Peter #2
She doesn’t know it yet, but I’ve already decided her fate. Wendy Darling isn’t marked by some shadow in the street. She’s marked by me. And before this night is over, she’s going to feel the weight of that mark in her very soul.
I flick the last of the ash from my fingers and watch it scatter across the floor like the remains of a burnt offering. I’ve run this city like a chessboard for years, moving pieces, taking lives, building an empire out of fear. Nothing makes my pulse climb anymore. Nothing makes me careless.
Except her.
The phone buzzes.
Movement near her building. Someone’s on the fire escape.
My jaw locks so hard my teeth ache. I type back with a hand that wants to be wrapped around someone’s throat.
Don’t kill him yet. Hold him for me.
I grab my jacket and head for the door. The corridor smells of oil and damp concrete, the scent of a hunt. My men part for me like the Red Sea, their heads ducked in primal fear. They know better than to ask.
The night air hits me like a blade. The city is alive, pulsing, neon dripping off the wet pavement like molten candy. Somewhere out there, she’s in her apartment, thinking she’s invisible.
She isn’t.
I slide into the back seat of the car and slam the door. My voice is calm, but my blood is screaming. “Drive. Fast.”
This isn’t a game of watching from a distance anymore. This is me moving in for the kill. I lean back and let the image of her rise up: Wendy in that booth, the way her breath caught, the way she tried to pretend she wasn’t waiting for me to ruin her.
She’s not safe. Not because of the shadow on her fire escape.
Because of me.
By the time the car glides toward her street, my thumb is tapping a steady, rhythmic count on my knee. Counting the seconds until I’m close enough to smell her again. Close enough to put my hand on the small of her back and feel the shiver she can’t suppress.
Tonight, she stops running. Tonight, she learns that there is no exit I don’t control.
And I’m going to be the one to teach her exactly how it feels to be owned.
The rain doesn’t just fall in this part of the city; it rots. It turns the soot on the brick into a black, oily smear that looks like old blood under the flickering street lamps.
I step out of the car, the heavy wool of my coat soaking up the damp, but I don’t feel the cold. All I feel is the rhythmic, thudding heat in my jaw. The hunger.
Jax is already waiting by the mouth of the alley, leaning against a rusted dumpster with a cigarette dangling from his scarred lips.
He’s a beautiful, jagged mess of a man—all sharp cheekbones and eyes that have seen too many shallow graves.
He’s got that lean, hungry look of a switchblade, his blonde hair slicked back and dripping.
Beside him stands Silas. If Jax is a knife, Silas is a goddamn sledgehammer.
He’s built like a heavyweight sin, shoulders broad enough to block out the sun and a jawline that looks like it was carved from granite and spite.
He’s wearing a fitted black tactical turtleneck that shows off the ink crawling up his throat and disappearing into his hairline—vivid, black roses that look like they’re choking him.
“Took you long enough,” Jax murmurs, flicking ash onto the wet pavement. “The rat’s halfway to the third floor. Thinks he’s being quiet. Thinks he’s a ghost.”
“He’s about to be one,” Silas rumbles, his voice like stones grinding together. He pulls a pair of leather gloves tight over his knuckles, the snap of the material loud in the quiet alley. He looks at me, eyes dark and vacant. “You want us to take him, or do you want the honours, Boss?”
I look up at the fire escape. A shadow is clinging to the iron railing outside Wendy’s window, a slim, pathetic silhouette in a hooded jacket. He’s prying at the glass. My glass. My window.
A low, feral growl starts in the back of my throat. “I want him to breathe long enough to regret the day he learned her name.”
“Copy that,” Jax smirks, pulling a butterfly knife from his pocket and flipping it with a hypnotic, metallic click-clack. “Silas, go long. I’ll flush him down the ladder.”
We move.
Jax scales the opposite building with the agility of a stray cat, while Silas disappears into the shadows of the basement entrance, a silent mountain of muscle. I stay in the centre of the alley, lighting a fresh cigarette, the cherry glowing like a sniper’s lens.
The kid—he can’t be more than twenty—slips his hand inside the window frame. He doesn’t hear the metallic shink of Jax’s blade against the railing above him.
“Nice view, isn’t it?” Jax’s voice drifts down, airy and lethal.
