* * * *
CARSON
Would you believe me if I said I was thinking about snacks?
Yeah.
Snacks.
Right after a murder, kidnapping, electrical torture, and my own personal descent into psychosis. I was standing there, blood on my jacket, Elise's scream still echoing in the corners of my skull—and my brain had the audacity to think: Popcorn would hit right now.
That's what trauma does.
Turns chaos into craving.
I felt a tap on my shoulder.
Alex.
"She's gone."
My stomach dropped.
The snack craving vanished.
I scanned the area.
No Elise.
Just a trail of wreckage and questions I didn't want to answer.
Alex started muttering something—probably logistics, strategy, whatever he did to feel sane.
I didn't listen.
Then—
An arm wrapped around my neck, dragging my head down, knuckles burying into my hair.
"Leona…" I growled. "Stop it. I get it. You're here."
She let go, smug as hell.
"That's not how you acknowledge someone, but I'll let it slide, maniac."
Marco tossed in a soft scolding. Dante and Diego grabbed my arms, trying to lighten the mood by lifting me like a sack of potatoes.
"You finally caught her and lost her," Marco said, eyeing Alex. "So how are we getting help from DCI without completing our assignment—finding her and returning her to grumpy-ass Kylon?"
Alex shrugged like a man who'd stopped caring two apocalypses ago.
I spoke while Dante and Diego dropped me back down:
"By finding her. Duh."
No one laughed.
Then Leona, eyes sharp as hell, tilted her head.
"Was she… average height, curly brunette hair, sweatshirt, jeans, white sneakers?"
I stared.
"Yes."
"Then yeah… another one of these idiots took her."
Her sigh was the sound of a storm rolling in.
She led the way.
We followed.
Straight into an abandoned gallery with the air charged and sparking.
Alex finally stepped up.
He took command like some military dad flipping the switch:
"Cut power. Carson, save our little princess. Everyone else—kill every guy you see. Spare no one. Five-minute operation. Then we hit the apartment lobby and crash. Got it?"
His voice faded the second we all started moving.
I didn't hear the plan.
Because I already had my own.
I ran.
Faster than I ever had.
Through the smoke and blood and flashing lights.
Through the broken bodies and louder screams.
And there—her.
Shaking.
Soaked.
Wrapped in shadows and trauma like it was her new skin.
They touched her.
They touched what was mine.
I didn't just get angry.
I fractured.
I tore through the room like a plague.
Didn't even use the gun at first—my hands were enough.
I made sure they saw me.
Made sure their last memory was the smile of the man who was going to end their pathetic excuse of a life.
When I reached her, she was already screaming curses at the world, clutching the revolver I'd left in my jacket like it was a lifeline.
God, she was beautiful.
Even bloodied. Even broken. Especially then.
"You did good,"I whispered in her ear.
I scooped her into my arms as she shouted every swear word in the dictionary and a few she made up.
She hit me. Kicked me. Bit my shoulder.
I didn't flinch.
"I've got you, chaton. You're safe."
She didn't believe me.
Smart girl.
As we ran, I held her tighter.
Because deep down I knew:
This wasn't protection.
This wasn't love.
This was something darker.
Obsession.
I wasn't saving her from the monsters.
I was dragging her into my hell and calling it safety.
But I didn't care.
Because I was never letting her go again.
They touched her.
Marked her.
Tried to break her.
Now they'd never touch another woman for the rest of their miserable lives.
I'd make sure of that.
I'd carve my name into their skin before I sent them to hell.
And if Elise ever tried to run again—
Well.
I'd remind her:
I don't let go.
Not of what's mine.
Even if it means destroying every piece of myself just to keep her close.
Even if it means she'll hate me.
Even if she already does.
Because love doesn't always feel good.
Sometimes?
It feels like war.
White lights. Bleached corridors. That familiar sterile sting in the air.
I sat beside her hospital bed, the pulse of the monitor like a lullaby for corpses. Elise's skin looked too pale for someone so angry at the world. Her body small against stiff sheets, but not fragile. No, she was too stubborn to die. I knew that now.
Smoke still clung to my jacket even after the nurse yelled at me to put out my cigar. It didn't matter. The scent followed me everywhere, like the ghosts I carried.
Alex sat slumped across from me, his white coat stained—he never changed after a shift. His fingers were trembling as he scrolled through photos on his phone. Not medical ones. Personal ones. A woman with auburn hair and tired eyes. A boy—small, no older than six—with a smile that didn't know how to lie yet.
His family. Dead. Bombed three years ago in Tunisia. Collateral damage from the same operation that Glory ran undercover.
"I should've stayed dead with them," he muttered, thinking I couldn't hear him.
But I did.
And I understood.
We all should've stayed dead a long time ago.
Elise twitched in her sleep. Her body reacting to nightmares she couldn't outrun.
The gallery. That place was more than a front—it was a goddamn shrine to corruption. Torture chambers turned into luxury display rooms. Behind a Vincent van Gogh painting, there was a refrigerated vault storing human organs. Labeled. Priced.
Someone was using art to move death like currency.
And I recognized one of the names on the shipment tags.
My father's.
