Chapter One #2
I looked up from my tablet, finally catching Ravik’s eye across the table. His glare could’ve melted through brick. Haze looked entirely too proud of himself.
I set the tablet down and took a sip of coffee before offering my contribution to the disaster.
“Maybe next time, I don’t agree with a protection detail that involves an NDA and a hot tub.”
Haze choked on a laugh. Micha snorted. Ravik muttered something dark in another language and made a mental note to kill us all in our sleep.
I went back to my notes. The meeting is officially back on track.
He just shifted his attention to me with that subtle command only he could pull off.
“Mm.” His voice was low, clipped. “You good with the Valenko stuff?”
I set my tablet down, stretching out my fingers for a second before replying. “Just tying up the reporting. Our client ghosted as soon as his brother got extradited. Probably halfway to Belize with a fake mustache and a burner phone by now.”
Micha nodded once. That was all he needed.
From the corner, Haze flipped his knife once more, then called out, “If we ever find him, dibs on asking what alias he picked. I’m betting on something dramatic. Like ‘Sebastian Falcon.’”
Ravik didn’t look up. “That’s a stripper name.”
“That’s an aspiration,” Haze shot back, deadly serious.
I just rubbed my temple and went back to typing. Gods help that bastard we were hunting next, because this was the team coming for them.
I sat back and let the silence hold, piecing through the threads in my head.
We’d been watching the patterns shift. More movement underground, missing persons, and names that didn’t appear in any system.
The kind of things that pointed to a black ops operation that either went sideways…
or was never supposed to be tracked in the first place.
Then Rosetti called. And Rosetti doesn’t call unless there’s something that needs tearing down.
We’d worked with Kingston before. Rosetti Grey didn’t call unless something was bleeding—or about to.
“Any word from Rosetti yet?” I asked, not really expecting anything new.
Micha barely glanced up from his tablet. “Nothing direct. Adrienne sent a message through the formal channel. Wants to schedule a sit-down once we’re clear.”
“Sounds like a party,” Haze drawled from his spot on the floor. Knife flipping between his fingers. We’ve learned over time together. He didn’t know how to sit still without a weapon. “Bet it comes with champagne and a body count.”
“Depends who’s hosting,” Ravik said without looking up.
“This is the kind of job that will leave a mess behind,” Haze continued, stretching like a cat in a sunbeam. “I can smell the blood already.”
“Means it’s real,” I said, tapping the edge of my tablet. “Someone’s trying hard to keep it quiet.”
“It also means we will be a target and they will try to stop us,” Micha added, almost like he was hoping they’d try.
I let out a slow breath and leaned back in my chair, letting the quiet settle for a moment.
We’d been circling the same puzzle for months, whispers about auction rings, omega disappearances, black ops ghosts that didn’t officially exist. Most of it sounded like the usual paranoid garbage until Rosetti reached out.
It felt like something was shifting. The kind of shift you felt in your gut before everything broke open. And underneath all that, something low and sharp and thrumming in the blood. It almost feels like bloodlust.
Odette
August 20th
4:43 P.M
The music was too loud, but I needed it that way.
It slammed through the garage, vibrating in my ribs and rattling the tools on the workbench. Something harsh and wordless, guitars screaming, bass snarling, drums pounding like fists on a locked door.
It filled the space like armor. Poured into every corner and wrapped itself around me, louder than the silence that usually lived here. Louder than the memory still clawing at the edges of my mind.
I didn’t want to hear my thoughts. I didn’t want to hear myself.
The heat outside was suffocating, thick with late-summer humidity, but I didn’t feel it.
The sweat on my skin had nothing to do with the temperature.
I kept working, stone dust clinging to my arms and my chest, streaking the curve of my neck like ash.
I didn’t wipe it away. Let it settle. Let it cover me.
Dust drifted through the sunbeams slicing in from the open garage door, soft and slow. It made everything look almost gentle, like the world was holding its breath. Like I wasn’t splintering behind my ribs.
