Chapter 3
Bastien Montclaire
New Orleans always smells like sin… but this bar reeks of it.
Leviathan isn’t an establishment for tourists. It’s a place where rules bend, morals blur, and sins of every variety are served neat. Revenge, lust, betrayal—all under the same roof.
The booths sink into shadows, carved into alcoves like confessionals. The lighting is low, just enough to reveal intention but not identity. Smooth jazz drips from hidden speakers, soft and seductive. The walls are dark, the leather blood-red, and the quiet between songs isn’t empty. It listens.
The low light flatters. Customers look younger, richer, prettier in here. But I see through all of it. Always have.
I sit at the bar, bourbon untouched. I never drink on the job. Whiskey is for after the job’s done.
Nothing about my placement is accidental. The mirror behind the bar shows me everything I need to see—exits, corridors, faces coming and going.
The dim lighting hides most things, but not from me. Every surface gleams, but none of it reflects the truth.
Illusion is currency here.
That’s the charm.
It’s also the threat.
Four exits. One by the bar. Two unmarked at the back. One through the kitchen. I can hit any of them within five seconds. Ten if I’m hauling dead weight. Less if they’re bleeding out.
I track every face without making it obvious. Eyes. Hands. Posture. Threat level. Kill difficulty.
Old habits don’t die. They sharpen.
A woman two booths down keeps glancing over, trying to reel me in. She wants to be seen… considered… chosen.
She won’t be because I don’t fall for that kind of distraction.
I’m not here for her. I’m here for the kill.
Tonight, Silas Rourke dies.
I monitor the door, scanning every man who enters. No sign of Rourke yet.
I don’t twitch or drink. The predator in me is calm, masking the violence underneath.
The bartender’s mid-thirties, square build.
The kind who served the minimum, never saw combat, and won’t shut up about his time overseas.
Brags as though he single-handedly won Afghanistan.
Keeps a gun under the bar that he believes no one notices.
He’d last two seconds against me. One if he tried to be a hero.
I check in the mirror again. Rear exits. Hallway shadows. Still no Rourke. He’s late.
The bastard thinks he’s meeting a sixteen-year-old girl tonight. Sweet, naive, chasing the dream of becoming a star—his favorite kind of prey.
We’ve been messaging for weeks. He thinks he’s luring a lamb. He doesn’t see the wolf already at his throat.
The song overhead fades, replaced by something slower. Norah Jones—smoke and sorrow wrapped in piano. A song I remember too well.
Aimee loved Norah Jones.
My chest tightens. Not enough to show, not enough to crack me open in this place. But the ache is there—low and constant—acting as an old wound that never healed right.
“Don’t Know Why.” Her favorite song. She used to hum along, off-key, offbeat, always too loud. She’d sing with her entire chest. It used to make me laugh. Now it makes my throat tighten and my eyes sting.
Aimee was sunshine in human form, loud and alive and too fucking good for this evil world. She was my heart. My compass. Someone I’d have burned down everything to protect.
And they took her away.
I still see their faces. They’re blurred by years, but burned into the back of my skull.
No arrests. No trial. Just statements filed, questions dodged, and then silence.
They walked free.
She didn’t.
Three escaped justice. One protected by a wealthy father. Another shielded by a judge’s debt. The third slipped through because the first two cases collapsed, and no one held him accountable.
All we got was a closed case file and a grave too small to hold the light she carried.
So I found them. One by one.
No trials. No statements. No mercy.
They begged. Lied about being sober. Swore it was an accident.
But I knew.
And I made sure they learned what it felt like to be powerless—to scream in the dark, to be forgotten.
Her death is the reason I became a killer.
Not for money. Not for sport.
For balance.
I blink it back and lock it down. Tonight isn’t about the past. It’s about Silas Rourke and the end he’s earned.
High-pitched laughter crackles behind me, sharp and sudden. Women—an entire table of them by the sound of it. Loud, loose, riding the high of expensive cocktails and wicked secrets.
Glasses clink and ice rattles. A bottle pops, and someone gasps.
It’s a laughter that turns heads. Bold, indulgent, reckless in the way only women are when they’re surrounded by their own kind. The pack makes it safe to be loud. To be seen. To be a little dangerous.
I ignore them. Or at least try to. But their voices carry, bleeding through the noise and slicing through the low hum of conversation. Too sharp, too bold. Blurred by liquor and lit with the thrill of something forbidden.
One voice, louder than the rest, cuts through the chatter. It’s bold and brash, drenched in alcohol and something feral.
