Chapter 2
Cassius
One Week Earlier…
The file lands on my desk with a soft thud.
Vincent has always had a flair for the dramatic, even if he's solely delivering information.
"Selene Deveraux has been asking about Purgatory."
My hand stills on the contract I'm reviewing.
That name.
It echoes through the years like a gunshot in an empty room.
The Glock 19 I used that night sits in my desk drawer, a reminder of where I came from, what I'm capable of.
I've killed seventeen men since then, but I remember every detail of my first authorized hit.
"Say that again."
"The judge's daughter. Someone at the victim advocacy center mentioned the club. She's been making inquiries ever since." Vincent sits across from me, studying my reaction with eyes that have seen too much. "She got hold of a card."
I lean back in my chair, mind racing behind a calm exterior.
Selene Deveraux.
The fifteen-year-old girl whose bedroom light haunted me for months after that night.
"How old is she now?"
"Twenty-three."
Eight years.
Has it really been that long?
The memory surfaces unbidden—me at twenty-seven, hungry to prove myself to my father, desperate to show I could be as ruthless as him.
More ruthless, if needed.
The judge had to die—he had evidence that would have destroyed our entire operation.
RICO charges that would have put my father and his entire crew away for life.
Judge Deveraux was the only incorruptible judge in the city, the only one who couldn't be bought, threatened, or blackmailed.
So, he had to be eliminated.
My father gave the order, but I insisted on taking care of it personally. My first sanctioned kill as his successor.
I spent weeks planning it, studying the judge's patterns, his security, his family's schedule.
The wife was supposed to be at her sister's house in Connecticut.
The daughter was supposed to be at a sleepover.
I wore a mask that night.
Black leather that covered everything but my eyes.
The weight of it made me feel invincible, anonymous, like death itself walking through their perfect suburban home.
The judge was in his study, reviewing case files—probably the very ones that would have destroyed us.
He looked up when I entered, and I saw the moment he understood.
Not fear, not at first.
Just resignation.
"Please," he said, standing slowly, hands visible. "My wife, my daughter, they don't know anything?—"
"Your family isn't my concern," I told him through the mask, voice distorted by the leather. "You should have taken the money."
"I couldn't be bought."
"Everyone can be bought. You just valued the wrong things."
The first shot was clean.
Right between the eyes.
He dropped behind his desk, and I thought it was over.
Then I heard footsteps on the stairs.
The wife wasn't supposed to be there.
She was supposed to be three states away, but plans changed.
Bad luck. Wrong place.
She saw me, saw her husband's body, and opened her mouth to scream.
The second shot was messier.
She fell halfway down the stairs, blood spreading across the white carpet.
I stood there for a moment, watching the red seep into the pristine fibers, and felt... nothing.
Just mild irritation at the complication.
But there was another complication I didn't know about.
The girl.
Hiding in the panic room her paranoid father had installed, watching everything through security cameras.
We didn't know about the room until after, when the news reported she'd been found twelve hours later, catatonic, covered in her parents' blood from trying to save them after we left.
My father praised the hit, called it clean despite the complications.
We sat in his office afterward, sharing fifty-year-old scotch.
"Shame about the girl witnessing it," he'd said, swirling amber liquid in crystal. "That kind of trauma... it'll either break her completely or forge her into something dangerous."
"She's fifteen," I replied. "She'll break."
"Maybe. Or maybe she'll become something interesting. Trauma has a way of transforming people, son. Creating appetites they didn't know they had."
I thought he was being philosophical, the way he got when he drank.
Now I realize he was prophetic.
"Are you really waiting for the judge's daughter?" Vincent's voice pulls me back to the present. "That's dangerous, even for you."
"I'm not waiting for anyone," I lie smoothly. "But have Peter and Paul keep eyes on her. Discreetly."
"Why?"
"Call it curiosity. I want to know what kind of woman that fifteen-year-old girl became."
Vincent's expression says he doesn't believe me, but he knows better than to push.
He's been with me since my father's days, the only one who survived the transition when I took over.
He knows when I'm hunting.
And I am hunting.
I just haven't decided what I'll do when I catch her.
The reports come in twice daily, encrypted messages that paint a picture of a woman unraveling.
Or perhaps, finally revealing herself.
Monday:
Peter reports she called in sick to work, spent the day in bed staring at nothing.
The boyfriend came by. She didn't answer the door.
