Chapter 1
Brooke
Iwake up choking on air, my body jolting as I drag in breath after breath.
The room drifts in and out of focus, and the ceiling seems to tilt no matter how hard I try to lock onto one point.
Beige walls box me in. Heavy curtains smother the windows, shutting out daylight and time.
Recognition comes slow, then hits hard. This is John and Mary’s house in Fresno.
How the fuck did I get here?
My head aches in a deep, relentless way that presses behind my eyes and crawls into my jaw.
My mouth feels dry, coated with a bitter taste.
I try to remember how I got here, but my thoughts slide away from each other, refusing to connect.
I remember Colorado, the hotel, the chaos.
I remember Grant’s voice and the sound of a gunshot that doesn’t stop echoing in my mind.
I remember seeing Seth go down, and the moment my brain tries to reject what my eyes saw. After that, there's nothing.
There's no memory of travel. There's no memory of time passing. One moment I am there, and the next I am here, with nothing in between. Someone drugged me. That is the only explanation that makes sense, because I can't lose two states of time without help.
I try to move, needing to get out, needing to get back to Seth. When I lift my hand, metal clinks softly. The sound snaps my attention downward. Cold circles my wrist, and I see thick handcuffs biting into my skin, bolted into the wooden armrest of the chair.
I yank against the cuff. The chair scrapes across the floor until the wood groans.
The noise feels too loud in the muffled room.
I search for a weak point, for a loose screw.
If I can loosen one, I can tip the chair.
If I can tip the chair, I can run. If I can run, I can find a phone, or a neighbor, or a way out.
I can't sit here and wait for whatever comes next.
The door creaks open, and the sound cuts straight through me. Mary steps inside and closes it behind her with careful hands, as if quietness could make this less frightening. Her smile is soft and concerned, the same one she has worn my entire life when something is wrong and she wants me calm.
“Sweetheart,” she says gently as she moves closer. “You’re awake. I was so worried about you.”
Relief hits so fast it makes me lightheaded. For a second, my brain grabs onto the only normal thing in the room. She wasn’t there. She didn’t see what John and Grant did. She doesn’t know who John really is.
“Auntie, please,” my voice shakes with desperation. “You have to help me. John isn’t who he says he is. He tried to kill me. He tried to kill Seth. Grant shot him. They drugged me. Please get these off me.”
Mary slows to a stop a few feet away from the chair. Her expression shifts. It isn’t shock or confusion. A tired look settles over her face instead, like she has been waiting for this exact moment and already knows what she is going to say.
“It’s for the best, Brooke,” she says quietly. “You don’t understand what’s at stake.”
The words don’t register at first. They don’t fit the version of her I know. The understanding hits anyway, hard and brutal. She isn’t confused. She knows. She has always known who John is, and she stayed.
“What are you talking about?” My voice shakes harder.
John walks into the room. He doesn’t look surprised to see me awake. He doesn’t glance at the restraints. He put me here.
“Brooke,” he says calmly. “You’re finally awake.”
I jerk against the cuff again, harder this time. “Where is Seth?”
The last image of Seth crashes through me without warning.
I see him on the ballroom floor. I see blood spreading beneath him too fast. I feel Grant’s hands dragging me away while I scream Seth’s name until my throat burns.
I still don’t know if Seth is alive, and the not knowing is its own kind of hell.
My stomach twists, and I fight down the nausea that rises with it.
Fuck, I’m pregnant.
My body has been drugged, restrained, and hauled across state lines. I barely had time to process it before everything collapsed. I found out, and then the hotel turned into a slaughterhouse, with bodies everywhere, people screaming, people running, people hiding, people dying.
Seth and I barely got to talk about it. We didn’t get to decide anything. My mind keeps circling back to him on that floor and the possibility that if he’s gone, this baby is the only piece of him I have left. Losing him and losing this baby would destroy me.
John exhales slowly. “You don’t need to concern yourself with him.”
“Who the fuck are you?” I fight against the restraints. “Let me go.”
“Brooke,” he says sharply. “Enough.”
“Is he alive?” My voice cracks. “Is Seth alive?”
John pauses. The silence stretches long enough to make my anxiety peak even more.
“If he is alive,” he says evenly, “he’ll be charged with every murder at the Everspring. Ours and his included.” His gaze stays on me. “They’ll attach every kill tied to Stratford too.”
