Peter
The basement of the warehouse smells like copper, stale cigarettes, and the kind of fear that makes a man’s sweat turn acrid. It’s a familiar perfume. It’s the scent of my life’s work.
I’m sitting in a high-backed leather chair that has no business being in a place this damp, watching Silas.
The second scout—a kid with a shaved head and a chin that won’t stop quivering—is zip-tied to a steel chair bolted to the centre of the concrete floor.
He’s already leaking. Silas has a way with a heavy ring that tends to split skin like ripe fruit.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I don’t have to look to know the rhythm of the buzz.
I slide the phone back into my pocket without a second thought. Clara thinks she knows what fire is. She doesn’t realise she’s been living in a house I built out of tinder and gasoline, and I’m the only one holding the matches.
I lean back, the leather creaking under my weight, and let my mind drift back to the bedroom. Back to the way Wendy looked when I left her—limp, ruined, her skin marked by the purple blooms of my ownership.
People think obsession is a sudden thing.
A lightning strike. They’re wrong. For me, Wendy was a slow-growing cancer.
I’ve spent seven years watching her from the periphery of her life, curating her world like a goddamn museum exhibit.
I remember her at seventeen, standing in the rain after a breakup with some boy whose name I’ve since erased from the earth.
She looked so fragile, so breakable. I knew then that if I didn’t take her, someone else would—and they wouldn’t be as careful with her pieces as I intended to be.
I didn’t want to just fuck her. I wanted to be the only thing she saw when she closed her eyes. I wanted to be the reason she couldn’t breathe.
“He’s not talking, Boss,” Silas rumbles, shaking his hand out. His knuckles are split. “Thinks he’s a soldier.”
I stand up. The movement is slow, intentional, the heels of my boots clicking against the concrete like a countdown. I walk over to the small wooden table beside the chair. On it sits a glass bowl filled with coarse, industrial sea salt.
I pick up a handful. It’s heavy. Gritty.
“You know what this does to a wound, son?” I ask, my voice a low, melodic purr. I walk behind the kid, my hand hovering over his shoulder. “It’s not just the sting. It’s the way it draws the moisture out. It preserves the meat while it burns the nerves.”
The scout tries to pull away, his breath coming in short, wet gasps. Silas has already done the prep work—three long, jagged slices across the kid’s bicep, the blood sluggish and dark.
I lean down, my mouth inches from the kid’s ear. “I’m thinking about my girl right now,” I whisper. “I’m thinking about how she’s sleeping in my sheets, smelling like me. And then I think about you, watching her through a lens. Following her. Touching the air she breathes.”
I don’t wait for him to beg. I press my palm—overflowing with the salt—directly into the open gashes on his arm.
The sound that rips out of him isn’t human. It’s a high, keening wail that bounces off the walls. I don’t let go. I grind my hand into the wounds, feeling the salt crystals grate against the raw muscle and the edges of the severed skin.
“Does it burn?” I ask, watching with a clinical fascination as the blood turns a strange, frothy pink. “It’s supposed to. It’s supposed to remind you that some things are sacred. She is the only thing in this world that is off-limits to you. And you looked.”
I pull my hand away, my skin stained red, and pick up a fresh handful. I move to the other side, where Silas has opened up the kid’s thigh.
“Please… God, please… I didn’t know!” the kid sobs, his head thrashing.
“You didn’t need to know,” I say, my voice turning into a razor.
I dump the salt into the deep cut on his leg and use my thumb to shove the crystals deep into the meat.
I go slow. I want him to feel every individual grain searing into his nervous system.
I want him to understand that my mercy is a myth.
He vomits then—a bitter, yellow spray that hits the concrete. I don’t flinch. I just keep my thumb buried in his leg, twisting it, feeling the wet crunch of the salt.
“Who sent you?” I ask, my voice dropping to a deathly quiet. “One name. And I’ll let Silas end this quickly. Otherwise, I’m going to spend the next four hours making sure you taste nothing but salt and your own blood.”
My phone buzzes again.
I’m calling the police, Peter. I mean it. Tell me where she is.
I look at the blood on my hands and think of Wendy’s pale, soft skin. The contrast is the only thing that makes me feel real.
The kid chokes out a name. A rival syndicate head from the North End. A man who thinks he can test my borders.