The garage had become my whole world, the only place where my skin didn’t feel too tight, where the ghosts were quieter.
Where I could carve the pain out of me, one strike at a time.
Steel beams above me, concrete beneath my boots, and marble everywhere in between.
There were chunks of it, broken and waiting to be shaped into something that made sense.
My hands ached from how hard I was gripping the chisel. My boots were scuffed and stained with old pigment. My tank top clung to me, damp with sweat and effort. My old cutoffs were streaked with red from the iron dust, and my thighs burned from crouching too long, but I didn’t stop. Couldn’t.
Because stopping meant thinking.
And thinking meant remembering.
And remembering...
No.
I slammed the mallet down again, the crack of metal on stone swallowed by the music. A chip of marble flew past my cheek. I didn’t flinch. This was the only place I still felt like I belonged to myself. Everywhere else, I was just a shell, still wearing my name.
The sculpture in front of me wasn’t just halfway done—she was emerging.
Not delicately. Not with grace. She was clawing her way out of the marble like she had been buried alive inside it, fighting with every fiber of her imagined body to be free.
Her form was rough in places, but her intent was clear.
She was a woman—naked, fragile, furious.
Kneeling, yes, but not in submission. This wasn’t a posture of surrender.
It was resistance. Her back arched, shoulders tense, wrists bound by thick, unpolished marble chains that coiled down from her arms into the unfinished base like they were trying to drag her back down.
Her face was tilted toward the ceiling, her mouth open in a scream I could almost hear if I looked too long. Her eyes were hidden behind her hands, as if she couldn’t bear to see what was coming next, or maybe she already had. Maybe she’d seen everything and couldn’t face it again.
I clenched my jaw and brought the chisel down hard.
The sharp crack echoed off the steel beams, a sound I’d learned to love.
A thin flake of stone snapped away from her shoulder and skittered across the floor like it had somewhere else to be.
I leaned in, brushing the dust from her ribs with the side of my hand, and let my voice slip out before I could stop it.
“You’re almost there,” I whispered to her. “Just a little further, sweetheart.”
I didn’t need sketches for this one. I didn’t plan her, didn’t measure or mark.
I knew her. I knew the curve of her back, the tension in her jaw, the way her scream should live in the hollow of her throat.
I saw her at night, in flashes between sleep and the memories that haunted me.
She was there in every panic-sharp breath, every cold sweat, every time I sat bolt upright with my hand clenched over my chest like I was still chained to that basement floor.
She wasn’t just a sculpture. She was me.
Or maybe she was what was left of me. The part of me that had crawled out of that darkness and didn’t know how to stop fighting, even when there was no one left to hit.
The music slammed through the garage again, louder this time, loud enough to make the overhead fluorescents rattle slightly in their fixtures.
I didn’t flinch. The noise was my shield, a wall of sound I could hide behind.
I could keep moving as long as the music was louder than the thoughts. Keep carving. Keep existing.
I worked until my arms ached, my fingers cramped around the chisel, and my breath came short with the effort. My tank top clung to my skin, soaked with sweat, and the marble dust painted my arms, chest, and face like ash. I didn’t stop. I wouldn’t.
Some people healed with time.
I carved through mine.
I never meant for this piece to exist. She wasn’t a commission or a concept. I didn’t dream her up—I birthed her. She came out of me like a wound splitting open, and once she started taking shape, I couldn’t stop. She had to exist. She needed out just as badly as I did.
Now, I come out here every day. Chipping away at her prison while trying to forget mine.
Some days, I hated her. I hated her for being so vulnerable, so trapped. I hated that I saw my own weakness in her every line.
Other days, I wanted to crawl inside her and scream with her. I wanted to let her carry my fury, let her bones break instead of mine.
But today... Today I just wanted to finish her.
I wanted to give her something I never got.
Closure.
Freedom.
A sense of fucking control.