Wendy
The world is a blurring, vibrating cage.
The metal floor of the elevator is ice against my spine, the vibration of the cables humming through my skull like a swarm of angry hornets. Felix is a heavy, suffocating weight between my thighs, his movements jagged and frantic, a desperate attempt to reclaim a territory he’s already lost.
Through the white-hot static of the cocaine, a single word begins to pulse. It’s not a thought; it’s a heartbeat.
Peter.
The name is a mantra, a jagged piece of glass I’m clutching in the dark of my mind.
Peter. Peter. Peter. I say it behind my teeth, tasting the copper of my bitten lip.
The drug wants to sweep me away, to drown me in the gold-leaf luxury and the chemical numbness, but the sound of that name is a tether.
It’s the smell of our kitchen. It’s the weight of his hand on the small of my back. It’s the only thing that’s real.
The elevator doors hiss shut, sealing out the sounds of the war upstairs. My stomach plummets as the lift jerks into motion, the sensation of falling making the nausea roll in my gut.
Felix lets out a manic, jagged laugh, his head lolling back as he thrusts into me one last time, pinning my wrists so hard against the vibrating metal I think the bone might snap.
“See, baby?” he pants, his eyes wide and glazed with a terrifying, bloated ego. “You see? They can burn the house down. They can kill every man I own. But you? You belong to me. You’re in my veins now. You’re in my walls. There is no Peter. There is only this. There is only me.”
He leans down, his teeth grazing my ear, his voice a distorted growl of triumph. “I bought you. I broke you. And I’m going to keep you in the dark until you forget what the sun looks like.”
He’s so convinced of his own godhood. He’s preening in the wreckage of his life, his ego expanding to fill the small, cramped space of the lift. He looks down at me, waiting for me to shatter, waiting for the final “no” to turn into a “yes.”
Then, the world dies.
The hum of the motor cuts out mid-note. The mechanical whine stops. The elevator jerks violently, throwing Felix’s weight hard against me as we stall between floors.
And then, the lights go out.
The darkness is absolute. It’s a thick, heavy velvet that swallows his face, swallows the shame, swallows the room.
“Fuck!” Felix screams, the sound ricocheting off the metal walls. “What? No! Fuck!”
He scrambles off me, his boots scuffing the floor as he fumbles for the control panel.
I can hear his frantic, shallow breathing—the sound of a man who realised his cage has two sides.
He’s slamming his fist against the buttons, the clack-clack-clack of the plastic the only sound in the suffocating black.
“The power… they cut the fucking power!” he shrieks, his voice rising into a thin, panicked wail.
In the dark, I don’t move. I lie there, naked and bruised on the cold metal, and I feel the first spark of clarity pierce through the cocaine haze.
The drug is still there, making my heart race, but the fear is gone. Because I know what the dark means. The dark is where the predators play. And Felix? He’s just a man with a check book.
I smile. It’s a slow, jagged thing, hidden by the shadows.
Above us, there’s a metallic groan. The sound of heavy, industrial steel being forced. Creeeeeak.
The outer doors on the floor above are being pried open. A sliver of light—not the sickly yellow of the estate, but the cold, clinical beam of a tactical flashlight—cuts through the gap in the elevator ceiling.
Two hands appear. Large, scarred, familiar hands. They grip the inner doors of the lift and slide them back with a terrifying, effortless strength.
The light floods in, blindingly bright.
I squint, my breath catching in my throat. There, framed against the opening at the top of the stalled car, is a silhouette I’d know in the afterlife.
Peter.
He’s covered in soot and blood, his tactical gear torn, his hair plastered to his forehead with rain and sweat.
He looks like he’s climbed out of the centre of a volcano.
He looks at me, and for a second, the murderous rage in his eyes vanishes, replaced by a look of such raw, aching relief that it hurts to watch.
He ignores Felix, who is cowering in the corner of the lift. He just looks at me, lying on the floor, and his face breaks into that lopsided, beautiful smile—dimples and all.
“Hello, darling,” he says, his voice a low, gravelly caress. “I believe you’re wearing my ring.”
Peter doesn’t wait for an answer. He doesn’t use the ladder. He drops through the opening like a falling star, a solid weight of vengeful muscle that hits the metal floor with a boom that echoes up the shaft.
Felix scrambles back, his hands out, his face a pale, sweating mask of terror. “Peter! Peter, wait—brother, listen to me—”
The word brother hits the air like a spark in a gas-filled room.
Peter is on him before Felix can draw another breath. He doesn’t use his gun. He doesn’t even use a knife. He grabs Felix by the throat and slams him into the back wall of the elevator with enough force to dent the steel. The sound of Felix’s skull hitting the metal is wet and heavy.
“Brother?” Peter’s voice is a low, vibrating growl, a sound torn from the throat of something that isn’t human anymore. “You think you’re my brother? You touched her, Felix. You put a needle in her. You put your filthy, pathetic hands on my wife.”
Peter’s fist connects with Felix’s jaw. Crack. Bone splinters. Felix’s head snaps to the side, a spray of blood and a broken tooth hitting the elevator floor near my hand. Peter doesn’t stop. He isn’t hitting him to kill him; he’s hitting him to break him apart piece by piece.
He grabs Felix’s hand—the one that was just inside me—and pins it against the metal wall.
“You used these?” Peter asks, his eyes wide and leaking a terrifying, manic grief. “You used these to touch what belongs to me?”
With a sickening, methodical twist, Peter begins to snap Felix’s fingers back, one by one. The sound is like dry kindling breaking in a fire. Snap. Snap. Snap. Felix’s screams are high-pitched, echoing off the walls, filling the small space until it’s all I can hear.
“Peter, stop! Please!” Felix wails, his pride evaporated into a puddle of cowardice. “It was business! Just business!”
