Peter
The first thing I taste is copper. The second is the freezing, salt-crusted air of the Atlantic.
My lungs feel like they’ve been packed with jagged glass and set on fire.
Every breath is a jagged, shallow struggle against the void.
I try to move, to reach for the warmth that was just in my lap, but my arms are lead, pinned to a surface that vibrates with the low, rhythmic thrum of a heavy engine.
“Wen…dy…”
The name is a wet splutter, a spray of blood and bile that hits the front of my shirt. My eyes snap open, the world a blurring, spinning kaleidoscope of industrial greys and shadows. I’m not in the ballroom. There are no lilies here. There is only the smell of diesel, old iron, and the sea.
“Easy, boy. You’re leaking like a stuck pig on my favourite upholstery.”
The voice is like a serrated blade dragged over velvet. I blink, my vision finally tunnelling into focus. I’m lying on a medical cot inside a moving vehicle—a massive, armoured transport.
Standing over me is a nightmare I haven’t seen in three years. James Hook. He’s leaning against the ribbed steel wall of the van, his midnight coat open, the wicked, polished chrome of his hook catching the dim red tactical lights.
Behind him, leaning against the back doors with her arms crossed over a tactical vest, is Tahlia.
Even through the haze of blood loss, she’s unmistakable. Her blonde hair is pulled back into a messy, high knot, a few stray strands glowing like gold thread in the red light. She’s staring at me with that signature look of pure annoyance, her jaw working a piece of gum with aggressive apathy.
“He’s awake,” she snaps, her voice a sharp, biting chime. “Great. Can we drop him at a vet now? He’s getting blood on the floorboards and I’m the one who has to hose this thing out.”
“Patience, Tink,” Hook murmurs, not even looking back at her. “Our guest of honour has had a very long night. He’s forgotten his manners.”
Tahlia rolls her eyes so hard I’m surprised she doesn’t see her own brain. “His manners? Hook, he’s a Hale. They’re born without them. And if you call me Tink one more time, I’m going to use your hook to stir my coffee.”
Hook’s head snaps around, his blue eyes flashing with a sudden, lethal coldness.
“Careful, Tahlia. Don’t think for a second that because we’re in transit, I won’t bend you over this crate and remind you exactly who owns the air you breathe.
Behave. Or I’ll have the boys toss you out the back at sixty miles an hour. ”
Tahlia doesn’t flinch, but she blows a small, mocking pink bubble with her gum before popping it. She doesn’t say another word, but the “fuck you” is written in the sharp line of her shoulders.
I groan, my head lolling to the side as I look at Hook. My brain is a fog of pain and morphine, but the reality of his presence hits me like a freight train.
“Fuck,” I rasp, the word ending in a choked cough. “If you’re here… if I’m in your cage… it must be bad.”
“Bad?” Hook lets out a dry, hollow laugh, stepping closer until his hook is inches from my throat. “Peter, your house is a bonfire. Your Council is a pile of ash. And the North End just pulled off the heist of the century.”
I freeze. The pain in my chest vanishes, replaced by a cold, hollow vacuum. I scramble to sit up, my hand flying to the empty space beside me on the cot.
“Where is she?” I snarl, my voice a viral, guttural mess. I grab Hook’s lapel with a bloody hand, ignoring the way Tahlia shifts her grip on her submachine gun. “Hook! Where is Wendy?”
Hook’s expression shifts. The mockery fades, replaced by a grim, clinical stillness. He reaches down, his gloved hand removing mine from his coat with a firm, crushing strength.
“They took her, Peter. Snatched her right out of the smoke while I was busy keeping your heart beating.”
The world stops. The red lights, the vibrating floor, the sound of Tahlia’s gum—it all disappears. I look down at my hands. They’re covered in her blood. And then I look at my own finger, where the secondary receiver for her ring is embedded.
The light isn’t red anymore. It’s a flickering, dying amber.
“Find her,” I whisper, my eyes locking onto Hook’s with a desperation that makes him recoil a fraction. “Find her, James, or I swear to God I’ll burn the docks to the waterline with you on them.”
I try to lunge off the cot, my muscles screaming, my vision white with a sudden, jagged flare of agony. I don’t care about the hole in my chest; I care about the empty air where she should be.
“Wendy!” I roar, but it comes out as a wet, broken sound.
I get halfway up before three of Hook’s men—massive, faceless shadows in tactical gear—slam me back down. My head hits the metal frame with a sickening clang, and for a second, the world turns into a grey static.
“Let go of me!” I snarl, my fingers clawing at the black Kevlar of their vests. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill all of you! Hook, tell them to get their fucking hands off me!”
Hook doesn’t move. He stands there, silhouetted against the vibrating steel of the van, watching me struggle like a pinned insect. He steps forward, the tip of his hook glistening in the red light as he presses it firmly against the centre of my bandaged chest, right over the wound.
“Don’t be fucking stupid, Peter,” he says, his voice a low, lethal vibration.
“Look at you. You can’t even hold your own head up, and you think you’re going to storm a North End stronghold?
You’d be a corpse before you cleared the driveway.
You think you can save anyone like this? You’re a liability, not a King.”
“I don’t give a fuck!” I scream, the rage boiling over, hot and bitter as bile.
I grab the shaft of his hook, the cold metal biting into my bloody palm.
“Why did you leave her? Why did you fucking leave her there, James? You had the guns! You had the men! You should have let me rot on that floor and taken her! You should have left me!”
Tahlia lets out a sharp, mocking breath from the corner. “Yeah, well, some of us have a thing for ‘bad form,’ Peter. Don’t flatter yourself. We only saved you because the Boss has a debt.”
“Shut up, Tink,” Hook snaps, his eyes never leaving mine. He leans in closer, his face inches from mine, the scent of expensive tobacco and gunpowder rolling off him.
