Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Xeniya Morozova
“Wait, what did Severin ask you to do?” Gemma Hayes, one of my closest friends, stared at me, but I barely heard her.
My vision blurred as I stared at the fluorescent lights.
My hearing dulled beneath a roar of panic as a memory locked itself into my mind.
A blur. The swirl of colors and light. Not being able to see anything but purple.
Purple. The horrible, deep, awful color—agony tearing me apart because I knew what purple meant.
Purple meant death.
I swallowed hard and blinked, my vision slowly returning.
It wasn’t true anymore.
None of it.
But my heart still sank to my toes because purple would always haunt me. I blinked again, and my gaze focused on Dr. Hayes, my former enemy and now close friend. The Order destroyed all women, even the ones working for them.
“Sorry, what did you say? I wasn’t paying attention.” I pressed my palms to the table and tried to center myself.
“Clearly, you went somewhere else.” Gemma cocked her head and stared at me like a crow assessing whether I was a danger.
My throat worked, and I nodded.
We were sitting in the break room at Saint Grace Hospital. I was visiting my friends at work since Neeve and Gemma were both on shift, and neither had surgery at the moment. Neeve was a heart surgeon, and Gemma was a general surgeon.
They were brilliant leaders in their field. Although sometimes they were penis-removers as well.
The break room at the hospital was simple: with two tables and chairs, a couch where Neeve was sprawled, and a TV mounted on the wall playing the nightly news. It played softly, like background music in a café.
We were the only three people in the room because I had locked the door intentionally.
It probably wouldn’t be a good practice to discuss my serial-killing habits within earshot of others—especially doctors.
Doctors who had taken the do-no-harm oath.
An oath these two interpreted very liberally.
After all, they both helped me hunt down the Lethe—the men who held me for three years doing unspeakable things to me—and take care of them in varied and inventive ways.
“I asked what Severin asked you to do when you were alone with him at Nemain Manor,” Gemma repeated once she knew I was listening.
“He asked her to hack into the Russian mafia’s ledgers and look for rats,” Neeve said, shoving a pillow over her face. “There is too much light in here.”
She was on hour twenty-three of her twenty-four-hour shift, and she was so ready to go home and sleep. I was here to drive her because, after everything we’d been through, I was not going to let her die in a car crash.
“You can’t be serious.” Gemma’s hand went to her mouth, and she rubbed it. “That might be the perfect way for you to hunt down the Headmaster, the Man in Black, or the Gold Mask.”
There were hundreds—probably thousands—of Lethean Order members we hadn’t unmasked yet.
Unfortunately, we were no closer to unmasking the top two from my cell.
Since I began hunting them, I had learned that the organization was set up like a terrorist cell.
Members knew only the identities of the people directly above or beside them, but no one knew everyone or the identity of the person running it all.
From what I had discovered, there were multiple Headmasters.
But there was only one Gold Mask… at least as far as I could find.
The cult was like a hydra. We’d cut off one head, and another would pop up in its place. Each cell tended to kidnap one girl and use her for as long as she was deemed a good investment. And when she was no longer valuable, they would kill her and start the process all over again.
My mission was to find active cells and rescue the girls while also hunting down all the Lethean members who harmed me. It was a daunting, never-ending task, and I didn’t have time to focus on anything else.
So far, we had rescued eight women. Not nearly enough. Eleven, if you counted Neeve, Gemma, and me.
But I didn’t think it was right to count myself, considering everything and considering how I had escaped. It didn’t feel like it should count.
“Yeah, that’s what I was hoping, too,” I finally responded.
“Plus, it gives her access to fuck with Severin’s finances, too. That’s a huge win.” Neeve’s voice was muffled from underneath the pillow.
“Yes, but we’ll have to be very careful with that information because I don’t want to move too quickly.” I rolled my neck, trying to relieve some of the tension. “Taking down the cells is still our first responsibility.”
“Of course. And you’re not saying that because you still might have feelings for Severin and don’t want to actually destroy him?” Neeve sat up and let the pillow drop to her lap.
I shook my head once. “I don’t have feelings for Severin Volkov.”
“Tell that to your face.”
I glowered at my best friend.
“You do have feelings,” Gemma added. “Rage is a feeling.”
