Page 95 of Buried in Blood

And the wedding?

It’ll be the most beautiful massacre this city’s ever seen.

* * *

The lights in the Golden Hollows buzz.

Faint. Steady.

I walk the corridor barefoot, every step echoing off concrete and steel. The walls sweat with condensation, dripping like the veins of a dying god. Down here, beneath the surface, there’s no time. No day. No night. Just obedience.

I like it that way.

A girl screams down the hall. Not loud. Not defiant.

Just enough to remind me they still feel fear. I light a cigarette. I exhale.

Smoke drifts toward the security monitor—twelve screens, twelve cages, twelve carefully calculated investments. Their faces blur into one over time. Open mouths. Empty eyes. Every cry is indistinguishable from the last.

Harmony appears on camera, pacing like a ghost.

I zoom in.

She’s clutching the detonator now. Holding it like it might bite. It will. If she makes the wrong move, it will bite everyone.

Good.

I tilt my head and watch her for a moment longer, then switch to the loading bay feed. Enrique is welding shut the auction crates. Sparks light up the screen in flashes of blue and gold. It looks like fireworks. Like war.

I take a final drag.

Then I pressdeleteon every trace of the transport footage—routes, names, timestamps, tags. Gone. Burned from the system like scripture in fire.

Mylegacy is clean. Untouchable.

I close my eyes and listen. To the electric hum. To the distant sobbing. To the whisper of power threading through my veins like morphine.

I whisper the words under my breath, like a prayer.

“Obedience is golden. Sin is cleansed.”

Then I smile to myself.

Because next?

Next, they’ll all be begging to be sold.

And I’ll be the one holding the gavel.

Speaking of begging to be sold—I almost forgot. I have to give Harmony her going-away present.

I postponed her auction until after Brooke’s. She is the only one I have to get into Lucien’s wedding, after all. That is something I’m willing to hold on to her for.

28

Harmony

The knock is soft. Too soft. Like he’s pretending to be gentle.