Chapter 27
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
HALLOW
The air in the submersible is thick, tasting of expensive leather, and the lingering copper tang of the blood still drying on my skin. It’s a pressurised tomb, vibrating with the low, rhythmic hum of engines that sound like a heartbeat.
I’m sitting on a steel bench, wrapped in a black tactical blanket that feels like sandpaper against my raw, overstimulated nerves.
Jex is beside me, his shoulder a solid, burning heat against mine.
He’s finally dressed in the gear Ryker threw at us—all matte black and sharp edges—but his eyes are still fixed on me with that same starving, protective intensity.
And across from us, strapped into a high-tech medical chair, is the man who gave me life just so he could sell it.
He’s still awake. Ryker made sure of that. The silver-masked bastard is leaning over the “Father of the City,” his fingers moving with a terrifying, surgical grace as he removes the metal retractors from the old man’s eyes.
“There,” Ryker purrs, his voice echoing in the small cabin. “Now you can blink, you pathetic fuck. Don’t want your vision getting blurry. You need to see every second of what’s coming.”
Dad—I refuse to use his name, refuse to give him the dignity of an identity beyond the role he failed—lets out a wet, rattling gasp. His eyelids flutter, red-rimmed and raw, as he stares at the three of us. The terror in his gaze is the only thing keeping me warm.
“You…” he wheezes, his voice a broken crawl. “You’re… all… monsters…”
“We’re your monsters,” I snap, the words coming out as a jagged, crystalline hiss.
I stand up, the blanket sliding off my shoulders, leaving me in nothing but the black tactical vest Jex cinched over my bare chest. I walk toward the chair, my bare feet silent on the grated floor.
“You spent years pruning us. You cut away the soft parts, the weak parts, the parts that loved you. Did you think we’d just grow back into something pretty for your campaign posters? ”
I lean down, my face inches from his. I can smell the salt-water and the bile on his breath.
“You’re a fucking corpse, Dad. The world thinks you’re at the bottom of the harbour.
You have no office. No guards. No ‘Choir’ to hide behind.
” I reach out and grab his chin, my nails digging into the sagging skin of his jaw.
“You’re just a witness now. And I’m going to make sure you live a very, very long time to see exactly how much fun we can have in the dark. ”
Ryker laughs, a dry, melodic sound that makes the hair on my arms stand up. He walks over to a console and flicks a switch. A wall of monitors flickers to life, showing grainy, thermal feeds of the surface.
“Look at the screen, Father,” Ryker commands.
“The rescue teams are searching for your body. The city is in mourning. They’re calling you a hero who died trying to save his ‘distraught’ daughter.
It’s a beautiful lie. Almost as beautiful as the ones you used to tell me before you sent me into the furnace. ”
Jex stands up then, his presence filling the cramped space like a physical weight. He walks over to me, his hand settling on the back of my neck, his thumb tracing the line where the straps bruised me.
“He’s too quiet, Ryker,” Jex growls, his eyes locked on the old man’s trembling lips. “I think he needs to hear the music again.”
Jex leans over and grabs the medical shears from the tray. He doesn’t look at the old man’s face. He looks at me.
“He took your voice for ten years, Hallow,” Jex rasps, his eyes blown out with that dark, kinetic heat. “Tell me which part of him we should take first.”
I look at the man who sold me. I look at the man who burned. I look at the man who claimed me.
And for the first time, I don’t feel like a victim. I feel like the Architect.
“Start with his tongue,” I whisper, a slow, predatory smile spreading across my face. “He’s lied enough for one lifetime.”
Jex doesn’t hesitate. He moves with the mechanical precision of a man who has already rehearsed this butchery in his sleep. He grabs the heavy surgical forceps, the cold steel clinking against the tray, and shoves his knee into the old man’s chest to pin him against the chair.
“Open up, Dad,” Jex growls, the sound vibrating in the pressurised cabin. “Let’s see that silver tongue one last time.”
The old man’s eyes go wide, a frantic, rolling white as he thrashes against the leather restraints. A muffled, guttural scream dies in his throat as Jex’s fingers dig into his jaw, forcing his mouth open with a sickening crack of bone against cartilage.
I lean in closer, my breath hitching, my pussy throbbing in time with the panic radiating off the man who ruined me. The smell is intoxicating—sweat, terror, and the metallic tang of the abyss.
