Page 58 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

The room is concrete. Silent, windowless, no cameras, and no clock. Just one chair and the man tied to it.

He doesn’t look like a monster but that is the trick of it. Clean shave. Pressed collar. Wedding ring still on. If you saw him on a stage, speaking about female empowerment and tech advancement in West Africa, you’d believe him. You’d clap. You’d donate.

That’s how they survive, by looking like everything they’re not.

The guard stands back against the far wall, arms folded. He doesn’t speak. He wouldn’t need to.

I step inside.

The man raises his head, lip already curled in disdain. “Whatever this is, it’s illegal. You’re not the law.”

“No,” I say, closing the door behind me. “I’m worse.”

His gaze sharpens.

I cross to the table and place the small black case on the steel surface between us. Open it. Inside: three flash drives. Labeled. Timestamped.

“Transaction logs,” I say. “IP traces. Boardroom invites. Auction codes. Every file you routed through the shell servers in Tallinn and Nairobi. Every underage girl rebranded as a ‘junior tech fellow.’ Every offshore payment funneled through your foundation’s endowment arm.”

He pales slightly. Then smiles. “None of that holds up in court.”

“This isn’t court.”

I sit across from him.

He shifts against the restraints—tight, but not cruel. I haven’t broken him yet. But I will. I already have, in the ways that matter.

“You don’t get to wear nice suits and pretend the girls you tagged weren’t sold in backrooms like cattle,” I say. “You don’t get to funnel grant money into rot and call it impact.”

His nostrils flare. “You’re bluffing. There’s no way you got into—”

“Your assistant used the same password for her burner Dropbox as her fitness app.”

I lean forward, lowering my voice.

“Thirteen gigabytes of auction previews. Files named after girls. Their measurements. Their regions. Their fake program names. All time-stamped to your keynote speeches.”

He swallows. That is the first break.

“You’re making a mistake,” he mutters. “There are senators on this board. If I go down, so do they.”

I tilt my head. “You think I care about them?”

He doesn’t respond.

I stand and cross to the case again. Pull out a single folder—paper, because there are still some things worth seeing with your eyes.

I drop it in his lap. “Read that out loud.”

He doesn’t.

So I do.

“Three weeks ago, you authorized a ‘donor preview’ of twenty-two girls in Cape Town under the mentorship arm of your fellowship. Four were fourteen. One tried to escape. She was labeled defective and removed.”

I stare at him. “She’s not dead. I found her.”

That makes him blink.

“She gave me your name. Your face. Your voice.”

I move to the wall. Press a button. A screen descends from the ceiling.

Security footage flickers to life—grainy, silent. It shows him. Smiling. Touching a girl’s chin. Then walking away.

“She’s in my custody now,” I say. “Safe. You’ll never see her again.”

He hisses, “You’re trying to be God.”

“No,” I say. “I’m cleaning up after the ones who played at it.”

***

Three days earlier.

A private room in a hotel no one knows I own. Two men inside. One of them a U.S. senator whose net worth tripled the year he began funding overseas tech accelerators for at-risk girls.

I stand by the window, arms folded, watching him pace.

“You have no idea what you’re stepping into, Dane.”

“I think you’ll find I know exactly what I’m stepping on.”

I turn to face him and slide the tablet across the table.

He glances. Freezes. Blood drains from his face.

“You have three options,” I say, calm. “Resign quietly and relocate. I’ve already arranged your shell holding in the Caymans.”

“And the other two?”

“Option two,” I continue, “I release everything I have. Not just to the press—but to your grandchildren’s trust fund managers, your wife’s sister, and the special committee you begged to chair.”

His mouth opens. Closes.

“And option three?” he asks.

I smile. “I bury your bloodline’s future under the wreckage of your name.”

He doesn’t speak after that.

He signs the resignation letter.

***

Now, in the silence of the holding room, the man across from me has stopped fighting.

He is shaking.

“What do you want from me?” he asks.

“Names,” I say. “Servers. Access points. Every handler. Every foundation you funneled through. And where the next auctions are.”

He blinks. “You’re going to dismantle the whole network?”

I stare at him. “I already am.”

He sits back, shoulders slumping. “And the girl? The one who escaped?”

“She’ll never see another room like the one you put her in.”

I lean closer. My voice is steady. Deadly. “But you will.”

***

“Wait!”

