35. ~Vex~ #3
“It’s so brilliant,” I sigh, almost wistful, “I wish I’d thought of it myself.
Once I’m free, once my pack gives me full and final control of the assets you spent years trying to steal, I rather think I’ll write the man a very handsome check.
To keep the place running. A sanctuary like that deserves to endure—a quiet little academy for the next clever Omega ready to play the long game against the monster who hurt her, and collect every ounce of payback she’s due.
” I tap my chin, performing thoughtfulness.
“It’ll be such a perfect Bonnie and Clyde of it all.
Although I’d still adore a bit of groveling first—or, oh, an Alpha realizing his deranged little queen is utterly insane and adores her for it anyway.
We do love a tragic love story, don’t we, my loves? ”
It is the cue they have been waiting for.
Doc comes first, stepping out from behind the gaudy black throne with the unbothered calm of a man arriving for a scheduled appointment, fountain pen still tucked in his breast pocket as though he might prescribe my husband’s death by the milligram.
Riot prowls in next, peeling out of the shadows by the torture racks where he has evidently been waiting with the cages, knife-grey eyes alight and a slow, terrible grin spreading across his scarred face.
And last, Silas—resplendent, immaculate, dressed in something exquisite and funereal, as though he has arrived for a celebration of life, which, in the truest sense, he has.
Their scents flood the cold room and braid around me like a homecoming—blood orange and old books, woodsmoke and warm iron, cold lilies and graveyard cedar—and when they reach me they each take one quick, scanning inventory of my body, checking that the blood is truly none of mine, relaxing only when they’re certain.
Then they fan out and close around the swaying man on the floor, and I watch the precise moment he registers that he is no longer the one doing the cornering.
They do not rush.
That is the most chilling part, and the part I love best.
Doc crouches and lifts my husband’s wrist between two fingers, checking his pulse against the dose with the detached interest of a man confirming a calculation, already deciding precisely how long and how lucid he intends to keep him.
Riot simply stands over him and smiles, slow and patient and absolutely delighted, cracking a knuckle, a creature who has waited a long time to be pointed at the man who hurt his Pretty.
Silas drifts to the rack of cruel implements along the wall and trails one long pale finger across them like a connoisseur browsing a gallery, humming softly, selecting.
Three monsters my husband sneered at not five minutes ago, arranging themselves around him with the unhurried calm of professionals who have all the time in the world and every intention of using it.
“You drugged me,” he rasps, gaping up at the three of them ringed above him.
“Your first mistake,” I say, “was believing you’d cornered me.”
I shake my head, almost fond.
“Always underestimating your bride. I’m afraid that particular habit is what leads you to your grave.
” I turn to my men, suddenly bright and businesslike.
“I’m going to go get changed. Maybe take a little nap—it’s been a long morning.
And I’d love one more date in town before we go, to say our goodbyes to everyone and properly thank Barney. ”
They nod, indulgent and adoring, three lethal men agreeing to my errands as though we are discussing brunch and not the disposal of the man bleeding panic onto the floor between us.
“Take the nap,” Doc says, not looking up from his patient. “You’ve had a stimulating morning and the medication will crash hard in a few hours. Hydrate first.”
“She killed fifty men and you’re telling her to drink water,” Riot says, fondly disgusted.
“Fifty men is precisely why she needs the water.”
“He’s right, Pretty,” Riot concedes, then grins down at the man on the floor. “Go on. We’ve got a long, slow afternoon planned with our new friend here. Wouldn’t want you to miss your beauty rest on our account.”
“Do try not to make a mess Silas can’t make beautiful,” I say, and Silas presses a hand to his chest as though I’ve wounded him with the very suggestion that anything could be beyond his talents.
I clap my hands together, delighted, and crouch one final time to pat both of his cheeks. He is barely conscious now, eyelids sliding, but I know how this drug works—I designed the dose myself—and I know his hearing will be the very last thing to leave him. I lean close so he won’t miss a syllable.
“It was such fun, playing this game with you,” I murmur.
“What a shame you never once realized the truth of it: that the real stalker in this little romance was always me. Stalking your every move, learning your every habit, arranging every piece, so that I would be the one standing here at the end with the last laugh.” I giggle.
“I’d give you a farewell kiss, for old times’ sake.
But I’m a committed woman now, devoted to a pack that loves me without conditions, so you’ll simply have to content yourself with the memory of my lips from our wedding night—and let that carry you all the way down to the grave. ”
I release his chin, rise to my full height, and kick him square in the face.
He topples backward, sprawling onto the concrete, and I stand over him like a benediction.
There is a strange, clean symmetry to it.
He took everything from me on a wedding night—my family, my future, my belief that I was anything more than a transaction—and now I take everything from him on the morning he was so certain he’d reclaim me.
