Peter
The rain hasn’t stopped. If anything, it’s turned into a deluge, a violent downpour that feels like the sky is trying to scrub the filth of this city into the gutters.
I don’t walk back to the SUV; I storm. Every step is a jolt of fire through my stapled ribs, but I don’t give a fuck. I reach the passenger side and slam my fist into the roof. Thud. The metal groans, a dull, hollow sound that isn’t nearly loud enough to drown out the screaming in my head.
“Woods!” I roar, spinning around to face Hook as he walks calmly behind me, wiping a smudge of Silas’s blood off his cheek with a silk handkerchief. “The woods? He’s taking her to the fucking forest? To a goddamn altar?”
I don’t wait for him to answer. I kick the tire, the impact rattling my teeth. My vision is blurring, the neon lights of the club bleeding into long, jagged streaks of pink and red. I can’t breathe. Every time I inhale, I taste the copper of the lobby and the rot of the people inside.
“I’m going to kill him,” I whisper, my voice shaking so hard it sounds like someone else’s.
“I’m going to find Viktor and I’m going to peel the fucking skin from his bones while he’s still conscious.
I’m going to make him watch as I unmake everything he’s ever built.
I’ll start with his fingers. Then his eyes.
I want him to feel every second of the terror he put into her. ”
I turn and launch myself at the SUV again, slamming my elbows into the window.
I want the glass to shatter. I want to feel it cut me.
I want the physical pain to silence the deranged images in my head—Wendy in a white dress, Wendy in chains, Wendy being touched by a man who bought her like a piece of fucking furniture.
“Stop it, Peter.”
Hook’s voice is a bucket of ice water. He’s standing by the driver’s door, his key fob clicking. The headlights flash, illuminating the rain between us. He looks at me with a bored, detached expression that makes my blood boil.
“Stop it?” I scream, lunging toward him across the hood. “Stop it? He’s taking her to an estate in the middle of nowhere! We need to find Viktor! Viktor is the one who did this! He’s the head of the snake! I need to go back in there and make Silas talk about Viktor’s safe houses!”
“Silas told us what he knew,” Hook says, his voice flat and clinical.
He climbs into the driver’s seat, leaving the door open.
“Viktor is a broker, Peter. He’s already moved the asset.
You can skin him all you want, but it won’t put her back in your arms tonight.
The estate is the finish line. That’s where the buyer is. ”
“I don’t give a fuck about the buyer! I want Viktor’s head on a spike!” I slam my hands onto the hood, leaning in until I’m staring at him through the windshield. “He took her! He put her in that cage! I need to find him!”
Hook looks up at me, his arctic-blue eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp flick of annoyance. He reaches out, grabs the door handle, and slams it shut, but not before barking out a final word.
“Get in the fucking car, Peter. You’re having a tantrum like a child who lost his favourite toy. It’s pathetic.”
I rip the passenger door open and dive in, the leather soaking up the rain from my clothes. I turn to him, my chest heaving, my hands curled into white-knuckled fists. “A toy? You think this is a game to me? You think I’m just ‘having a meltdown’?”
Hook floors it. The SUV surges forward, the G-force slamming me back into the seat. He doesn’t look at me. He just grips the wheel with his good hand, his hook resting motionless on his thigh.
“I think you’re weak,” Hook says, his voice silken in venom.
“I think you’re letting your rage blind you to the logistics.
Viktor is a shadow. We could spend weeks hunting him through the city’s cracks.
Meanwhile, the man in the woods is currently putting his hands on what belongs to you.
If you’d rather hunt a broker than save your girl, then get out of my car and go back to the club. ”
I choke back a sob of pure, unadulterated fury. He’s right, and I fucking hate him for it. I want to hit him. I want to grab that surgical steel hook and rip it off his arm.
“I’m going to kill them both,” I growl, staring out the window at the dark trees starting to blur past as we leave the city limits. “The broker. The buyer. Everyone who stood in the room while she was auctioned. I’m going to burn that estate until there’s nothing left but ash.”
“Good,” Hook murmurs, the speedometer hitting a hundred. “Hold onto that. But keep the theatrics to yourself. I don’t have the patience for a little girl meltdown while I’m trying to drive.”
I sink into the seat, the darkness of the forest closing in around the car.
The rain is quieter here, muffled by the canopy of trees.
It feels like we’re driving into the mouth of a beast. I look at my hands—the knuckles are split and bleeding from hitting the car.