“Hold him, Ryker,” I whisper.
Ryker steps behind the chair, his gloved hands snapping around the old man’s forehead, pulling it back until his neck cords strain to the breaking point. The silver mask reflects the wet, pink interior of the mouth Jex has pried open.
Jex reaches in. The forceps bite down.
A horrific, wet gurgle erupts from the old man’s throat as Jex yanks the muscle forward. It’s a slick, red organ, pulsing with the life he used to dictate my ruin. Jex doesn’t use a scalpel. He uses the shears.
Snip.
The sound is thick—the sound of wet leather being torn.
A fountain of hot, dark blood sprays across Jex’s face and drips onto my bare chest, sizzling against my skin. The old man’s body goes rigid, his muffled scream turning into a bubbling, drowning sound as his mouth fills with his own life.
Jex tosses the piece of meat onto the floorboards. It twitches once, a useless scrap of flesh that will never tell another lie.
“He’s choking, Jex,” I moan, the sight of the blood coating my brother’s jaw making my head swim. I reach out, my fingers trembling as I smear the red spray across Jex’s lips. “He’s going to die too fast.”
“He isn’t going anywhere,” Ryker says, his voice flat and chilling. He reaches for a cauterising iron, the tip glowing a dull, angry orange. “I’ve spent five years learning how to keep a body alive when the soul wants to leave. He’s going to feel every single cut.”
The sizzle of the iron against the raw stump of the old man’s tongue fills the sub with a sweet, cloying stench of burning hair and meat. The old man’s eyes roll back in his head, his chest heaving in a frantic, silent rhythm.
Jex turns to me, his eyes dark voids of predatory hunger. He’s covered in our father’s blood, his chest heaving, the adrenaline making him look like a god of the slaughter. He grabs the back of my head, pulling me into a kiss that tastes like blood and victory.
“You hear that, Hallow?” he rasps against my mouth, his thumb dragging through the blood on my breast. “That’s the sound of the world finally being right.”
I look over Jex’s shoulder at the man in the chair—the weeping, bleeding wreck of the man who sold us. He’s staring at us, trapped in the light, forced to bear witness to the two monsters he spent a lifetime perfecting.
“Next are the fingers,” I whisper into Jex’s mouth, my hips grinding against his tactical belt. “I want to watch him lose the ability to sign another check. I want to hear the bones snap.”
Jex pulls back just enough to look at me, his face a mural of our father’s blood. He looks down at the old man’s hands—the hands that used to pat my head after a “client” left, the hands that signed the checks that kept the clinic’s lights on while they opened me up.
“The fingers,” Jex repeats, a dark, low-frequency hum in his throat. “Good choice, Hallow. Let’s see if he can still grasp the concept of consequence.”
He reaches for the heavy-duty trauma shears, the thick metal blades designed to cut through leather and bone. He grabs the old man’s right hand, forcing it flat against the cold, steel armrest of the medical chair.
The man in the chair is making a sound now—a rhythmic, wet clicking deep in his throat where his tongue used to be. His eyes are blown wide, shimmering with a frantic, animal light as he watches Jex position the blades over his index finger.
“This one was for the campaign posters,” Jex says, his voice a jagged rasp.
CRACK.
The sound of the bone snapping is loud, sharp, and dry, followed by the sickening squelch of the blades shearing through the tendon.
The finger hits the grated floor with a dull thud.
The old man’s body arches so hard I hear his spine pop against the restraints, his muffled wails vibrating through the very hull of the submersible.
“This one was for the doll you bought her to shut her up,” Jex growls, moving to the middle finger.
CRACK-SHHH.
Blood sprays in a hot, rhythmic pulse, painting the black tactical gear of Jex’s thighs. I’m leaning over them both, my hand tangled in the old man’s thinning hair, forcing his head back so he has to watch. I want him to see the precision. I want him to see the lack of mercy in his son’s eyes.
“And this one,” I whisper, my voice dropping into a terrifyingly sweet lilt as I lean down toward his ear, “this one is for every time you walked out of the room when I looked at you and begged you to stay.”
Jex doesn’t use the shears for the third one.
He takes the heavy forceps and simply twists.
The old man’s hand becomes a mangled wreck of white bone and purple-black bruising, the skin tearing slowly under the pressure.
The cabin is filled with the smell of raw meat and the metallic heat of the blood pooling around our feet.