I pull my hand back and wipe the blood onto the kid’s shirt. “Thank you for your honesty,” I say, stepping back. I look at Silas. “Take his tongue. I don’t want him sharing my secrets with the devil.”
I walk out of the room, the kid’s renewed screams muffled by the heavy steel door. I don’t feel guilt. I don’t feel anything but a crushing, desperate need to be back in my bedroom.
I get into my car, the interior smelling of expensive leather and the faint, lingering scent of Wendy’s perfume from the ride over. My pulse finally begins to settle.
I’m a monster. I’ve always been a monster. But as I drive through the quiet streets toward my estate, I know one thing for certain.
She’s the only thing that makes the monster want to stay in the light. Even if I have to keep her in the dark to do it.
I pull the black sedan out of the warehouse lot, the tires crunching over gravel that sounds too much like the kid’s bones. I don’t turn on the music. I prefer the hum of the engine and the ringing in my ears—the aftermath of a scream is the only silence I ever truly trust.
My phone vibrates on the passenger seat. Persistent. Annoying. Like a fly buzzing against a windowpane it doesn’t realise is closed.
Answer me, Peter. I went to her apartment. Her window is broken. There’s glass everywhere. If you’ve done something… I’ll tell the Council. I’ll tell them you’ve lost it.
I glance at the screen, a ghost of a smirk pulling at my mouth. The Council. A collection of old men in silk suits who think they control the tide. They don’t realise I am the tide. And I’ve already washed over Wendy Darling, pulling her deep into the undertow where the light doesn’t reach.
I think about that broken window at her place.
I didn’t break it. She did. Three years ago, when she thought she could lock me out.
She’d climbed out onto the fire escape because she saw my car idling at the curb.
I watched her—this slip of a girl in a white nightgown, looking like a haunting.
She’d tripped, her elbow shattering the glass, and I’d been up those stairs before she could even gasp.
I remember the way I’d pinned her against the brick of the building, the city of Chicago breathing down our necks. I’d taken her bleeding arm, licked the copper tang of her skin, and whispered that the next time she ran, I’d take her legs.
She hadn’t run since. Not really. She just invited the fire in and pretended she wasn’t warming her hands by it.
Another buzz.
You always wanted to ruin her. Even when we were kids. I saw the way you looked at her across the dinner table. Like she was a meal. You’re sick, Peter. You’re fucking sick.
“Sick,” I mutter to the empty car.
It’s not sickness. It’s devotion. The world out there—the neon, the filth, the men I just left in that basement—it’s a meat grinder.
Wendy is too soft for the gears. She’s all silk and grey-storm eyes and a heart that still beats with a rhythm that isn’t dictated by fear.
I’m not ruining her; I’m preserving her.
I’m the cage that keeps the wolves away, even if the bars are made of my own sins.
I drive past the North End, my territory. Every corner is a reminder of what I’ve built. The shops that pay for my protection, the alleys where my shadows move with silent, lethal efficiency. This city is a kingdom of rot, and I am its crown prince.
I think of her back at the estate. My bed is a fortress.
The sheets are Egyptian cotton, the scent of my sandalwood and her lilies and the metallic smell of the night’s work all tangled together.
I can almost feel her skin under my palms—the way she shivered when I used the zip-ties.
She hates the restraint, but she loves the certainty of it.
She loves knowing that for the first time in her life, the choice has been taken away.
She doesn’t have to wonder what comes next. I am what comes next. Always.
Last chance. Tell me she’s safe.
I pick up the phone this time. My thumbs hover over the glass, the red light of a passing siren illuminating the ink on my knuckles.
She’s exactly where she belongs. Stop looking for her, Little Sister. You won’t like what’s left of her when I’m done.
I toss the phone back. It’s a declaration of war, but I’ve been at war since I was old enough to hold a blade.
I turn the corner onto the long, winding drive that leads to my house. The iron gates hiss open, a welcome home from the only thing that doesn’t demand my blood. I park the car and sit for a moment, letting the adrenaline of the warehouse fade into the cold, sharp hunger for the woman upstairs.
I look at my hands. There’s a smudge of the kid’s blood under my fingernail.
I don’t wash it off. I want her to see it.
I want her to know exactly what kind of monster she let into her bed.
I want her to smell the salt and the iron and realise that the man who just broke a boy in a basement is the only man who will ever be allowed to touch her.
She’s my ruin. She’s my religion. And tonight, I’m going to make her pray.