I lick the blood off. It tastes like iron.
It tastes like the promise I’m making to the man at the end of this road.
I’m coming, Wendy. And God help anyone standing between us.
The SUV is a pressurised cabin of hate, the engine a low-frequency growl that matches the vibration in my teeth. The city is a smudge in the rearview mirror, and the trees are closing in like the walls of a cell.
Then, the console screen glows. Unknown.
Hook’s hand doesn’t even shake as he taps the speaker icon.
The sound of a lighter flicking open fills the car, followed by a long, slow exhale of smoke. Then comes that voice—a dry, aristocratic rasp that makes my skin crawl with the phantom sensation of insects.
“James,” Viktor purrs. “And little Peter. Since when did the King and his shadow become such fast friends? I thought you’d be at each other’s throats by now. It’s a touching display of solidarity. Almost enough to make me sentimental.”
“Viktor,” Hook says, his voice so low it’s almost a whisper. “I’m going to find a way to keep you alive after I’ve removed your heart. I want to see how long you can stare at the hole in your chest before the light goes out.”
Viktor laughs. It’s a rich, genuinely amused sound.
“Still the romantic, James. But you’re distracted.
And Peter…” He pauses, and I can practically hear him smiling through the phone.
“Back from the dead, boy. I have to say, your timing is impeccable. You rose just in time to miss the best parts of her.”
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” I scream, lunging toward the dashboard as if I could throttle the signal. “I’m going to tear your world apart! Where is she? Give her back to me!”
“Give her back?” Viktor’s voice drops, becoming intimate, disgusting.
“She’s not a library book, Peter. She’s a masterpiece.
And masterpieces are meant to be enjoyed.
You should have seen her an hour ago. We had to…
prep her for the transition. A little something in the veins to keep her compliant.
Heroin is such a beautiful conductor for a voice like hers.
She doesn’t scream anymore—she sings. A low, thrumming hum that vibrates right against your skin when you’re deep inside her. ”
My stomach turns over, a violent surge of bile hitting the back of my throat. I can see it. I can see her eyes blown out, her body limp and heavy, that needle-track ruin on her pale arm.
“She has a very specific way of breaking,” Viktor continues, his voice conversational, clinical.
“That tight, desperate heat of her… it felt like she was trying to swallow me whole just to make it stop. I almost kept her for myself. But the buyer? He offered a figure that even I couldn’t ignore.
Fifty million for a widow in chains. Can you believe it?
She’s the most expensive thing I’ve ever sold.
And she was worth every cent of the commission. ”
Hook’s knuckles are white on the wheel, the surgical steel of his hook vibrating with the tension in his arm. He doesn’t look at me, but I can see the vein in his temple throbbing.
“You’re a dead man, Viktor,” Hook says, the silk finally stripped away, leaving only the jagged iron.
“Maybe,” Viktor says, the lighter flicking again.
“But I’m a rich dead man who knows exactly how your girl tastes.
She’s at the estate, boys. The altar is set.
The buyer is waiting to see if his fifty million was well spent.
Don’t be late for the ceremony. I’d hate for you to miss the moment she finally forgets your names. ”
The line goes dead.
The silence that follows is a physical blow. I’m staring at the blank screen, my breath coming in short, jagged hitches. My mind is a scorched-earth map of madness. Heroin. Fifty million. Sings. The words are branding themselves into my brain.
“He touched her,” I whisper, my hands shaking so hard I can’t close them into fists. “He used her and he drugged her and he sold her like she was fucking cattle.”
I turn to Hook, my eyes wide and wild. “Did you hear him? Did you hear what he did to her?”
Hook doesn’t answer. He just shifts the car into a lower gear and slams his foot on the gas. The SUV screams as it hurtles into the heart of the forest, the headlights cutting through the rain like twin blades.
“I heard,” Hook says, his voice a flat, dead thing. “And now, we aren’t just going for a rescue, Peter. We’re going to make sure that for fifty million dollars, the buyer gets exactly what he paid for.”
“What’s that?” I rasp.
Hook looks at me, and for the first time tonight, there’s no mockery in his eyes. Only a reflection of the same murderous ruin that’s eating me alive.
“A goddamn bloodbath.”
The silence following Viktor’s laugh is worse than the explosion at the club. It’s a vacuum that sucks the air right out of my lungs, leaving me gasping in the dark.