Chapter 22 #2
My vision blurs. Hot. Wet. Tears carve tracks through the paint on my cheeks. I can’t tell what’s mine anymore. My tears. Her blood. The paint. The shame. It all runs together in one violent sweep through my bones.
I want to scream.
I want to claw the mask off my face and scream until my throat bleeds too. But the sound that comes out is small—a choked, non-human thing.
It hurts. Everything hurts. The boy inside me, the one who waited for his mother, who believed in things like safety and home, is screaming too. But he’s so far down now I can only feel the echo of it, a dull, endless ache that radiates out from my sternum like a second heartbeat.
The metal box is cold against my palm when I reach into my pocket. I don’t remember deciding to take it out. My fingers are numb, clumsy, shaking so hard the powder spills across my knuckles before I can tap out the line. I don’t care. I don’t wipe it away.
I bring my hand to my nose, blood and coke mixing on my skin, and I inhale deep. So fucking deep, the burn is instant. White fire exploding behind my eyes, racing down my throat, searing every nerve it touches.
My head snaps back. My vision whites out for a second, and it’s pure, blinding nothing.
When it comes back, the alley is sharper, louder, more real than it’s ever been.
The slam of a door somewhere up the block.
The shrieks and laughter of sugar-drunk kids, and cackling of costumed revelers.
The hollow, dead thud of my own heartbeat.
The drip of blood is deafening.
My breathing is deafening.
The silence inside my skull is deafening.
I look down at her again. Allison Greene.
Her eyes are still open. Still empty. Still accusing.
Dead. Allison was a person who became a problem I solved.
A mother who will never know that the alternative would have been far worse for her.
A mother who will never know I chose her kid over her.
Would she still damn me to hell if she knew?
I reach out with shaking, blood-and-coke-stained fingers and close her eyes, the lids cold and heavy under my touch.
Then I collapse, sliding down the brick wall until my ass hits the concrete, legs splayed like a broken puppet.
The alley spins slow, lazy circles around me, and for once, I don’t fight it.
The coke is in me now, blooming like fire through every vein, every nerve ending lit up gold and electric. I fucking worship it.
I worship the way it hushes the screaming in my skull, smothers the boy who was still begging in there, wraps the whole bloody mess in soft white noise.
I worship the rush that lifts me out of this skin, this alley, this night—the way it makes my heart thunder like a war drum and my skin feel too tight and too alive at the same time.
Every breath tastes like metal and lightning.
My fingertips buzz. My teeth hum. The blood on my gloves looks almost beautiful, glittering under the streetlight like dark jewels.
I tilt my head back against the brick and let the high roll through me, wave after wave of clean, bright nothing. No guilt. No boy. No mother with her throat open. Just this sweet, chemical grace that makes the world soft at the edges and the pain feel distant, like it belongs to someone else.
The numbness is perfect.
I worship it like a god that never answers prayers.
The alley is still quiet except for the low hum of the cleanup crew’s van idling at the mouth.
Headlights cut through the dark, painting the walls in cold white, but I don’t move.
I’m slumped against the wall, legs sprawled, blood drying sticky on my gloves, paint cracking and flaking off my face in slow curls.
The coke is still riding high, making every drip of water from the eaves sound like a gunshot, every heartbeat like a drum in my skull.
I’m not shaking anymore. I’m vibrating.
A second set of lights sweeps in—long, sleek, black. A limo. I know the engine note before the driver even cuts it. I know the way the back door opens without a sound, the way the interior light spills out gold and expensive.
A stiletto heel emerges first—black, razor-thin, sharp enough to draw blood just by looking. Then the leg, long and pale, the slit in the black dress parting high enough that if she shifted an inch more her pussy would wink at the streetlamp.
The dress clings like sin, silk and shadow, hugging every curve she’s spent years weaponizing. Dark, curly hair tumbles loose over her shoulders, catching the light like oil on water, and when she steps out it’s slow, deliberate, every movement choreographed for maximum effect.
Valeria Capello.
Beautiful. Arresting.
Evil.
She doesn’t speak at first. Just stands there in her six-inch heels and surveys the scene like it’s a gallery opening. The dealer’s body, throat crushed. The woman sprawled like a broken doll, apron soaked dark.
Valeria’s lips curve. “Had a minor slip-up, I see.”
I don’t answer. I just stare at her from the ground, letting the hate burn through the high.
She tilts her head, amused. “At least you know how to take care of a nuisance.”
