Peter
My sister doesn’t know half of what I do. That’s the only reason she still calls me her brother.
She thinks I run numbers. Maybe a little dirty work for the local syndicates. Nothing serious, nothing that leaves a permanent stain on the family name.
She never asks too deep because she doesn’t want the answer, and I don’t give it to her because I don’t want her to see me for the hollowed-out husk I’ve become.
I don’t want her to see the boy she used to share a bedroom with replaced by a man who has more in common with a meat hook than a human being.
But she’s sharp. Always has been. And she’s the one person on this planet who can cut me down to size with a single, disappointed look.
Which is why I keep my walls sky-high when she calls my name across the apartment tonight, dropping her designer bag on the counter like she owns the place.
The space smells like her—expensive perfume and lavender—a stark, jarring contrast to the scent of bleach, iron, and burnt flesh still clinging to my pores.
“You’re out late again,” she says. Her voice is casual, practiced, but her eyes are predatory. They flick over my jacket, the lingering ghost of smoke on my hands, the bruises blooming faint and purple across my knuckles where I slammed that boy into the brick. “What are you doing, Peter?”
I smirk, leaning against the doorframe. “Working.”
She doesn’t laugh. “You don’t work, Peter. You haunt. You’re a ghost with a pulse, and I’m tired of wondering who you’re scaring tonight.”
I almost snap back, almost tell her that the only thing I’m scaring is the competition, but then I see it—what she’s really hiding.
The subtle shift in her stance, the way she pushes her hair back too quick, her fingers trembling just a fraction.
She didn’t come here for me. She came here because of her.
“Wendy,” I murmur, tasting the name like it’s a shot of gasoline I’m about to swallow.
Her eyes dart away. Too fast. Too obvious. “She’s fine.”
“No,” I say, stepping closer, my boots thudding heavy on the hardwood. “You’re worried. You’re vibrating with it.”
“She’s my best friend. I’m allowed to be worried when she stops answering my texts at midnight.”
“And I’m not?” The edge in my voice is sharper than I meant it to be, a jagged blade that draws blood the moment it touches the air.
She crosses her arms, her chin lifting in defiance. “About what, exactly? You barely talk to her. You look at her like she’s a problem you’re waiting to solve.”
I huff a laugh, a dark, wrong sound that echoes in the quiet kitchen. “I don’t need to talk to her to know her. I know the way her pulse jumps when I walk into a room. I know the way she clenches her teeth to keep from screaming my name. I know her better than you ever will, Sister.”
“Jesus, Peter.” She shakes her head, a look of genuine horror flickering in her eyes. “You sound like one of those men we promised each other we’d never become. Like the ones who used to wait for Mum outside the back door.”
Too late. I’m already ten steps past those men.
I lean against the counter, letting my smile turn cruel, letting her see the shadow behind my eyes.
“You really think she’s safe? Walking home through alleys that smell like death?
Sitting in clubs where men would sell their fucking souls for a chance to fuck her?
You think you know the kind of ghosts that follow her around?
You think I’m the only monster in this city? ”
Her face pales, the blood draining out until she looks like marble. “If you so much as touch her—”
I cut her off with a sharp, barking laugh. “Touch her? Sister, you’ve got it backwards. She’s already in my hands, whether you like it or not. I’ve been holding her for years. The question isn’t if I’ll touch her. It’s if she’ll beg me to stop when I finally do.”
Her jaw locks. She looks at me like she’s seeing a stranger standing in her brother’s skin. Maybe she is.
“Stay away from her,” she says finally. It’s not a plea. It’s a command.
And that’s the thing about commands. They never fucking work on me. They just make me want to break the person giving them.
I push off the counter, stepping close enough to see the mask of “Little Sister” slip, revealing the terrified girl underneath.
“You want me to stay away?” I whisper, my voice a low, vibrating threat.
“Then tell Wendy to stop looking at me like she already knows she’s mine.
Tell her to stop wearing that perfume that makes me want to burn the world down just to keep her in the smoke. ”
Her breath hits a snag. That’s all the proof I need. She knows. She’s seen the way Wendy looks at me when she thinks no one is watching.
“You’ve changed,” she says quietly, her voice thick with unshed tears. “This isn’t you, Peter. This is some… twisted obsession.”
I laugh under my breath, a low, jagged sound that makes her shoulders tighten. “That’s where you’re wrong. This has always been me. I just got tired of playing the part of the good brother. You just didn’t want to look at the blood under my fingernails.”