The word hangs in the cold room like vapor off a corpse.

The philanthropist’s voice cracks as he says it, a little too fast, too eager. His wrists strain against the restraints, blood now soaking through one cuff.

Not enough to kill, just enough to remind him that bleeding is the only language this place speaks.

“I can give you more,” he says, breath shallow. “I have accounts, yes. But I also know where they’re moving next. There’s a fund—off-books. Even the senators don’t—”

His voice pitches upward as I approach.

“You break me now, and it all dies with me.”

I pause.

Look at him.

Then reach down, grab his left hand, and crush the bones in his palm with one clean twist.

The scream is instant. High. Wet. Real.

I don’t blink.

“You talk because it’s right,” I say. “Not because you want leverage.”

He whimpers, curling into himself. The guard doesn’t move. No one here moves unless I say so.

I lean closer, voice quiet now. “You hurt girls. Sold them. Watched them be broken so you could smile on stage with a fucking ribbon on your chest. There’s no deal here.”

“I—I didn’t…” he sobs. “I was just following orders—”

“Then give me every name who gave them.”

I turn away, wiping his blood from my fingers with a cloth I’d brought in my jacket pocket. I always brought one. There is a process to this. A silence afterward.

That’s when they usually start talking.

***

I’ve learned that there are two kinds of blood.

The kind that washes off.

And the kind that lingers.

Mine lingers.

It’s in my cuffs. My breath. My decisions.

I leave the interrogation room with a name, an address, and a vault key that shouldn’t exist. It will be enough to pull the next thread. The next ring. The next boardroom masked as a mentorship initiative.

But every answer costs something. And I am running low on parts of myself I can afford to give away.

***

The flashback returns before I can stop it.

Dark-paneled walls. Low ceiling. A leather chair positioned precisely across from mine. A half-empty whiskey tumbler sits untouched on the senator’s desk.

His hand shakes as he reaches for it.

“I don’t know who you think you are,” he says, voice measured, but splintered. “You think playing vigilante makes you a hero?”

“I’m not a hero,” I reply, voice flat. “I’m the final fucking reckoning.”

He doesn’t respond. Just looks at the folder I’d laid in front of him.

Inside: photographs, account logs, statements, autopsy reports.

I had let him read. I always do. Watching them see it…watching the rot finally catch up to the luxury they live in—that’s the only part that ever feels close to justice.

“You could be ruined for this,” he says quietly.

“No,” I answer. “You could.”

The senator looks up, eyes glassy. “You won’t save them all.”

I stand slowly.

“No,” I say. “But I’ll make sure you don’t touch another.”

He resigns before sunrise.

***

Six trauma centers are already funded. Three more are in blueprint. All anonymous. Hidden behind fake charities and shell accounts. Places for the recovered girls to heal, far from the names of the men who broke them.

I sign another release.

$9.7 million.

Allocated to a center being constructed outside Dar es Salaam. I’ll never visit it. They’ll never know who paid for the mattresses, the bodyguards, the trauma specialists flown in from out of country.

It isn’t about recognition.

It is about reparation.

This is what redemption looks like for me. Not prayers. Not therapy. Not love.

Just action. Violence when necessary. And silence afterward.

***

Later, I sit in the penthouse’s surveillance command alone again.

I don’t bother to change. My shirt still smells like cold air and copper. My hands are clean, but not clean.

The screen flickers to life again.

Her.

Vera. Curled up. A different book this time. Same blanket. One knee tucked under the other like always.

Her lips move silently, mouthing something she reads. She smiles, just barely. The kind of smile people only have when they feel safe.

And it guts me.

Because it is the kind of safety I buy with another man’s broken hand.

She will never know.

She’ll never see the rooms I built beneath cities, the girls I move like chess pieces to escape invisible buyers.

She’ll never know the kind of people I’d threatened. What I’d traded. What I’d become.

Because if she knew, she’d stop seeing the man who makes her tea and reads her contracts.

And start seeing what I really am.

A monster tailored into something civilized.

I touch the side of the screen. Just once. Then whisper to the dark:

“You are the only light in a world I walk through on fire.”

I could give her everything except my truth.

Because my truth would ruin her.

And if I have to choose between saving myself…or keeping her untouched—

I’ll choose her.

Every time.

Even if it means bleeding alone.

Even if it means she’ll never love the man I really am.