Peter #2
He looks like a man who has already accepted he’s going to hell and is just waiting for the gates to open.
“James,” I call out, my voice barely carrying over the roar of the downpour.
He stops. He doesn’t turn around, but his shoulders bunch. “Don’t,” he says, the word a flat, vibrating warning.
I catch up to him, my boots splashing in the deep puddles. My mind is a jagged mess of “what ifs.” I don’t know where she is. I don’t know if Viktor has her in a basement, if he’s moved her across state lines, or if she’s already been sold to someone I’ll never be able to reach.
The lack of information is a slow-acting poison. I keep picturing her face—not crying, but that terrifyingly blank look she gets when she’s given up.
“We hit the docks first?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady. “If Viktor is moving ‘high-value’ stock, that’s where the transport hubs are.”
Hook finally turns. His face is a ruin of wet hair and arctic-blue eyes that look completely hollowed out. The water drips off the end of his hook.
“We hit the club first,” he says. The silk is gone from his voice; there’s only the venom left. “Viktor’s second-in-command, Silas, keeps his books at The Gilded Cage. He’s the one who handles the logistics. He’s the one who knows which names are on the manifests.”
“And if he won’t talk?”
Hook steps closer, the smell of wet wool and gun oil rolling off him. He raises his left arm, the polished steel of the hook coming up to rest just beneath my jaw. It’s cold—colder than the rain.
“Then I’ll use this to unzip him until I find the page with her name on it,” he murmurs.
He drops his arm and heads for the blacked-out SUV idling at the end of the alley.
The engine’s low rumble vibrates in the pavement, a growl that matches the tension coiling in my gut.
I look back at the warehouse one last time.
It looks like a tomb. I can’t hear Tahlia anymore, and I don’t know which is worse—her screaming or the silence.
I climb into the passenger seat, the leather cold against my damp clothes. Hook guns the engine, the tires screaming against the wet asphalt as we pull out into the night.
I stare out the window at the blurred lights of the city.
Somewhere in that maze of concrete and shadow, Wendy is waiting.
She has to be waiting. I grip the handle of my door so hard the plastic creaks.
I don’t have a hook, and I don’t have James’s cold-blooded certainty, but I have a desperation that feels like it’s going to light me on fire.
“Drive faster,” I mutter.
Hook doesn’t respond. He just floors it, the speedometer climbing as we race toward a ghost.
The silence in the SUV is a living thing, bloated and heavy with the sound of the rain lashing against the windshield. The wipers rhythmic thwack-thwack feels like a countdown I can’t stop.
I’m vibrating. It’s not the cold and it’s not the shock from the staples—it’s the poison of the unknown. My mind is a fever dream of images I can’t scrub away. I see Wendy’s throat, pale and vulnerable, and I imagine a hand that isn’t mine wrapping around it.
I imagine her blue eyes turning glassy, looking for me in a room I can’t find.
Where is she? The question is a jagged loop in my skull. Is she breathing the same air I am right now, or is she trapped in some soundproof box beneath the city? I want to rip the dashboard out with my bare hands.
I want to swallow the sun so the whole world has to feel as dark as I do.
I’m becoming something I don’t recognise—a frantic, starving dog pacing a cage made of “what ifs.” If I find out someone looked at her too long, I’ll gouge their eyes out.
If they touched her, I’ll peel the skin from their fingers inch by agonising inch.
She’s mine. She’s the only thing that makes the blood in my veins feel like something other than battery acid.
I look over at Hook. He’s staring straight ahead, his jaw so tight I can hear the bone creak. The dash lights cast a ghoulish blue glow over his face, making the hook on his arm look like a jagged shard of frozen moonlight.
“How do you do it?” I ask, my voice cracking, raw with the deranged edge of a man losing his grip.
Hook doesn’t blink. “Do what?”
“Leave her like that.” I gesture vaguely back toward the warehouse, toward the memory of Tahlia’s screams. “She’s your entire world.
You just chained her to a radiator like a fucking animal and walked away.
Doesn’t it make you want to vomit? Doesn’t it make you want to turn this car around and just crawl into that dark room and never leave her side? ”
Hook’s hands tighten on the steering wheel until the leather groans. The speedometer climbs—eighty, ninety. He swerves around a sedan, the horn blaring behind us like a fading ghost.
“Drop it, Peter,” he says, his voice a low, dangerous rumble.
“I’m serious, James. I’m losing my fucking mind over a girl I can’t find, and you’ve got yours right there.
You’ve got her locked down where no one can touch her, where she’s safe, and you still look like you’re heading to your own execution.
Is it because you know she hates you now?
Is it the guilt, or is it just the fact that you’re a monster who’d rather have a bird in a cage than one that flies? ”
Hook slams his foot on the brake.
The SUV fishtails on the wet asphalt, the tires screaming before we skid to a bone-jarring halt on the shoulder of the highway. The silence that follows is deafening.
Hook turns to me. The look in his eyes isn’t ice anymore—it’s a fucking blizzard.
He lunges across the centre console, his good hand catching the front of my jacket and slamming me back against the door.
The surgical steel of the hook comes up, the tip of the blade pressing into the soft skin just beneath my ear.
“You don’t mention her name again,” Hook snarls, his face inches from mine, his breath smelling of bitter coffee and rage. “You don’t speculate on what I do to keep her breathing. You think you’re the only one drowning? You think I don’t hear those screams every time I close my eyes?”
“Then why—”
“Because I’m the one who knows what happens to girls like her when men like us get distracted!
” he roars, his voice shaking the cabin.
He presses the hook deeper, the sharp point drawing a single bead of blood that tracks down my neck.
“I am keeping her alive. If she hates me for it, if she spends the rest of her life trying to cut my throat, at least she’ll be alive to do it.
You? You let yours get snatched. So don’t you dare judge the way I hold onto mine. ”
He stares at me for a long beat, his chest heaving, the madness in his eyes reflecting the mess in my own. We’re both ruins. Two broken men racing through the rain to save things we’ve already destroyed.
He lets go of my jacket and shoves himself back into the driver’s seat. He wipes the rain and sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, his hand trembling.
“We’re going to find her,” he says, his voice dropping back into that terrifying, silken monotone.
“And when we do, you’ll realise there is no version of this story where we come out clean.
You want her back? Fine. But don’t expect her to thank you for the blood you’re about to bring home on your hands. ”
He shifts the car back into drive and floors it.
I touch the puncture wound on my neck, my fingers coming away red. I don’t care about being clean. I don’t care about being thanked. I just need her back. Even if she looks at me the way Tahlia looks at Hook. Even if I have to be her jailer to be her saviour.
“I just want her,” I whisper to the dark.