Chapter 7
Bastien Montclaire
Obsession burns brightest in the dark. And last night, mine caught fire.
I haven’t slept. Not even close.
I left Laurette’s house, went straight home, and cracked open everything I could find on her. Public records. Court dockets. News archives. Social media profiles scraped and stitched together.
Laurette Devereux.
Assistant District Attorney for Orleans Parish.
High conviction rate. Sharp, respected, and ruthless in court.
Defense attorneys hate her. Judges praise her.
Victims trust her. And under that impeccable record and spine-of-steel reputation is a woman who has carved her place in a city that eats the weak alive.
A woman like that doesn’t survive. She dominates.
The deeper I dig, the harder it is to breathe. Not because I’m surprised.
Because I’m not.
I expected brilliance, but I hadn’t anticipated this level. Her mind. Her drive. A dangerous elegance she wears the way other women wear perfume.
I find a few photos. Press conference stills. Courtroom candids. None of them does her justice. The camera never captures that smirk or that venom-sweet glint in her eye.
Judge Henri Devereux is her father. Revered. And from what I can piece together, dirty. Whispers of case tampering, backdoor deals, suppressed evidence. Nothing's been proven, but a stain clings to his name.
I don’t press for more. Not yet. But I file it away because I never look away when something dark stares back. And I sense something foul beneath the surface.
Jon David Bellamy comes next. Criminal defense attorney. Smug. Stylish. Polished to a shine.
They’ve gone head to head in court many times.
I suspect he is the one Laurette was talking about at the bar. The one who drugged her. Her recent ex. Which tells me two things: she doesn't mind fucking the enemy, and she sure as hell doesn't mind fighting the one she is fucking.
A remarkable woman.
But Jon David isn’t only an asshole. He’s a man with a reckless nerve that makes your skin crawl. A man who drugs his own girlfriend so he can indulge in his secret appetite while she’s out cold in the next room. That takes audacity. That takes a dangerous blindness.
But here’s the truth about men built that way—they believe taking risks makes them untouchable, boldness empowers them, and cruelty gives them control.
What they never account for is this: someone out there can be darker, smarter, and more relentless.
He assumes he got away with it.
He hasn’t met me yet.
My fingers hover over the keyboard as I stare at her name on the screen. Laurette Devereux. Each letter, a pulse. Each syllable a promise.
I’ve studied the basics—case files, court transcripts, articles, tagged photos. I’ve learned her career moves, her legal style, her press quotes. But that is only on the surface. I want the details no database can give me.
What scent lingers on her sheets? At what hour does her bedroom go dark? Does she hum when she brushes her teeth? Does her lock click softly or loudly when she turns it? I want to see how she moves through her space, the pattern of her days, and the silence that settles over her nights.
I’m dying to know what keeps her awake at night and what drives her hand between her legs. I want to see the image that flickers behind her eyes when she rubs herself to get off. Whose name she bites back when she comes.
And I want to know exactly what it'll take for that name to be mine.
I'll know it all. Every nuance, every secret.
She is my study now.
I wonder if she’s found my message yet. I envision her at the mailbox this morning. The napkin would stop her cold. I imagine the pause before she touches it, the moment where suspicion gives way to curiosity. That subtle shift when she realizes my words are meant for her.
I want her thinking about me as she moves through her house, wondering who watched, who listened.
Locking doors she never bothered with before.
And later, when she’s alone, I want the thought of me to linger longer than it should.
Not fear, but anticipation. Because if she’s imagining me, even for a second, then I’m already exactly where I want to be.
But before I can get lost in whatever madness I feel toward her, there’s business to be done.
I swipe the screen and reopen the app on the burner phone, my gateway into Silas Rourke’s twisted little world.
I tap open the profile: “brittanygrace_2009.” A joke of a username, but Rourke took the bait. Hook, line, and thirsty DM.
hey omg i’m so sorry for bailing last night my dad caught me tryna sneak out can we maybe try again tonight?
My fingers hover before sending. The message is immature but necessary.
Rourke’s response is nearly immediate. He’s hungry for the next young girl.
It’s ok. Something came up on my end too. I can meet tonight. Leviathan at 12:00?