Nuisance? Is that what a mom is these days?
I push off the wall, my legs feeling like they’re floating an inch above the ground. “I got this under control. You don’t need to be here.”
“I was in the neighborhood.” She steps closer, heels clicking sharp on the concrete. “Thought I’d drop by and check in on my favorite problem-solver.”
I don’t flinch when she reaches out. I want to. Every instinct screams to rip her hand off, but I don’t. I can’t. Not while she has the only thing left that still matters to me.
Her fingers close around my jaw, nails digging in. I jerk my head back with a snarl, but she doesn’t let go. She yanks me forward, down until our faces are inches apart, paint smearing on her fingertips.
“You’re high,” she purrs, thumb stroking the black streak across my mouth. “What did my husband tell you about mixing drugs with jobs?”
I bare my teeth, don’t say a word.
Her smile edges into something cruel as she closes the distance, the streetlight catching the deep creases around her eyes, every wrinkle a betrayal of the age she’s spent years trying to bury.
I’m forced to move, my back pressing against the brick. The cold stone bites through my shirt, and her body molds to mine—soft where it wants to be, hard where it needs to be. It makes my fucking skin crawl.
“You’re sad for her, aren’t you?” she murmurs, nodding toward the woman whose throat I slit.
I don’t answer. I don’t move.
“You’re sad. You’re high.” One hand slides down my chest, lower, her long, bony fingers curling around my cock. She squeezes. “I know how to make it all feel better.”
She kisses my neck, slow, teeth grazing. My cock stays soft under her hand, dead and disinterested. She knows it. “I’ve always wanted to fuck you with your face like this. Painted. Ruined. Mine.”
I snarl, low and feral. “Get your hands off me.”
She laughs against my throat. “When are you going to give me what I want?”
“I told you.” I grab her wrist, peel her hand away with bruising force. “I’ll never fuck you. Not willingly.”
Her eyes flash. “Stop being so stubborn. We’ll be so good together.”
“I will never. Fuck you, Valeria.”
She jerks free, her smile ice. “There are ways to make you more… willing.”
“I’m well fucking aware.” I lower my face so it’s inches from her, my voice low and lethal, hoping she can feel my hatred for her.
“But like I told you so many fucking times—if you drug me, do anything that gets my cock inside you… I will kill you, and then I’ll kill myself too.
I can’t care about consequences when I’m dead. ”
“Oh, Nazareth. You keep on saying that, but I’m starting to think I should call your bluff.” She leans in, lips brushing my ear. “After all… she’s pregnant now.”
The world stops. My heart stutters once, hard. Then again. “What?”
“She didn’t tell you?” Valeria’s voice is pure smug satisfaction. “She’s ten weeks pregnant. And she’s so excited. We all are.”
My vision tunnels; the alley narrows to a pinprick. My hands clench so hard my nails rip tiny crescent moons into my palms.
Valeria tilts her head, dark curls falling over her shoulders. “Are you going to stand there and tell me you’re willing to sacrifice her life, and her unborn child’s, just because you don’t want to give me what I want?” She steps back, smiling like she’s won. “To prove a point?”
I don’t speak. I don’t move. I’m fucking ice cold.
She tuts, soft and pitying. “That would make you a special kind of monster, wouldn’t it?”
There’s no fucking air as she turns, heels clicking, and walks toward the limo while I’m trying to reroute everything I know, because this… This. Changes. Everything.
The driver opens the door for her, and she pauses, glancing back at me. “At least you’re my monster.”
The door closes, and the limo pulls away, the clean-up crew van following suit. I stay in the alley long enough to feel the coke dissipate, like the tide going out and leaving only shitty wet sand and the dark at the edges of my mind.
Pregnant? She’s fucking pregnant?
I pull out my phone and find four missed calls and a text.
‘Call me. It’s important.’
Jesus. This can’t be happening.
My heart hammers a frantic, broken rhythm, each beat slamming like a fist I can’t dodge. I force myself to call her, thumb shaking so badly I nearly drop the phone. She picks up on the second ring.
“I was wondering when you’d call me back.”
I have to clamp my lips shut when her voice hits me—bright, warm, the only familiar thing I have left in this world. I squeeze my eyes closed, fighting to keep the raw panic out of my own.
“Hey,” I manage, the word scraping out like gravel. “Sorry. I was at this charity auction…you know…for, ah—”
“Oh, Valeria told me about that. The children’s hospital foundation.”