“Okay, bitch, tell us everything. Did they fuck you stupid or what?”
They?
“No, no, no. Don’t tell me,” one of them says, half-laughing, half-horrified. “I don’t think I can stand hearing this.”
Laughter detonates around her, sharp and rowdy. Someone snorts. Another slaps the table in quick succession, a drumroll before the punchline.
“Girrrl, tell us they wrecked your pussy in the best way possible.”
They don’t stop there.
“Seriously, if you could walk straight the next day, I’m going to be so fucking disappointed.”
Another voice cuts in, lower, laughing but sharp. “Shh… Jesus, Brielle, keep your voice down. We’re not the only ones in here.”
“Calm down and give me a second. I’m gonna tell you everything you want to hear… and a lot of shit you don’t.”
“Oh, this is about to get good,” the loudest one says. “She doesn’t have a single prudish bone in her body, and we’re all about to benefit.”
I should be annoyed by the disturbance and their complete disregard for anyone else in the room… especially those of us whose dicks have seen more hand than pussy lately.
They draw attention like bait in the water, but I’m not irritated. I’m amused… and intrigued.
And now I want to hear about her night.
What she did.
What they did to her.
And how loudly she screamed.
My gaze drifts to the mirror. Instinct, nothing more. My curiosity is piqued.
The glass above the bar catches her face, revealing the mystery behind me. And fuck. She’s not what I expected.
She’s more.
Better.
Everything.
Her long dark hair is pulled up, baring her throat. I imagine my hand there—pressing, not choking. Not yet. The pressure would be enough to feel her breathe, to remind her who holds the power, and feel her pulse stutter against my palm.
Her eyes hide their color in shadow, but they’re calm, steady, and unyielding. They demand I pay attention.
And that mouth—God, that fucking mouth. It’s not smiling, not fully, but the curve is there. It’s the kind of mouth that could kiss or command, ruin or worship. And I’d take it either way.
I imagine her on her knees, lip gloss smeared, eyes locked on mine. That mouth parted, just enough to let the filth spill out like a prayer. Not begging.
No, this woman doesn’t beg. She negotiates, barters with pleasure, and bleeds defiance.
I’d give her what she asks for, and then shove past it, just to hear how she moans when she breaks.
She’s not built to whimper. She’d swear at me instead, curse my name with shaking thighs and a voice torn raw from holding back.
And I’d savor every second.
I’d disrupt her cadence and take the choices she pretends she doesn’t need. Hand her control by stripping it down to nothing but sensation and breath.
She hasn’t even glanced my way. Doesn’t have a clue I exist. But my body answers her—locked in and dialed sharp. She’s already under my skin.
I’ve snapped necks, crushed throats, and watched men die without blinking. None of it ever made my pulse thunder this way.
But her… this… makes me pause. Something feral stirs inside me.
Not love. No, never that. This is ownership—instinctive and ruthless—a claim formed in the space of a single reflected glance.
She doesn’t know what she’s done to me. No idea she’s already shifted something that rarely moves.
But she will.
She’ll feel it the moment she looks my way. That invisible click. The way the air tightens. The sudden awareness crawling up her spine, telling her something has locked on.
She won’t understand why her breath stutters or why the room seems to shrink around us. She won’t be able to explain why her body reacts before her mind does.
But I’ll know.
Because that’s the moment I decide she’s mine. And when I decide something belongs to me, I don’t release it. I don’t forget it.
I don’t let go.
My hand curls around the glass of bourbon. This time, I bring it to my mouth. Just a sip. Just enough to note the burn and pretend it’s not because of her.
I should stop watching and listening.
But who the fuck am I kidding? That’s not happening.
Silas Rourke still hasn’t shown, but something far more dangerous has. And I don’t think I’m walking away clean.
The girls around her are still buzzing, still laughing, still demanding the details. But she hasn’t answered. Yet.
Something’s off. I see it in her shoulders, in the set of her jaw. She’s not glowing. She’s gritting. And they’re too drunk, too tangled in their own wicked fantasies to notice.
But I see that flicker, that fracture. The shadow behind the smile. And suddenly, I need to know.
What did they do to her?
What did she let happen?
What happened that wasn’t supposed to?
Because she looks like a woman unraveling in slow motion. And no one at that table notices.
But I do.
I keep my eyes on the mirror. Waiting. Watching. Listening. And when she speaks, it won’t be for them.
It’ll be for me.
And I’m listening.