I glare at him, shock and anger rising fast.
“He’ll be taken into custody,” John continues. “He won’t remain there long. We have people inside. Guards, administrators, men who understand what loyalty demands.” His tone doesn’t change. “They’ve already decided what will happen next. He’s going to die publicly.”
My throat tightens, and swallowing feels difficult.
“Nick’s family wants their name restored, Amber’s family does as well.” He sighs. “This is how the Collective keeps itself clean. They give the public a single monster to fear. Then they remove him.”
He looks at me directly. “That is how the Collective functions.”
I shake my head. “What the fuck is the Collective?”
John drags a chair across the floor and sits like he’s about to lecture me.
“The Collective,” he says calmly, folding his hands together, “is not new. It didn’t begin with Grant. It didn’t begin with me.” His gaze stays fixed on mine. “It has existed for generations. Wealthy families. Political dynasties. People who have always understood how power actually works.”
My mouth goes dry again.
“We aren’t pretending the world is innocent,” John continues. “We see it as it is. Violent. Competitive. Unstable.” His voice remains calm. “We also understand that violence doesn’t vanish because certain people refuse to acknowledge it. Someone always directs it somewhere.”
I try to follow him, but my thoughts keep racing.
“I train our men,” he says. “I prepare them. I teach discipline, restraint, and obedience. Not everyone can kill on command. Not everyone can live with it afterward. I decide who can.”
He pauses, then adds in a tone that makes my skin turn cold, “The men Seth killed at the hotel were mine.”
The men in the animal masks. The ones with the machete, axe, and crossbow. The ones that attacked me and Seth.
“They were yours? The ones in the masks?”
“Yes.”
“One of them tried to kill me.”
John shakes his head once. “No.” He doesn’t even blink.
“He wasn’t trying to kill you. He was trying to take you.” His gaze stays on mine. “The instructions were to bring you back to me. Alive”
Nausea rises sharp and sudden, and I swallow it down.
John leans back slightly. “The Collective doesn’t exist just to indulge violence. It exists to direct it. Chaos already exists. We decide where it goes. Order requires structure. Structure requires sacrifice.”
I force air into my lungs. “You murdered a hotel full of people, for a fucking tech company?”
John nods once. “Trinity Tech interfered with interests controlled by our faction, they refused cooperation. They assumed public ethics would shield them.” His voice stays calm. “They were wrong.”
For a moment, my thoughts slow. Then they line up in a way that feels worse than panic.
I remember John pulling me out of the freezer. I remember the freezer door slamming shut again.
Is Travis still inside?
The thought hits like a gut punch. Travis alone in the dark, locked behind metal that is turning colder by the second. His breath will get thinner as the temperature drops, and nobody will find him in time.
“Is Travis alive?”
“If he is, he shouldn’t be.” John folds his hands in his lap. “He works for Trinity Tech. That means he had to die. Everyone in that building should be dead.”
My vision blurs as the thought hits, both of them gone.
I stare at him, trying to match this man to the one who drove me to school, corrected my homework, told me discipline mattered more than talent.
“What is wrong with you?” My voice shakes, but the words come out clear. “You weren’t like this. You raised me. You watched me grow up.”
John exhales through his nose.
“You knew the version of me I showed you. That was all you needed.”
My breath stutters.
“You killed my parents.”
“Your father was one of ours. He knew the rules, and he decided they didn’t apply to him anymore.” He tilts his head slightly. “That’s when he became a problem.”
I shake my head, but it isn’t denial. It’s my body refusing to accept it.
“People like this don’t come out of nowhere, it runs in families, and you see it early.” His eyes stay on me. “Your father had it. That’s why he was brought in. That’s why it mattered when he stopped listening.”
He smirks. “And you have it too.”
My throat burns. My hands curl into fists as much as the cuffs allow.
“We were instructed to kill you as well, Mary begged me not to. So you became somewhat of an experiment.”
I shake my head, refusing it even as the truth starts to settle in.
“You were compliant,” he continues. “You showed promise. You learned quickly. You endured without collapsing. You adapted when others would have broken. You were never meant to be sheltered. You were meant to be shaped.”
I grip the edge of the chair, fingers tightening against the wood.
“All those years,” he adds, “I was preparing you. Conditioning you for what this life requires. The training, the discipline, the exposure. Nothing you survived was accidental.”