I type out another reply, still in character, channeling a sixteen-year-old girl, all nerves and emojis.
yayyy perfect!! i’ll be there can’t waaaait eeee
omg I’ll be thinking about it all day don’t be late!! lol
I’ll keep him breathing long enough for the lesson to sink into his bones. It should sting and scorch. He’ll learn how to beg for mercy, and I’ll make sure every word comes out thick with regret.
Rourke set a trap for a gullible young girl, but he baited the wrong animal. And make no mistake, I'll take pleasure in this. Not the violence itself, but the inevitability of it. The way the hunter becomes the lesson.
When midnight comes, I won’t be hunting. I'll be avenging.
If I’ve learned anything, it’s that perfection doesn’t happen by accident. Flawlessness is manufactured, carved out piece by patient piece until the thing you want fits exactly where you put it.
The trap is set. There’s work to do. A job to finish. A man to unmake.
I move down the hall and into the room in the basement where light is optional and mercy never lived. This is where I prepare when the world needs correcting.
I inventory without thinking. Gloves. Plastic folded with military precision. Knife cleaned, handle wrapped. Spare gloves. Zip ties. Plastic sheeting. A sealed change of clothes. Burner phone. Charged battery. Cash. A crowbar tucked where no one would think to look.
There are other tools too, chosen with care. Instruments of pain meant to persuade and remind the body how fragile it really is. Enough to break. Enough to teach.
Nothing here is accidental. Every item earns its place. I don’t rush. I rehearse and strip the act down to its essentials until what remains feels inevitable.
This won’t be chaos. It won’t be sloppy. It’ll be exact.
I don’t picture his face. That comes later. For now, I picture the sequence. The entry. The moment he realizes the math has changed. The silence after.
Everything is ready. The hours thin, and the time nears.
Now we wait.
I eat the way I always do before a job—slowly and deliberately without distractions. Food isn’t comfort; it’s calibration. Protein, water, nothing wasted. The body needs to be steady, and the mind must be sharp. Whatever comes next will take both.
This isn’t appetite. It’s discipline. The kind you build over years until restraint feels more natural than impulse. Rage is sloppy, and hunger clouds judgment. Control is what keeps you alive when the night turns unforgiving.
When the plate is empty, I sit for a moment longer, breathing evenly, letting the weight of it settle. I close my eyes and let the night assemble itself in my head, not as chaos but as a sequence. One thing flowing cleanly into the next. No surprises or noise. Just intention narrowing to a point.
I rehearse it once. Then again.
Not as a plan.
As a certainty.
On my way out, I stop at the mirror for one final check.
Six-four. Broad shoulders built for damage, not display.
Ink marks most of my skin—black snakes coiled around bone, skulls peering from beneath ragged script, fangs and fire and all the monsters I’ve already killed.
Nothing decorative or soft. Just warnings carved in flesh.
The face? Strong angles. Straight nose. A jaw that’s never backed down. Golden brown eyes that track everything and give nothing away. A neatly trimmed beard shadows my mouth, dark as the hair falling in thick, unruly waves I never bother to tame.
But beneath all of it—the order, the calm, the control—is the other thing.
The one that waits.
The one that kills.
Some things fall like dominoes—slow at first, then inevitable.
Last night, I came here to find Silas Rourke.
Instead, I found her.
I let my eyes drag across the room. I don’t move until I’ve mapped every face, every shift in posture. Then I slide into a different seat. Two stools down from last night, angled just enough to watch the door without turning my head.
The mirror behind the bar is advantageous. From here, I see it all—who walks in, who lingers, who stares too long. Every blink, every breath.
They don’t know they’re already caught.
I fucking love a mirror. It does half the work for me. Watches what I can’t. Reflects what people try to hide. Shows me how they move when they assume no one is looking. It allows me to study them.
The bartender looks up, the same one as before. He nods, vague and uninterested. No flicker of recognition.
Perfect. Last night, I ordered bourbon. Tonight, it’s rye.
“Neat,” I say.
He pours without blinking. Doesn’t even glance twice.
Good. Let him assume I’m just another ghost dragging his sins into the dark. Not the kind that opens men from throat to gut and watches what spills.
The glass hits the bar. Amber and untouched. I don’t lift it. The burn I need is already crawling in my chest, licking up the inside of my ribs.
I glance in the mirror, then at the door and the time. Still early. Rourke won’t show yet. He prefers to be late, convinced it makes him important, as if the world holds its breath for his entrance.