Tuesday:
She went to therapy, stayed twelve minutes and then left, slamming the door.
Paul followed her to a liquor store, where she bought vodka she didn't drink, just held the bottle like she was considering something.
Wednesday:
She fought with the boyfriend.
Peter had the adjacent apartment bugged months ago—standard procedure for anyone connected to my past.
I listen to the recording of her voice, cold and final: "I'm done pretending to be someone I'm not."
Thursday:
She went shopping. Not to her usual conservative boutiques, but to the kind of place where women buy dresses as weapons.
She paid cash—interesting, since she usually uses cards.
She's hiding something. Planning something.
Friday afternoon:
She was seen at her boyfriend’s. They fought. She ended things.
Paul calls me directly. "Boss, she's getting ready for something. Her friend left, and she's already out the door. That dress she bought? She's wearing it."
"Where's she going?"
"No idea, but she looks like sin incarnate."
Sin incarnate. The judge's daughter.
I pour myself a drink and consider what I know.
She's been asking about Purgatory.
She's shed her safe life like a snake shedding skin.
She's preparing for something that requires cash purchases and battle armor in the form of a fuck-me dress.
She's coming to Hell.
The thought shouldn't excite me.
This is dangerous—having her in my space, so close to the truth.
But I'm curious.
What does trauma look like when it grows up?
What kind of woman does violence create?
I'm about to find out.
Present Night…
Purgatory thrums with its usual Friday night energy.
I sit in my seat in the corner of the club, watching how Hell is particularly busy tonight.
A senator who likes to watch his wife get fucked by other men while he cries.
A CEO who pays to be tortured by women who remind him of his mother.
A federal prosecutor who likes to be choked until he passes out, then revived, then choked again.
The usual depravity of the powerful.
My phone buzzes.
Lucian:
Heard you're in Hell tonight. Try not to make too much of a ruckus.
I don't respond.
Lucian owns Purgatory, but Hell is my domain.
We have an understanding—he provides the venue, I provide the protection and many of the "special" participants.
The ones who aren't here by choice, who owe debts that can only be paid in flesh and humiliation.
Speaking of which?—
"Bring her in," I tell Lionel through my earpiece.
The woman who betrayed me is dragged in crying.
She sold information about my shipping routes to the Covenant—a rival organization trying to move into my territory.
The man she sold to is already dead, shot three times in the face and left in his apartment for his wife to find.
But she requires a different kind of punishment.
Public. Memorable.
She's sobbing, begging, but I'm only half-listening.
Something feels different tonight.
Electric.
Like the air before a storm.
Then my security system alerts on my phone.
Someone used this week's code for Hell—someone who shouldn't have it.
I pull up the elevator camera and see her .
Selene Deveraux.
In that dress that clings to every curve, dark hair flowing like water, pressing the button for Hell with fingers that don't shake.
She's actually doing it.
The judge's daughter is descending into my domain.
The elevator opens, and she steps out. I watch her pause, taking in the scene.
The screams. The begging. The sound of flesh hitting flesh.
The scent of sex and fear and pain that permeates everything down here.
Most people flinch, run, or freeze in shock.
She takes a step forward, then another.
Her chest rises and falls rapidly, but not from fear.
Her pupils are dilated, visible even in the low light.
She's aroused.
Fuck.
"Boss?" Lionel's voice crackles through my earpiece. "We got a tourist. Want me to bounce her?"
I watch her move deeper into Hell, drawn like a moth to flame. "Test her. See if she runs."
I watch as Lionel approaches her.
He's intimidating—six feet five inches of scarred muscle and violence.
He grabs her arm, and I expect her to cower, to realize she's made a mistake.
Instead, she looks him in the eye and says something that makes him laugh.
He lets her go, speaks into his comm: "Boss, this one's interesting. Says she's exactly where she wants to be."
"Let her stay. But watch her."
I turn my attention back to the woman who betrayed me, but I'm distracted.
Through my peripheral vision, I track Selene on the monitors.
She's watching the scenes around her with fascination, not horror.
When someone screams, she shivers—but not from fear.
Vincent appears at my elbow. "The situation is handled. The man who bought the information is dead. What do you want to do with her?" He indicates the crying woman.
"Public punishment," I decide. "Let everyone see what happens to those who betray me."
"Here? Now?"
"Why not? Good entertainment for our guests."