Flashback: Carson, Age 10
The knife was cold. Not sharp. Not yet.
"Look," he said, "if you cry again I'll take the dog's tongue next."
He smiled like the devil wore Armani.
That was my father—Theodore Henderson. General. Businessman. Monster.
He trained me like an animal. Starved me to sharpen my instincts. Burned me to make me feel "closer to God." Once told me Elise's mother was weak, that she begged like a pig. I didn't even know what he meant until I saw her name in the files.
He killed her. Shot her while Elise watched through a crack in the door.
Back to Present
Alex stepped outside to take a call from Leona. Something about Glory's next shipment coming through JFK Airport in 72 hours.
I turned to Elise. Her lashes fluttered, and she winced as if remembering the tank, the wire, the sick amusement in those men's eyes.
I knew that pain. I lived in it.
You belong to me now, I thought. Not in the romance way. In the way broken things cling to each other when the world has used them up.
She stirred.
I leaned in. "Don't move. Just listen."
Her eyes opened, red-rimmed but alive.
"They'll come again," I whispered. "They know what you saw. That gallery? It's not just about drugs. It's a graveyard for all the people who knew too much."
She blinked at me, tears swimming. "Why me?"
"Because of your father," I said. "Because Kylon Maurice is not the hero you think he is."
Her lips parted, trying to speak. I didn't let her.
"Your mom didn't die in a robbery. She was executed. And the man who gave the order was sitting next to your crib the whole time."
She screamed. Not out loud. Inside. I saw it.
Alex burst back in.
"They hit one of our safehouses," he panted. "Left a note."
He handed me the paper. No signature. Just three words:
"HELLO, MY SON."
The floor tilted. My hand shook.
"I need to find him," I said, already standing.
Alex grabbed my arm. "Carson. If you go, we all die."
I smiled.
"I'm already dead."
I left Elise at the hospital after whispering a half-lie into her ear, calling her "chaton"—a nickname that sounded soft, too soft for the world she was in now. But it was my way of saying goodbye without goodbye. She needed sleep. I needed silence. Alone. For once.
I didn't take the others. No Alex. No Leona. No Dante, Diego, or Marco. Not even the ghost of my own conscience. Just me. Just Carson. The broken twin. The twin that wasn't made to shine but to sink.
The lead came from a note hidden in my jacket. Cryptic coordinates, a time, and a symbol—Pierce's symbol. The golden boy. The hero. The perfect Henderson. My twin. My foil. My curse.
I found him exactly where the trail said I would: a dim-lit PC café that reeked of sweat, burned wires, and teenage ambition. He sat at a station, mouse clicking with that calm, smug glow only he could wear without choking on it. A round of Call of Duty played between us like we weren't flesh and blood soaked in secrets.
"Nice of you to show," he muttered, eyes still glued to the screen.
"You said Mom and Damian are dead if I don't," I replied flatly.
He smiled.
"Just doing Dad's work. You know how he gets."
I laughed. Or maybe it was a scream trapped in my throat. We didn't talk. We bled words. Every line between us was a threat, a warning, a ticking clock strapped to my sanity.
Then the beating began. A message from Father. No blades. Just fists. Kicks. Bruises made of silence. I was left crumpled behind the café, blood trailing from my lip, teeth rattling with rage.
By morning, I saw Elise. Her back turned, talking to her father—Kylon Maurice. Smiling. Unaware. Or maybe too aware. Maybe that was her coping mechanism. Like mine was madness.
We called off the mission. No glory. No takedown. Not yet. Too risky. Too many eyes. And I couldn't let Elise become another name scratched into my guilt.
I returned to the penthouse—the one place no one knew but me. And now, her. She slept in my bed while I curled up on the black leather couch, thinking of the men who touched what was mine and how many ways I could end them.
Sleep? That was for sane people. I didn't sleep. I planned.
And by morning, I walked the school halls like a shadow. Elise played her role: podcast queen, elite girl, one of the queen bees. And I was the transfer student. The ghost. The boy who pretended not to know her, even when our hands brushed in the hallway and it felt like electricity.
Later that day, I met up with Ryder. My brother from another pathology. Koinoniphobia made him avoid crowds, but the guy was still the most infamous playboy in town. Sick, twisted, brilliant.
We snuck into the airport posing as security.
The moment the first box opened, I knew we were in deeper than I thought.
Fish packed with cocaine. Labeled for Mexico. The real shipment: a single microdrive tucked in the gills. Dark web access point.
I stared at the thing and felt my brain smile.
A clue.
But Ryder looked at me like I was seconds from self-destruction. "We walk away for now. Stay low. Pretend normal. Until we're not."
So we did.
But my mind never stopped. I kept rewinding the gallery incident, Elise's blood-soaked face, the static in her voice when she said "You killed him."
I kept replaying Pierce's smile when he beat me senseless, and the way Kylon looked like a proud puppet master.
I kept seeing the tank Elise was drowned in. The electricity. The men. The pain.
I kept thinking about how she called me an idiot when she passed out.
And somehow, it made me grin.
I wasn't born this way.
I was made.
And now I'm about to remake everything else.
Welcome to my spiral. There's no bottom here. Only blood and memory and fire.
* * * *