The intruder jolts, his boots slipping on the wet iron. He looks up, eyes wide and white in the dark, and sees Jax grinning down at him like a demon. “Who the fuck—?”
“Wrong answer,” Jax chirps. He kicks the ladder release.
The heavy iron ladder slides down with a screeching, ear-piercing scream of metal on metal.
The intruder panics, sliding down the rungs, hitting the pavement with a wet thud right at my feet.
He tries to scramble up, but before he can find his footing, Silas emerges from the dark.
He grabs the kid by the back of his neck and slams him face-first into the brick wall.
The sound of his nose breaking is a wet, sickening crunch.
“Easy, Silas,” I say, stepping forward, the smoke from my cigarette curling around my face. “Don’t break the toy before I get to play with it.”
Silas spins the kid around, pinning him to the wall. The kid’s face is a mask of red, blood dripping onto his cheap hoodie. “Please,” he bubbles. “I didn’t—I just wanted—”
“You just wanted to touch something that belongs to me,” I finish for him. I reach out and grab his hand—the one that touched her window. “Jax. Hold him steady.”
Jax steps in, grabbing the kid’s other arm and pinning it wide. Silas maintains the chokehold. They look like two fallen angels flanking a sacrificial lamb—hot, heartless, and hungry.
“You liked watching her?” I ask, my voice dropping to a whisper.
I take the glowing cherry of my cigarette and press it firmly into the centre of his palm.
The smell of burning flesh fills the alley—acrid and foul.
The kid screams, a high, piercing sound that is cut short when Silas squeezes his throat.
“Music to my ears,” Jax hums, leaning his head back.
I drop the butt and pull out the hook. The light catches the heavy, serrated piece of cold steel.
“You used these eyes to look at her,” I growl. “You used them to stare into her private sanctuary. Now I’m taking them.”
I don’t hesitate. I use the blunt end of the hook to pin his head against the brick, and then I use my thumb. I press hard into the corner of his left socket. The kid’s body goes into a violent, rhythmic convulsion, a strangled, wet shriek tearing through his mangled nose.
There’s a sickening pop as the pressure gives way, followed by a wet, squelching sound as the globe of the eye is forced out of its housing. It hangs by the optic nerve, a slick, white marble trailing red against his cheek. I don’t stop. I move to the right.
The second one is easier. I feel the warm, jelly-like fluid coat my knuckles as I scoop it out. The kid is no longer screaming; he’s making a high-pitched whistling sound, his shock so absolute his brain is short-circuiting.
“Jesus, Boss,” Jax murmurs, his eyes wide and bright with a sick kind of admiration. “He’s got a look of permanent surprise now.”
“He shouldn’t have looked,” Silas says flatly, his grip unyielding even as the kid’s blood soaks his sleeves.
I look at the boy—now a blind, sobbing mess of blood. His sockets are empty, weeping red holes that stare at nothing. He’s pathetic. He’s nothing.
“This is for the window,” I growl, stepping behind him. I hook the serrated steel under his jaw, forcing his head back so his hollowed-out face meets the rain.
I don’t just cut. I rip.
I jerk the hook back with a violent, upward twist. The steel teeth catch on his windpipe, tearing through the cartilage and muscle like wet cardboard.
The alley explodes into a spray of hot, copper-tasting red. It paints the brick, it paints Silas’s black turtleneck, it paints my own face.
The kid hits the ground, his throat open and pulsing, the blood jetting out in rhythmic spurts.
“He earned every drop,” Silas says, wiping a stray fleck of blood from his jaw with a thumb, looking like a demonic god of war.
I stand over the body, cleaning the hook on the kid’s jacket. I feel a profound, hollow peace.
“Get rid of it,” I say. “No fingers. No teeth. I want him to be as anonymous as the dirt he is.”
“You got it,” Jax says, grabbing the body by the ankles. “Silas, grab the heavy end. My back’s killing me.”
“Stop whining, Jax. You’re just lazy.”
I walk back to the mouth of the alley and look up at Wendy’s window. It’s dark. She’s safe. She’s sleeping, oblivious to the fact that the bricks below her are stained with the lifeblood of the man who dared to look.
My phone vibrates.
He was just the scout. There are three more.
My jaw locks. My smile returns, feral and wide.
“Good,” I whisper to the rain. “I’m still hungry.”