms, a controlled reveal that's aimed at me. “Focused. It's good to have you back, Nazareth.”
My name in her mouth. Thirteen years of hearing it, and it still sits in my skull like a stone in a shoe.
“I spoke with Samuel today,” Valeria continues, and every nerve in my body goes on high alert. “Mary and little Lucas are doing well.”
The mention of my sister is calibrated. It's always calibrated. Valeria doesn't make conversation—she builds pressure systems. She mentions Mary the way a banker mentions collateral, a casual reminder that the asset is in her vault and the terms of the loan haven't changed.
“Good,” I say. The word comes out exactly the way I need it to. Flat. Controlled. Empty.
“Although Mary looked thin the last time I saw her.” The concern in Valeria's voice is immaculate. If you didn't know what she was, you'd believe the warmth. You'd trust the softness.
You'd be wrong, and the wrongness would get you killed.
“You should check in on her. Pay her a visit.” Valeria’s lips pull in a barely-there smirk. She knows exactly what she’s doing, and I know exactly in which direction I’ll carve while cutting her mouth off her face.
“I will,” I sneer. “When I get a chance.” Which I haven’t yet because that’s how Valeria orchestrates it all. One job after the other while purposely keeping me away from my sister.
“I’m sure she’ll appreciate that.” She stands from the chair in one fluid motion, the dress falling into place around her like something that knows its job.
She crosses the room toward me, heels clicking on the stone, and stops close enough that I can smell her perfume—patchouli and something darker, a base note I've never been able to identify that smells like the inside of a closed room.
Her hand rises. Finds my jaw. Fingertips pressing into the hinge, angling my face down toward hers. The touch is ownership.
Her thumb traces the edge of my scar through the cracked paint, and everything in me goes very still. The kind of still that happens inside a bomb one second before detonation, when all the components are in place and the only thing missing is the trigger.
“You've been such a good boy,” she murmurs. “So compliant. So efficient. It almost makes me nervous.”
I hold her gaze. Let her see what she expects to see—the emptiness, the obedience, the trained animal responding to the handler's hand. I've been performing this version of myself for so long, and the performance is flawless because it has to be.
“I have the intel from the interrogation,” I say, redirecting her the way you redirect a river. “Two accounts in the Caymans. A contact in the DOJ. And a safe house in Fairfield County he was using to—”
“Later.” She pats my cheek. Two small, precise taps, the way you'd pat a dog that performed a trick. “Clean up first. You have paint in your hair.”
She turns and walks toward the stairs, heels echoing against stone. At the bottom step, she pauses. “Oh. And Nazareth?” A glance over her shoulder. “I have something for you. A new assignment. Overseas. You’ll spend the night here, and I’ll brief you in the morning.”
The door at the top of the stairs opens, closes. The lock doesn't engage. She doesn't lock me in rooms anymore. She doesn't have to. The locks are inside me now—installed so deep they feel like architecture, like the bones of the house itself, and I can't tell where the cage ends and I begin.
Fuck. I hate the nights I’m forced to spend here more than others. Knowing I’m sleeping under the same roof as that psychopath bitch is like sleeping with a snake at the foot of my fucking bed.
I stand in the basement with a dead man and cracking paint and blood under my fingernails, and I run the equation.
If I stay compliant, she doesn't look for Sophia. If I stay compliant, Mary stays safe inside the family. If I stay compliant, the wall holds.
The equation is sound. I've tested it from every angle.
Except for the flaw.
The one I circle like a drain every single night, careful never to look down into it.
The one that starts whispering the second the house goes quiet and there’s nothing left to drown it out.
The kind of silence that doesn’t protect you.
It exposes you. Peels you down to the raw place where the truth bleeds through.
Whatever Sophia built inside me—that impossible, warm, stubborn thing that made me believe, for a few stolen moments, I could be more than a painted face and a blade—it’s leaking.
