Chapter 23 #4
The Collector continued as he crossed the room halfway to the bed.
"You thought becoming a monster would make you untouchable—that if you grew fangs, the world would bow down at your feet.
But the truth is, Elanah— monsters don't announce themselves.
They wait. They watch. And by the time you decided to sharpen your claws, you had already curled inside the jaws of something far darker than you could ever be. "
Her breath caught—sharp, involuntary. "Ww..why are you doing this? I thought we were going to take the Kings down together?" Elanah's chin quivered, her lips shaking with fear as she took him in.
Her eyes widened, panic blooming fast, her movements becoming feral as the Collector stepped closer.
She screamed. High, jagged, primal, as if the sound alone could free her from her bindings.
It sliced through the room, so piercing that the Collector flinched, one hand snapping to his ear as he snarled at her in pain.
The Collector looked at her, his expression unreadable, watched the fruitless battle Elanah fought.
He'd seen others fight like this before. And he knew exactly when the fight would fade, the moment the syringe delivered the powerful sedative into Elanah's veins, it would all be over.
The Collector stepped closer, syringe in hand. The metal point broke her skin easily. She watched in horror as it did. Her eyes were already beginning to close as he whispered to her.
"Don't feel too bad, Elanah, you were a prisoner of my desires long before you walked through that door."
With Elanah secured, it was time to move the prisoner. The mausoleum waited.
He yanked the trapdoor open and started down the stairs.
No mask today. What was the point? In forty-eight hours, he'd be gone—this place, this persona, all of it buried.
No one would recognize him on a beach in Bali, on the other side of the world.
He'd be someone else by then. His go bags were already waiting for him in his boat, at the marina in town.
Every piece of his exit plan had been thought out and planned months ago.
He just needed the final pieces of his plan to fall into place.
It was time to let go. Time to trade the ghosts of his past for greener pastures. He wanted to take more of them down, shake the very foundations of the cartel.
But at the bottom of the steps, he stopped cold.
Everything looked normal except for one blaring fact that had him scrambling across the room.
The prisoner was gone. The cell lay empty in front of him as he moved in closer to inspect it. He felt a slow dread creep over him. He'd worked so hard to get to this point, and the prisoner was just…gone.
For a moment, he couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. The air was wrong— it was too still, too quiet in the room. His restraints lay twisted on the floor like shed skin. The cot overturned, one leg splintered, rested against the wall.
And then it hit him.
"The key—"
He'd never retrieved it and hadn't resecured his cuffs before he left. He'd gotten distracted—too many bodies at the club, too much noise. He'd walked away, confident the man couldn't escape. Carelessly.
"Fuckkkkk."
His roaring scream bounced off the concrete walls and back into him. He didn't have time for this. Anxiety held him in place for just a brief moment before he sprang into action, looking for clues.
He dropped to his knees, scanning the cell.
Under the overturned cot, he found it—the man's means of escape.
The prisoner had been digging around the cinder blocks, scraping out mortar bit by bit.
Slowly, patiently. The discarded metal husks—bent lids, rusted edges—lay near a small hole in the wall. Just wide enough to crawl through.
He pounded his fists against the wall, kicked it hard enough to crack pieces of dried mortar from around the hole. Broken pieces skittered across the room.
"How had he missed this—"
He pulled out his phone. Checking the time. "This was something the prisoner had done over time… his mind jumped back to their last encounter, remembering the bloody, cracked fingernails."
Everything was closing in. The Collector's chest heaved as he pulled up the security surveillance videos for the last twenty-four hours.
"How could he have been so stupid, missed something so obvious?"
Maybe he should leave. Cut his losses. Start over now.
The plan was unraveling. The risk of being caught was becoming alarmingly clear.
He backed away slowly, phone still in hand.
He rewound the videos to about the time he left yesterday to head back to Blood Lust. He watched himself leave the basement and saw the man finish removing the bottom bricks in the wall.
Watched as he struggled through the small hole.