“Business?” Peter roars, his face inches from Felix’s, his spit flecking the man’s bloody skin. “She is my soul! She is the only reason the sun comes up! And you treated her like a manifest line item?”
Peter grabs a handful of Felix’s hair and slams his face into the control panel. The emergency lights flicker, strobing over the violence. Peter pulls him back and drives a knee into Felix’s ribs. I hear the snap of the cage, the air whistling out of Felix’s lungs in a bloody wheeze.
Peter isn’t done. He’s spiralling, his movements jagged and obsessive. He reaches down, grabbing the jagged piece of the broken elevator gate—a shard of sharp, industrial steel.
“I remember when we were kids,” Peter whispers, his voice suddenly, terrifyingly quiet as he presses the shard against Felix’s thigh. “I remember when I thought you were the only person in the world who had my back. I would have died for you, Felix.”
He plunges the steel into Felix’s leg, twisting it slow. Felix’s howl is a jagged rip in the dark.
“Now,” Peter says, leaning his weight into the shard, watching the blood soak through Felix’s expensive trousers. “I’m going to watch you bleed out in the dark, and I’m going to make sure the last thing you see is the man you betrayed taking back what’s his.”
Peter turns his head slightly, his eyes finding mine on the floor. The murderous vacuum in his gaze softens for a fraction of a second, a flicker of the husband I know peeking through the monster he’s become.
“Don’t look, Wendy,” he breathes, even as he reaches out to snap Felix’s other wrist. “Close your eyes, darling. I’m almost finished with the trash.”
Above us, Hook’s boots thud on the floor of the hallway. He looks down through the hatch, his surgical steel hook glinting in the tactical light. He watches the carnage for a beat, his face a mask of dark, bored approval.
“He’s getting a bit messy, isn’t he?” Hook calls down, his voice silken with wit. “I told him the leather was a bitch to clean.”
Peter doesn’t look at Hook. He doesn’t look at anything but the man who used to share his bread and now shares his nightmares.
“Look at me, Felix,” Peter commands, his voice a gravelly, haunted rasp.
Felix tries to lift his head, his face a pulpy, unrecognisable mask of purple hematomas and shattered bone.
He gurgles, a thick bubble of crimson foam bursting on his lips.
Peter reaches down and grabs the heavy brass paperweight that had fallen from the desk earlier, its edges sharp and unforgiving.
He doesn’t use a gun. A bullet is too clean. A bullet is a mercy Felix doesn’t deserve.
Peter brings the brass down on Felix’s kneecap.
The sound of the patella exploding is like a gunshot muffled by wet velvet.
Felix’s mouth opens in a silent, agonising O, his lungs failing to find the air to scream.
Peter does it again. And again. He’s unmaking him, turning the man into a collection of broken parts.
“This is for the powder,” Peter snarls, slamming the brass into Felix’s shoulder.
Crack. “This is for the cage.” Crack. The elevator is a slaughterhouse.
Blood is everywhere—splattered across the brushed steel walls, pooling in the grooves of the floor, soaking into the knees of Peter’s tactical pants.
It smells of copper and bowels and the cold, metallic tang of death.
With a final, guttural roar of pure grief, Peter drops the brass.
He reaches out with his bare hands, grabbing Felix’s head, and with a sickening, wet thud, he slams the man’s skull into the corner of the elevator frame.
Once. Twice. On the third hit, there’s a sound like a melon dropping on pavement.
Felix’s body goes limp. His eyes stay open, staring at nothing, the light in them extinguished by the weight of a husband’s vengeance. Peter stands over him, his chest heaving, his hands dripping red, looking like a demon born from the very darkness Felix tried to hide us in.
The silence that follows is deafening.
Peter turns slowly. The rage in his eyes is still there, simmering beneath the surface, but as his gaze lands on me—naked, shivering, and covered in the residue of my own ruin—the monster shatters.
The brass weight clatters to the floor.
“Wendy,” he breathes, his voice breaking.
The clarity hits me like a physical blow.
The cocaine is still screaming in my veins, but the reality of the blood on his face and the body at his feet breaks the last of my composure.
I don’t see the hero. I see the man who wasn’t there when the needle went in.
I see the man who let the world take me.
“You left me!” I shriek, the sound torn from the deepest part of my lungs. I try to crawl away from him, my limbs tangling on the cold metal. “You let him! You weren’t there! I waited and I waited and he… he put his hands… he put the white… Peter, you left me!”
The sob that rips out of me is a jagged, ugly thing. I’m shaking so hard I can’t breathe, the trauma of the last few hours finally collapsing on top of me.
Peter doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t apologise with words; he moves.
He crosses the small space in a single stride and scoops me up into his arms. He doesn’t care that I’m naked.
He doesn’t care that he’s covered in the blood of his “brother.” He just pulls me against his chest, crushing me to the Kevlar and the heat of his skin.
“I know,” he sobs into my hair, his own tears tracking lines through the blood on his cheeks. “I know, darling. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I’ve got you. I’ve got you and I’m never letting go again.
He tucks my head under his chin, shielding me from the sight of Felix’s corpse. He’s shaking as much as I am, his grip so tight it almost hurts, but I need it. I need to feel the bone-crushing reality of him.
Above us, Hook clears his throat, his silhouette still framed by the hatch.
“As much as I enjoy a good domestic reconciliation,” Hook calls down, his voice dry and biting, “the police are about four minutes out and the estate is currently on fire. Might want to move the reunion to the car, Peter.”
Peter doesn’t look up. He just shifts my weight, his arms like iron bands around me, and begins to climb the emergency ladder with a strength born of pure desperation, carrying me out of the dark and back into the cold, cleansing rain.