Slowly. Every job, every basement, every body I hose off the floor takes another piece of it. And I’m not getting it back.
I’m running out of her.
Upstairs, the estate is quiet. Late afternoon light slants through the tall windows, catching the dust motes in long, golden shafts.
The hallway smells like lemon polish and fresh flowers—Valeria's housekeeper keeps vases on every surface, because even in a house built on blood, the aesthetic must be maintained.
My room is at the end of the east wing. Small by the estate's standards. A bed, a desk, a window that looks out over the rear grounds.
I sit on the edge of the bed. Remove the lollipop stick from my inside pocket.
It's broken. Snapped clean in half at some point during a job I can't pinpoint. But the shape is still there. Heart-shaped. Absurd.
Even monsters deserve love sometimes.
Something behind my ribs collapses inward.
Every night—every single fucking night—when the operational part of my brain finally surrenders and the dark creeps in, I let myself slip. Just for a moment.
I think about her hands on my chest. The gentle drag of her fingertips tracing the tattoo like she was decoding every fractured story I’d carved into my own skin because I was too broken to say any of it out loud.
The way her touch made the scar on my face feel less like a brand and more like something she wanted to kiss.
I think about the soft moan she made the first time I pushed inside her—that little broken gasp that sent me reeling while her pussy fit my cock perfectly. She’s the only woman I’ve ever been inside, and I vowed to keep it that way. A vow I had imprinted on my skin.
While rubbing my palms together, I study the fresh tattoos.
I never got my hands inked. They had too much blood on them already.
Now, both hands are covered in heavy, violent blackwork—overlapping blades, broken chains, faded tally marks, blood droplets scattered like I’ve been washing other people’s lives off my skin for years and never quite got it all.
It looks mean. It looks permanent. It looks exactly like the hands of a man who was born to destroy.
But on the top of my left hand sits the real reason I did this. A vow hidden in plain sight, a symbol not even Valeria could interpret.
Each of my fingers carries a single word in stark black ink, like labels on a killer’s tools.
East. West. North. South. Between the chaos of ink is a broken compass, glass shattered, metal frame bent and ruined like it was smashed with a hammer.
The needle is snapped clean in half, but the remaining piece is frozen—pointing straight toward my ring finger.
North.
Her.
She was the first woman I ever had.
She will be the last.
My true north.
And I’ll bleed myself dry before I ever let the needle point anywhere else.
Fuck, I hate how much I miss her. I hate the ache of broken bones inside my chest. I hate how shallow every breath is without her.
It hurts so fucking much I have to press the heel of my hand against my sternum just to keep the pain from splitting me open.
My throat burns. My eyes sting behind the paint.
I want her so badly my hands shake with it—not the violent kind of want I’m used to, but the terrifying kind that makes a man like me dangerous.
The kind that makes me want to burn the whole world down just to crawl back into her arms and let her call me Nazareth again.
I let the pain crest, let it wash over me until my chest feels too small for my heart, until I can almost smell vanilla and orange peel on my skin.
Then I shove it all back down. Hard. Brutal.
The way I’ve been trained to do everything.
Because I can’t afford to think of her too much.
Thinking about her is a door, and behind that door is the taste of her mouth—warm, clean, that sweetness that was only ever hers.
If I taste it, even in memory, even for half a second, I’ll go to her.
I won’t decide to. I’ll just be moving. Plane, train, stolen car, my own two bleeding feet across every mile between this house and the apartment in Paris.
I won’t stop until her body is pressed against mine, until her mouth is on my mouth, until her hands are sliding under my shirt like she’s trying to hold all the broken pieces of me together again.
I slip the lollipop stick back into my pocket, right against my heart, and close my eyes.
Tomorrow there will be another job. Another city. Another name that doesn’t matter.
The equation will hold.
It has to.
Because if it doesn’t, I’ll go to her.
And the second I do, Valeria will know exactly where to find the only thing in this world that still makes me feel human.