Eight hours ago, he'd been gone from the cabin for eight hours.
He switched cameras to view the outside perimeter of the cabin.
Rewound the time. Watched as the man emerged from the side of the house and slowly dragged himself across the wooded outline of the driveway, moving from tree to tree.
It had taken him hours in his weakened state.
But two hours ago, he made it past the line of view of his cameras to the main road.
He no longer had a scapegoat. And if the prisoner made it to the Kings before the Collector finished his plans, things could go from bad to worse quickly for him.
He needed to move now. He wondered if the man could identify him to the Kings.
It didn't matter at this point if they found out he was the Collector.
He just wanted to kill as many of them as he could, take as much from them as possible before he left.
It was the only way he could walk away, without coming back and risking being caught in the future.
Time to make some calls.
He scrolled through his contacts, thumb pausing on Thomas's name.
The phone rings. Once. Twice. Three times.
"Hello—?" Thomas's voice spoke cautiously, uncertain.
"I need you to do something for me. And I need it done now." The Collector tapped his fingers
A beat.
"Okay… what is it?"
"I assume you've heard about Hector."
Silence.
"There's a threat to Raven. It's serious. He wants Mynx out of the mansion—immediately."
Thomas exhaled. "What do you need me to do?"
"Go to the garage. Take one of the armored cars. Meet Mynx at the front entrance of the mansion when I tell you to. Drive her to your house."
He doesn't pause.
"I've already arranged a security team. I'll station them there until the threat to the Kings is past."
Thomas hesitates. "Should I talk to her? Let her know—?"
"No, I don't want you to speak to her. Don't get out of the car. She's not to know you're even there."
A beat.
"Do you understand me?"
"Yes, but… can I stay once we arrive? Help protect them?"
A dry laugh.
"You can't aim a gun, your hands shake so bad, Thomas. What makes you think you'll do a better job than my team at taking care of their safety?"
Silence, then, barely audible:
"But I… I owe my family that much. If they're not safe, then—then what was any of this for? "His voice cracked as he struggled to keep his composure. "I know they'll never forgive me. I don't expect that. I just… I need to try."
The Collector closed his eyes. His jaw clenched, breath shallow. The phone creaked in his grip, plastic straining like bone under pressure.
"Do what you're fucking told, Thomas. Or it'll be your brains decorating some forgotten wall. You're weak. Untrained. Fragile. Be smart. This task isn't about redemption—it's about survival."
A beat.
"I understand."
The Collector ended the call with Thomas. Satisfied that he would carry out the orders. Thomas was already afraid of the Kings, scared they might kill him. He was scared that they might make his daughters pay for his mistakes with their lives. He'd told the Collector as much.
That fear had lived in him for months now, a quiet, corrosive emotion.
It wouldn't take much to break the man to an unretrievable mental state.
Because lately, something else had begun to take root.
A conscience. Or the ghost of one. Over the past few weeks, the weight of what he'd done had started to press in.
Not just the debt—or the slow, choking accumulation of loans he'd taken out with no way to repay them—but the cost of it.
The collateral. His family. He was already a weak, useless man; with the addition of his conscience, he was even more malleable and soft.
It worked to the Collector's benefit; it made him a tool he could mold.
He knew he'd put his family at risk. With every lie, every delay, every desperate gamble to try and recoup his losses, he had drawn the Kings closer.
And now, they weren't just circling him.
They were inside his life — his wife and daughters' lives too.
He walked the line because he knew what waited beyond it.
He'd seen what happened to men who thought for themselves.
He wasn't ready to bleed for a principle. Trying to pay a penance for his sins.
The Collector paced the length of the cabin. He needed to gather his thoughts before taking the next step in his plan. The Kings had eyes everywhere, and he needed to make a few minor adjustments to the plan.
Scrolling again, he found Pierre Le Grange's contact. Hit the call button.
"Pierre?"
The voice on the other end answered smoothly and expectantly, like he'd been waiting for the call.