She takes a small step back, her hand reaching for the counter to steady herself. “If you care about me at all, Peter, you’ll leave her alone. Don’t drag her into your world. Don’t make her another body in your wake.”
I tilt my head, watching her with the cold, calculated curiosity of a predator. “If you care about her at all,” I counter, “you’ll stop pretending she’s safe out there. You’ll stop feeding her fairy tales about good men and white picket fences. She doesn’t want a picket fence. She wants a cage.”
“Wendy isn’t like us,” she whispers. “She still believes in people.”
“She wants someone to burn the lies out of her.” My voice cuts sharper now, faster, the way it does when the hunger takes over. “She’s been circling me for months. Walking into the same rot I haunt. Waiting for me to notice the way she bleeds for me. And I did. I noticed everything.”
“Stop.” Her eyes flash. “You’re talking about her like she’s a thing, like she’s property.”
“She’s already halfway gone,” I snap. “You think she walks into that club because she likes the music? No. She’s looking for a reason to fall apart. She’s looking for me to be the one to break her.”
My sister’s lips press together, her face a mask of panic. She doesn’t know whether to believe me or not, and that’s exactly where I want her—drowning in the doubt.
“She’ll hate you,” she manages finally.
“She already does.” I take a slow step toward her, lowering my voice until it’s a whisper that bruises. “But hate is just a different kind of hunger. Hate is a tether. Hate is what makes her wet when I whisper her name. It keeps her coming back for more of the poison.”
Her eyes shine with anger. “If you ruin her—”
I lean closer, my mouth near her ear, smelling the fear on her skin. “Then she was never yours to save. She was always mine to destroy.”
The words land like lead. I straighten, adjusting my jacket, the leather creaking in the silence. I look perfectly normal. Perfectly sane. “Go home,” I tell her. “Lock your doors. Pretend you don’t know where I’m going next. Pretend you didn’t see the blood on my boots.”
“You won’t find her tonight,” she throws back, her voice desperate. “She’s not at the club. She went home.”
I smirk, already halfway to the door, the adrenaline finally starting to sing in my veins. “She will be. She always is. She can’t stay away from the fire.”
And then I’m out in the hallway, the fluorescent lights flickering like a dying heart. The night swallows me whole, my pulse already shifting into that slow, lethal rhythm it always finds before a hunt.
Wendy’s scent is a permanent resident in my brain. The club’s red lights are burned into my retinas. The night tastes like gasoline and ash as I step outside, the city pressing down heavy. A thousand strangers brushing past, pretending they aren’t all one bad day away from becoming me.
My sister’s voice still rings in my skull. If you ruin her…
Too late. I ruined her the first night she looked back at me and didn’t scream.
The car waits where I left it, sleek and black as a coffin. I slide behind the wheel and let the leather swallow me, the city reflected in the windshield like a broken, neon mirror. I don’t turn on the radio. The only music I need is the memory of Wendy’s breath hitching.
I take the long way. Past the river where the boy’s body is currently being weighed down with stones. Past the boarded-up houses where I learned that the only way to get what you want is to take it. Every block reminds me why I was always going to end up here—with her neck in my hand.
I think about the booth. The way she sat stiff, defiant, trying to pretend she wasn’t vibrating with need. The way she clenched her thighs like a betrayal. She can hate me all she wants. It’s the most honest thing she’s ever done.
I rest my hand on the gearshift, the tattoos on my knuckles dark and permanent. I look in the rearview. My eyes look like holes in a mask. A man who doesn’t ask, doesn’t wait, and doesn’t fucking beg.
I told my sister the truth: Wendy is looking for me. She might not understand it yet, but she’s been hunting me as much as I’ve been hunting her. She doesn’t need a saviour. She needs a match. And I’m going to burn everything she is until there’s nothing left but me.
The club’s lights bleed onto the street as I turn the corner. Velvet red against black asphalt. A den of sweat and secrets. A hunting ground dressed as a playground.
My pulse steadies. My hunger grows teeth.
By the time I kill the engine, I already know what I’m going to do when I see her again. I’m not going to touch her. Not yet. I’m going to corner her. I’m going to make the air so thick with the smell of what I just did that she’ll taste the blood on my skin.
Tonight, there is no exit. Only me. And I’m the only thing she has left to fear.