Ryker stands behind us, his silver mask reflecting the carnage like a funhouse mirror. He isn’t helping, but he’s not stopping us. He’s watching the way Jex and I move together—the way my moans of dark, twisted satisfaction are syncopated with the snapping of our father’s bones.
“He’s going into shock,” Ryker notes, his voice flat, almost bored. He reaches over and adjusts a dial on the IV drip hooked into the old man’s arm. “I’m upping the adrenaline. I won’t let him pass out. He needs to be present for the thumb. That’s the one that makes us human, isn’t it, Father?”
Jex drops the forceps and reaches for my hand, pulling my palm toward his face. He licks a stray drop of blood off my knuckle, his eyes never leaving mine. The hunger in him is a living thing, a predatory beast that’s finally been let off the leash.
“The thumb, Hallow,” Jex murmurs, his breath hot and smelling of copper. “You do it. Use the shears. Feel the weight of his legacy coming apart in your hands.”
He presses the heavy metal handles into my grip. They’re warm, slick with the life of the man who sold me. I wrap my fingers around them, the weight feeling right—feeling like justice.
I lean over the old man’s mangled hand. He’s looking at me, his eyes pleading, his mouth a bloody, ruined cavern.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I hiss, my thumb finding the trigger of the shears. “You always said I had to be strong for the family. Well, look at me now, Dad. I’m the strongest one in the room.”
I set the blades. I don’t hesitate. I squeeze.
The steel blades bite through the thick base of his thumb with a resistance that sends a sickening vibration up my arms. It’s not like the silk he used to dress me in; it’s grit and gristle.
I hear the crunch of the joint, a sound like dry branches snapping in a winter storm, followed by a wet, heavy suction as the digit is severed completely.
The old man’s head snaps back, his muffled, tongue-less scream a hollow rattling in his chest. His body is jumping in the restraints, a frantic, rhythmic thrashing that makes the medical chair groan.
I drop the shears. They clatter onto the floor, splashing into the dark puddle gathering at my feet.
My hands are coated in him—hot, thick, and smelling of the copper mines.
I look down at my chest, at the way his life has painted my skin, and I feel a surge of power so violent it makes my knees weak.
“There,” I gasp, my breath coming in short, jagged bursts. “Now you can’t even hold a pen to sign your own death certificate.”
Jex is behind me in an instant. He wraps his arms around my waist, his large, blood-stained hands splayed across my stomach, pulling my back flush against his chest. I can feel the hard, frantic thud of his heart through his tactical vest, a steady drumbeat of war that matches my own.
He buries his face in the crook of my neck, his tongue licking a stripe of hot blood off my collarbone.
“You did it, Hallow,” he growls, the vibration of his voice rattling my teeth. “You broke the hand that held the leash.”
Below us, our father is fading. His eyes are rolled so far back only the whites are showing, his skin a translucent, sickly grey. The monitors are screaming, a frantic beep-beep-beep that signals the edge of the cliff.
Ryker steps forward, the silver mask catching the strobe-light flicker of the failing vitals. He doesn’t look concerned; he looks like a chemist watching a reaction reach its peak. He reaches for a syringe filled with a neon-yellow fluid and plunges it directly into the old man’s carotid artery.
“Stay with us, Father,” Ryker purrs. “We’re just getting to the part where you watch us burn your city to the ground. You don’t get to die until you’ve seen every brick turn to ash.”
The old man’s eyes snap open, his pupils pinpointing as the chemicals flood his system, forcing his heart to keep beating in a body that wants to quit. He’s trapped in a loop of perpetual, chemical agony.
Jex turns me around in his arms. He’s hard, his arousal a thick, demanding weight against my hip, his eyes dark with a sick hunger. He grabs my chin, forcing me to look at him, at the monster I’ve finally matched.
“He’s going to live for weeks like this,” Jex rasps, his thumb dragging across my bottom lip, smearing the gore into my mouth. “And we’re going to spend every second of it making sure he knows exactly who we are.”
He picks me up, my legs instinctively wrapping around his waist, the blood on our skin acting as a slick, macabre lubricant. He slams me back against the cold, vibrating wall of the submersible, the metal humming against my spine.
“Watch, Dad,” Jex snarls over his shoulder, his hand reaching down to guide himself into me. “Watch the only legacy you have left.”