Underground Chamber, Unknown Location
He tried to spit at me. Tried. I caught his jaw with one hand, fingers digging in hard enough to make bone creak beneath skin. “You’re going to listen,” I said quietly. “Because I don’t think you understand who the hell you sold.”
He wheezed, “I didn’t know—didn’t know what they were. I needed the money—”
I slammed his head back against the chair.
A crack. A grunt. Blood down his chin. “You knew.” I crouched so he had no choice but to look into my eyes—into the legacy he’d never survive meeting.
“You knew exactly what they were. Every ‘family’ that paid for her was on a private registry. You signed away a child to people who didn’t adopt—they purchased. ”
His face drained white.
“And then you did it again. And again,” I murmured. “Until she was so broken she forgot she deserved love. Forgot what safety felt like.”
I leaned closer, lowering my voice to something cold and intimate. “And then she grew up. Survived. And she ended up with me.” The realization hit him like a slap. “She’s pregnant.”
He choked on the words, barely audible. “She… she had kids? With you?”
“Twins,” I said. “Two lives that will never know you existed. Two children who will never be touched by the rot you traded their mother into.”
He tried to speak again. I didn’t let him. My fist drove into his ribs with a sickening crunch. He screamed, the sound echoing off the stone walls, swallowed by the underground.
Good.
Let the darkness hear it. Let the Ledger bear witness.
I straightened, flexing blood off my knuckles, my breath steady.
“Anthony Ward,” I said, tasting the name like poison. “You forfeited any right to mercy when you signed that first contract.”
He sobbed. “Please—please, I’m her father—”
“No.” My voice was a whisper. Razor-edged. Absolute. “You’re the man who sold her childhood to predators.”
He shook violently.
“I’ve killed men for less than what you did.”
His mouth trembled. “What… what are you going to do?”
I stepped behind him, resting my hands on the back of the chair. My voice lowered to something only the walls and the Ledger could hear. “What you taught her life was,” I answered. “A transaction.”
I nodded once to Reed, who stood waiting in the shadows. He moved toward the table, retrieving the tools we’d prepared. “I’m rearranging the debt,” I said.
The man sobbed harder, shaking the chair.
“You’ll wish I killed you quickly,” I told him. “But I want you alive. Long enough to understand what you made of her. Long enough to regret breathing the same air she does.” I leaned forward, breath cold against his ear. “You should’ve loved her.”
Then I stepped back. Reed cracked his knuckles. Katya adjusted her gloves. The room shifted. And I closed the door behind me.