The pressure of the hook on my chest increases, forcing the air out of my lungs. I stop struggling, my body trembling with a mix of shock and pure, unadulterated fury.
“You want to know why I saved you?” Hook whispers, his voice dropping to a haunting register.
“Because of what that girl did. While the world was ending, while the bullets were flying and the ceiling was coming down, she wasn’t looking for the exit.
She was cradling your pathetic, dying head in her lap like you were the only thing left on earth. ”
My heart stutters. I can feel the tracker ring on my finger pulsing, a ghost of her heartbeat.
“She looked me in the eye,” Hook continued, a strange, dark glimmer of respect crossing his features.
“Covered in your blood, shaking like a leaf, and she didn’t ask for her life.
She begged for yours. She said, ‘Save him. He’s my husband.
’ And then, right before they winched her into the dark… she said she loved you.”
The words hit me harder than the bullet did. I go still, the rage draining out of me, replaced by a cold, devastating clarity. She loved me. She said it while I was dying. She said it to the man with the hook.
“She’s yours, Peter,” Hook says, pulling his blade back and straightening his coat.
“She’s branded to you in ways I don’t even think you understand yet.
So you’re going to lie there, you’re going to let my medics stitch your miserable hide back together, and you’re going to behave.
Because if you die now, you’re proving her a liar. And I hate a liar.”
I lie back, the cold metal of the cot biting into my spine. I look up at the red lights, my breath hitching in my throat.
I love you.
She’s out there. Somewhere in the dark, wearing a ruined white dress, waiting for the man who promised he’d never lose her.
“Get the kit,” I rasp, my eyes turning into bottomless pits of obsidian as I look at Tahlia. “Stitch me up. No anaesthesia. I want to feel every fucking second of it. I need to remember why I’m going to kill every man who touched her.”
The van screeches to a halt, the heavy doors throwing open to reveal the skeletal, rain-slicked ribs of an abandoned shipyard. I’m hauled out on the cot, the movement jarring my ribs, sending a fresh wave of agony through my chest that makes the world tilt and grey out.
“Into the shed,” Hook commands. “And bring the whiskey. He’s going to need something to bite on.”
They dump me onto a rusted metal table in a room that smells of saltwater and industrial cleaner.
The light above is a single, flickering bulb that hums like a hornet’s nest. Hook’s medic—a man with dead eyes and hands that move with the cold precision of a butcher—slices my charcoal suit away until I’m bare from the waist up.
The wound is a jagged, purple-rimmed crater, weeping a steady stream of dark blood onto the cold steel.
“No morphine,” I rasp, my head thrashing against the table as the medic swabs the area with iodine. The sting is a lightning strike. “I told you. I want to feel it.”
“Suit yourself, Hale,” Hook says, leaning against the doorframe, crossing his arms. He looks at me with a detached, clinical curiosity. “Tink, hold his shoulders. I don’t want him thrashing and ruining the needlework.”
Tahlia sighs, stepping forward. Her small, strong hands clamp down on my collarbones, pinning me to the rusted metal. She doesn’t look sympathetic; she looks bored, but her grip is like iron. “Don’t bleed on my boots, Peter. I just polished them.”
The medic doesn’t offer a warning. He reaches into the wound with a pair of long, silver forceps.
I seize. My spine arches off the table, the muscles in my neck roping until they feel ready to snap.
The sound of metal scraping against my own bone echoes in the small room—a wet, horrific clicking that makes my stomach turn.
I can feel the lead bullet, flattened and jagged, lodged deep against my third rib.
I don’t scream.
I bite down on my tongue until the taste of my own blood fills my mouth, my jaw locked so tight I can hear my teeth grinding. My knuckles are white where I’m gripping the edges of the table, my fingers denting the rusted tin.
“Steady,” the medic mutters. He gives a sharp, violent tug.
A guttural, choked-back animal sound escapes my throat as the bullet is ripped free. It clatters into a metal tray with a ringing ping that sounds like a death knell. Blood geysers up, hot and thick, splashing onto Tahlia’s tactical vest and my own face.
“He’s going into shock,” Tahlia says, her voice flat, though I see her eyes widen just a fraction as she looks at the amount of blood.
“He’s fine,” Hook drawls, stepping closer, his hook glinting under the bulb. “He’s fuelled by ego and bad intentions. Keep going.”
Next comes the needle. I feel every single puncture.
The medic sows my flesh back together with thick, black silk thread, pulling the skin taut until it burns.
It feels like he’s embroidering a map of my own failures directly into my chest. I stare at the ceiling, my vision fracturing into a thousand white sparks, and I think of Wendy.
I think of her in that white dress. I think of the way she looked at me when she said she loved me. Every time the needle pierces my skin, I imagine it’s the price I have to pay to get back to her.
One stitch for her tears. Two for the blood on her lace.
Three for the bastards who took her.
By the time the last knot is tied, I’m drenched in a cold, oily sweat, my chest heaving with shallow, agonising breaths. I’m a patchwork of scars and fresh embroidery, a broken king held together by spite and black thread.
Hook steps over, looking down at the handiwork. He reaches out with his hook and taps the red-glowing ring on my finger.
“You’re a stubborn son of a bitch, I’ll give you that,” Hook says, a hint of genuine dark respect in his tone. “Now, get up. The tracker is pinging a warehouse on the South Side. If we move now, we might find her before they start breaking the pieces they can’t sell.”
I roll off the table, my feet hitting the floor with a heavy, unstable thud. I stumble, my hand catching the edge of the metal, but I don’t fall. I look at Hook, my eyes burning with a lethal promise.
“They won’t break her,” I rasp, the words tasting like iron and vengeance. “Because by the time I’m through with them, there won’t be enough of them left to hold a hammer.”