“Exactly.”
Silence fell between us. Neeve didn’t believe me. To be honest, neither did I, but hatred had to be my only guiding light. I would ruin the entire Order. That was my only life mission. I had been given another chance to be the fury in the darkness—a monster hunting monsters.
I would end them all.
In the silence, the TV screamed, and when the news reporter said serial killer, all three of us turned our heads at once like birds spotting prey.
I hadn’t yet made it on mainstream news, but it was only a matter of time until I did.
Neeve grabbed the remote and turned the TV up.
“We’re here at the scene of a horrific serial killing,” the reporter said.
”The woman was found frozen and posed like a doll on the steps of the Met.
Her lips were sewn together with thick red thread, and we’re getting reports that she also had the word DOVE sewn into her upper thigh.
This is the sixth confirmed killing by the Embroiderer. ”
The cameras cut to B-roll of the FBI at the crime scene. Seraphina Keres was standing on the steps of the Met, holding an evidence bag as she glanced at the reporters, then glared. Seraphina was also a previous victim of the Lethean Order—and often a thorn in my side.
She was ethereal, beautiful, with long white hair she refused to dye.
She was the type of woman whose beauty should have made her an A-list movie star.
But instead, she chose to join the FBI to hunt down serial killers.
And I chose to become one. She once accused me of brutally killing a man who had been involved in her cell.
She wasn’t wrong, but I told her to find the evidence or get out of my way.
To my knowledge, she hadn’t shared any of her suspicions with her colleagues, but it was only a matter of time.
“That’s horrific.” Neeve’s feet dropped to the floor, and her elbows went to her knees as she leaned in closer to the TV. “Xen, we have to do something.”
I chewed on my cheek, watching the images of the dead girl. Why they chose to show her dead body on the nightly news was beyond me, but people loved watching sick things.
A dull ache spread across my chest, like someone pressing hard on a fresh bruise.
Of course I wanted to stop all evil men. If I had all the time in the world, I would hunt this serial killer down. But I didn’t.
“It’s not our problem,” I said, probably too harshly.
“Are you kidding me?” Neeve jerked her head back to me. “You really can be that heartless sometimes, can’t you?”
“Neeve…” I said slowly.
“And selfish? All you care about is your trauma and your revenge.”
“Come on. You know that’s not true,” Gemma cut in.
“That’s six dead girls, Xeniya. How can you not care about six dead girls?” Neeve ignored Gemma.
“Of course I care about them, but I’m one person. One fucking person. I can’t do everything I am doing to hunt the Order and hunt down every bad person in the world.”
“No, but you could do something.” Neeve crossed her arms. “Do you think the FBI is going to be as talented as you are at hacking into cameras and following this guy’s shadow?” She shook her head. “Of course they won’t.”
I turned to Gemma. She opened her mouth, then closed it, as though every possible answer was the wrong one. If I knew Gemma, she was siding with both of us. She was the diplomatic, grounded one. Soft and calming like a wildcat tamer.
Neeve and I were both tigers—hotheaded wildcats.
I let out a slow sigh. “I’ll help you look into it when I’m done going through the Russians’ finances.”
“He could kill again before that.”
“And there are women out there right now being raped, tortured, and killed by the Order; are they less valuable to you than the Embroiderer’s victims?”
“No, of course not.” Her nostrils flared with a sharp inhale, but she gave up the fight. We were both immovable boulders, both trying to help vulnerable women.
Neither of us was right or wrong, and that was the problem.
“Sera is on the case, and as much as I sometimes want to strangle her, she’s great at her job.”
“Right. The honorable fury,” Neeve said sarcastically. “I don’t trust her enough to find him before he kills again.”
“I trust her to do her best, just like we’re doing ours.”
Another silence settled between us. Neeve’s anger boiled between us, but she didn’t say another word. She knew that I was too stubborn for that.
Gemma cleared her throat. “Not to change the subject back to the Russians, but, Xen, are you going to be okay? I know you used to love Severin, and it’s one thing to plan to destroy the person you love. It’s another thing entirely to do it.”
I gulped. Gemma was right. But I needed to forget my past. It was the only way I wouldn’t break in the future. Yet my past never wanted to let me go.