He turned our vows into a death sentence for the people I loved.
I have simply made the contract mutual.
Till death do us part, he promised once, smiling, with a knife already in his other hand.
I always was a woman who kept her promises.
“I’ll see you in hell. But don’t fret—my loves will take such good care of you in the meantime.
Lucien will see the dosage keeps it from being too agonizing.
Riot will make sure his methods aren’t too cruel.
” I glance at Silas, who is already smiling in serene anticipation.
“Silas and Crowe will see you adorned in the very prettiest flowers for your celebration of death. A pity there’ll be no one to mourn you—but rest assured, we’ll scatter your ashes somewhere appropriately close to the pits of hell.
” I straighten, smoothing my bloodied skirts.
“I suppose this is the ultimate move. Checkmate…from your favorite obsession.”
I turn and walk away, the click of my heels echoing through the cathedral of his defeat.
“No,” he slurs behind me, the word gone soft and shapeless at the edges. “Wait. Come… come back.”
My giggles swell into laughter—real, helpless, ringing—as the full truth of it crystallizes inside me, bright and permanent.
I was never the Harley to his Joker.
I was the Joker all along.
The agent of beautiful chaos, the one who wrote the punchline, the architect of the whole elaborate joke whose punch he is only now, too late, beginning to feel.
Now that I’ve won—truly, finally, irrevocably won—I am free to step into the life I built in the ashes of the one he stole.
By this time next week we’ll be in Monaco.
New names, new faces, new papers, our funds released and our pasts scrubbed clean down to the bone—a fresh beginning, every one of us reborn.
All of it owed to Blackthorn Institute: the unlikely cradle of empowerment for the psychotic Omegas of this world, the ones finally ready to dismantle the lives of the Alphas who dared to break them first.
Somewhere warm, I told Riot on a cliff at sunset, with a pinky hooked around mine.
Where the sun doesn’t apologize for itself, where we travel under names no one can trace and live the lives we actually deserve.
It is a promise then, I whispered, and meant it, and now—blood drying on my skirts, my husband’s screams a fading overture behind me—I get to keep it.
The hollow that defined me is full.
The board is cleared. The empire my father built and my husband died trying to steal will fall into my hands and mine alone, with three men beside me who would rather burn than cage me.
I did not survive my life.
I outplayed it.
There is a difference, and I have finally, at the cost of everything, earned the right to know it.
The screaming starts before I’ve even managed to pull the heavy door shut behind me.
Outside, in the clean salt air, one of my bodyguards waits with a bouquet cradled in his arms.
He bows and offers it up to me, and the scent of it reaches me first—roses and white lilies and something sweetly funereal underneath, an arrangement that could only have been designed by one particular pair of pale, devoted hands.
“The car to the safe house is ready, so you may change in peace, Miss Valentine,” he says. “These are from your men. To their Pretty Darling Psycho.”
I grin, accepting the flowers, ridiculously proud of our little code of a title.
“See to it my men reach the destination safely,” I instruct, lifting the blooms to breathe them in. “And don’t forget to remind our friends in the black market of my return. We’ll have to celebrate together, properly.” I pause. “Oh…and make certain Puddin is there.”
“Puddin, ma’am?” he asks, unable to help himself.
I giggle, turning proud eyes on him.
“My new pet hamster. My pack just got him for me—I found the little surprise waiting on the kitchen island this morning, a new photograph showing his little cage, the sweetest thing. But duty called before I could properly meet him, what with that lovely invitation to attend to.” I wave a dismissive, blood-flecked hand toward the warehouse and its muffled symphony of screams. “Now that it’s handled, we can make him a perfect little home in Monaco.
Tell me—do private jets allow hamsters?”
Puddin.
They named him Puddin, the absolute menaces, the only three souls alive who know what that name costs me—who know about the first Puddin, the small soft creature that was the one love of my childhood that never once betrayed me, the loss I carried like a stone in my chest for half my life.
They gave me back the one uncomplicated love the world ever stole, and they wrapped it in a photograph of the four of us so I’d understand, without a single word, that the loneliness is over.
That I have a pack now who will never once make me bury what I love.
I think of the little creature waiting in his cage on the kitchen island, blameless and sweet and entirely mine, and the joy of it sits so enormous in my chest I could weep, here in the salt air, with a dead man’s screams for music.
“Anything you wish, Miss Valentine.”
“Good.”
I turn away from the warehouse and begin to walk toward the waiting car, toward the future of Monaco, and onward where my men, my new name, and the rest of a life I clawed back from the grave one patient move at a time.
Behind me, my ex-husband’s screams rise and fall like the last movement of a song I composed myself, and I tip my face up to the warm and unfamiliar sun, and smile.
Vengeance is my new favorite obsession.
F.I.N.
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