"What do you have for me? Were you— able to get—what I wanted? The girl—"
"I have it. But you'll need to meet me at the address I text you after this call to collect."
He let the pause hang—baited.
"I'll sweeten the deal if you make the transfer immediately. A sister. Two for one special—if you're interested—"
Pierre's breath caught. "You're serious?"
The Collector didn't answer right away. He didn't need to.
He knew Pierre well enough—his appetites, his rituals. The man didn't require his victims to be unwilling, but he preferred it that way. The fear, the resistance they put up—made the act fulfilling.
They were similar. Too similar for the Collector's liking.
In another life, they might've been friends. Might've hunted together, traded stories over blood and bourbon. But it didn't work that way.
Serial killers didn't collaborate. They didn't share territory. When you became aware of another— operating in your orbit, you didn't reach out.
You removed them. Cleanly. Quietly. Before they got curious. Before they got bold.
"Wire the funds we discussed to the account I gave you. Once I receive confirmation, I'll send the location where you can pick them up."
Pierre's excited tone shifted— to something more curious, suspicious as he replied. "Why go to all this trouble— for me? Is this a power play? You trying to take Raven down— now that the old man's out of the picture?"
A smile curled in the Collector's voice as he answered. "Indeed. And with the club scrambling to prepare for war with the Stallions, now is the perfect time to give you what you want… and gut Raven from the inside out and take the Kings for my own."
Pierre laughed. The sound was like nails on a chalkboard to the Collector; it was grating, smug, and indulgent. He despised the man. Not just for his appetites. But for the way he wore his need, loud and unapologetically, like a badge for the world to see.
He paused, considering that his hatred stemmed from something more profound. A recognition of the threat he posed to him.
Pierre wasn't just another predator. He was bold. Unpredictable. He didn't operate with precision—he operated with hunger, and hunger was messy. Hunger got noticed, which happened to be just what the Collector needed from him.
The Collector preferred silence. Clean lines. No ripples.
Pierre made ripples. And that made him dangerous, but a tool he could use nonetheless.
"Let's talk about the other requirements for getting the girl. Tell me what you have in place."
"What about them? I've already got plans in motion. Men in place —to fulfill those requests. Mateo will be the easier of the two to take out. Since his heart attack last year, he hardly leaves the house. I made arrangements to have his breakfast laced with the poison you gave me this morning."
The Collector swallowed hard. Tugged at his collar, irritation prickling beneath his skin.
Letting Pierre make the kill felt wrong. Like a betrayal. Not of the plan—but of himself.
His death was supposed to be personal. Precise. A signature kill.
Delegating it to Pierre—letting him leave the mark—was like handing over authorship of his vengeance. And the Collector didn't share authorship.
Not with amateurs. Not with monsters who didn't understand the art. But if he wanted him dead before the FBI closed in, he had no choice.
"Tony's scheduled to fly to Mexico this morning. I've placed a man on his flight—he'll take care of it. Strangulation. It will be clean. Contained—"
He paused, letting the implications settle.
"With the war now imminent, his death will read like a strategic move from the Stallions. A calculated strike. Taking out underbosses to get to Raven."
"Excellent, I'll require proof of death before I text the address to you." The Collector would need to time his arrival at the Cooper house in conjunction with Pierre's to dispose of him.
"That won't be an issue. Give me two hours, and I'll contact you with the pictures."
"Sounds like a plan, and Pierre— when I'm in charge of the Kings, I won't forget what you've done here today for me."
"Does that mean I will have free rein at the club, to do what I want in the future?"
"Push, push, push. Greedy little bastard. Always wanting more."
The Collector paused. Thought for a moment. Then replied, voice low, and calculated as he answered, careful to say exactly what the man wanted to hear.
"You never can tell what the future will hold, Pierre. But I'll say this—if you and I work together, it'll be a masterpiece. Something the world won't see coming. Something they'll never forget."
Pierre laughed again. "That stupid fucking laugh." The Collector hung up the phone. He couldn't wait to paint the walls of the Cooper house with his blood.