Bonus Scene
Nyx
“Reaper.”
The voice comes from behind the stainless-steel embalming table.
Bram finally looks up from his work. He’s overseen the agency’s dead for longer than I’ve been alive.
Embalming. Cremations. Burials. Whatever happens after a mission ends eventually finds its way to him. Our arrangement never leaves this room.
“Bram.”
I duck beneath the yellow duct tape stretched across the hallway—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY—and stop at the counter.
“What’ll it be today?” he asks.
“Scott’s recent. Vincent Agapov.”
His brows pull together as he studies me. I reach into my pocket, withdraw the thick stack of cash, and place it onto the counter.
Bram gathers it quickly, thumbing through each bill. “This is more than what we agreed on. Feeling generous today, Vale?”
“Today’s special.” I shove my hands back into my pockets. “Keep it.”
Bram hesitates only a second before nodding. Without another word, he rounds the counter, pulls the blinds over the windows, and locks the front door. We leave through the back of the building, crossing the quiet field until we reach a pair of weathered cellar doors hidden beneath the hill.
The hinges groan as they swing open.
Rot. Bleach. Formaldehyde.
The smell rolls over us in a heavy wave. Most people would gag. I breathe it in. It smells like justice.
The lights flicker awake one after another as we descend the narrow staircase. At the center of the underground room sits a steel table.
Vincent.
His body lies motionless beneath a white sheet. His severed head rests crooked beside his shoulder.
“I figured this one was yours,” Bram says as he folds the sheet back. “That cut is too clean to belong to anyone else.” His eyes drift over Vincent’s battered face. “But this…” he whistles quietly. “You usually aren’t this messy, Reaper.”
“I wasn’t there in time for that.” I grunt. My gaze lingers over Vincent’s ruined features. He underestimated my wife. It cost him everything.
“What exactly am I being paid so much for?” Bram asks.
I reach into my pocket and let eight steel loops fall onto the table. They clatter against the metal. The only pieces of Florence’s collar I chose to keep. Some are polished silver where fire burned them clean, others are still stained black with soot and ash.
Bram studies them before carefully picking one up. “Can I ask?”
“No,” I snap.
The air thins with silence. He waits anyway. I don’t.
“I want every one of them sewn around his neck.”
Bram looks from the loops to Vincent’s detached head.
“…After you reattach it.”
He exhales through his nose. “Are we cremating this one? The one with the missing thumb kind of jammed my machine…”
“The yard.”
He nods once. No questions. No judgment. Just an understanding between two men.
I turn and start back toward the stairs.
“Nyx.”
I stop halfway up, my hand resting against the cold iron railing.
“Does she know about this?” Bram asks warily.
“No.”
A pause.
“Are you ever going to tell me who she is?”
My grip tightens around the railing.
“She’s my wife.”
I don’t wait for a response. The cellar door slams shut behind me as I step into the afternoon sun.
Across the field, weathered boulders rise from the earth.
No names. No dates. No flowers. Just stone.
One for every man who ever laid a hand on Florence.
One for every monster who believed he’d escape my wrath through death.
I know every grave. Every face. Every reason.
The world may believe they belong to hell.
They’re wrong.
They belong to me.