Page 63 of Fractured Devotion (Tainted Souls #1)

The night presses against my skin, thick and cold.

The refinery rises ahead, a rotting monument of steel and smoke, sprawled across the barren outskirts. It hums like a living thing, its walls pulsing with dim orange lights, its heartbeat mechanical and steady.

I watch from a ridge, hidden in the skeletal remains of an old maintenance shed.

The wind carries the tang of oil and rust, biting into my lungs.

The guards below—six of them that I can see—pace lazily, their rifles slung low.

They think the dark protects them. They think no one would dare to come here.

Fools.

I pull my hood lower, my leather gloves flexing around the grip of my knife.

I didn’t come here to threaten.

I came to end this.

Vescari is inside. I know this because Lorna told me herself, her voice still echoing in my mind. She gave me everything—coordinates, security details, and most importantly, his exact schedule. He never leaves this place after nightfall. This refinery is his bunker, his kingdom of shadows.

He is the next one on my list. The one I can reach tonight.

The one with blood-soaked hands that I can drag into the dirt.

But he isn’t the last. Rourke is still out there somewhere beyond my reach, for now. I’m saving him for the end. The final chapter. He deserves that much.

But Vescari? He’s mine tonight.

He’s one of the architects who carved their names into the bones of children, who traded minds and bodies for data points, who thought they could play gods while the rest of us became their broken creations.

I’ve carved their names into my memory and branded them into the inside of my skull. Not for justice, not for revenge, and not because I believed it would fix anything.

But because I can still hear the screams.

My mother’s screams while strapped to a chair and begging under the cold hands of men worse than Vescari or Rourke. People cut from an older, crueler cloth. The kind of monsters who didn’t hide behind corporations or data streams. They broke people up close with their hands, and they enjoyed it.

I was just a child. They erased me and rewrote me, every moment of pain carefully designed to make me obedient, efficient, and hollow.

And lately, another voice threads through those screams. Celeste’s.

Watching her unravel and watching her fight her way back from the same pit they once threw me into dragged everything back to the surface. Her pain doesn’t belong to her alone anymore. It coils tightly around my ribs, burrowing deeper.

Her story and mine aren’t just similar. They’re tangled, knotted together in ways I can’t ignore. The same kind of hands that broke me shaped her too. And every time I watched her claw toward freedom, I saw my mother’s eyes. I saw my own.

They thought they’d buried it deep enough and that no one would ever dig it back up.

But she did.

And now, I remember everything.

Tonight, I take back every piece they ever stole.

I slip from the ridge, my every step absorbed by the dirt, my heartbeat steady, my purpose clear.

Vescari won’t walk away.

None of them were meant to.

I move through the shadows, keeping low, my focus unbroken.

The first guard rounds a corner, yawning, his rifle loose in his grip.

I grab him from behind, my gloved hand sealing his mouth, the knife sliding cleanly beneath his chin. Warmth spills out in a gush.

He doesn’t even struggle.

I drag him into the dark, leaving him slumped among the scrap.

Another comes, whistling a tune, unaware of the stain already spreading across the ground.

One quick snap of the neck, and he drops like a puppet with cut strings.

The others fall just as easily, methodical and silent.

This isn’t a fight.

It’s culling.

I wipe my blade clean and enter through a side door, slipping into the labyrinth of corridors.

The refinery groans around me, pipes rattling under pressure, steam hissing through cracks.

My boots echo softly against metal floors.

Everything smells of smoke and old grease, and the air is thick enough to choke.

But I don’t rush.

Every step forward is deliberate, every turn a slow tightening of the noose.

I want him to feel it.

I want him to know death is coming, inch by inch.

The main office is ahead. I can hear the faint scrape of a chair against the floor, followed by the subtle shift of footsteps. Vescari, moving within his den, unaware that his time has run out.

I push the door open, calm as still water.

Vescari looks up from his drink, his face aging under the harsh lights. He doesn’t flinch.

“When I heard about Dunley, I wondered if it’d be you,” he says, his voice carrying the easy weight of old knowledge.

I step inside, shutting the door with a soft click.

“You never were good at running,” I answer, letting the words hang between us—words we’ve both said in other rooms and under different circumstances.

He leans back, swirling amber liquid in his glass and studying me with the same detached interest I remember too well.

“And you,” he says, a faint smile tugging at his mouth, “were always too good at chasing. That’s why I kept you close… back then.”

His tone twists around something that isn’t quite admiration but more like a private joke only we’re in on.

I walk toward him, each step slow and steady.

“Do you know what I hate most about men like you, Vescari?” I ask, my voice low.

“Enlighten me,” he murmurs.

“You still think you matter.”

I strike fast. My blade slams into his hand, pinning it to the desk.

His fingers loosen, the glass slipping from his grasp and crashing onto the floor, shards scattering with a sharp crack.

He doesn’t scream, but his face twists in agony.

“You think I came here for answers?” I ask, leaning close.

“No,” he murmurs.

“Good,” I say, twisting the knife.

I let him bleed, watching the red pool beneath his hand.

“You think you won something tonight?” he rasps.

“No. This isn’t a victory,” I reply, my voice calm.

“Then why?” he gasps.

I lean in, my breath hot against his ear.

“Because some debts need to be paid in flesh.”

I pull the knife free before shoving him down to the floor with a brutal shove. Then, I straddle him, pinning him in place.

His breath comes in short, ragged bursts, panic flickering in his eyes as he realizes there’s no escape.

“This isn’t about justice,” I whisper, my voice steady.

“What is it about then?” he chokes.

“Balance,” I say. I press the blade to his throat. “You took too much. Now I take everything.”

With that, I cut deep and slow.

He gurgles, his eyes wide, his hands clawing at mine.

I watch until the light fades.

Then, I sit there for a while, staring at his body.

No more words. No more power.

Just meat and silence.

I wipe the blade clean on his shirt. Then, I rise and leave him there.

Outside, the night is still.

The refinery burns faintly behind me, a dying heart losing its beat.

But my list isn’t finished.

Not yet.

Rourke still lives, tucked away in some fortress, playing his games from afar. He’s the final name, the last thread I need to pull.

But tonight, I cross another off. And I feel it, the hunger beneath my skin, still gnawing, still restless.

I walk into the darkness, the weight of what’s left pressing down on me.

I’m not done.

Not until every debt is paid.

I don’t head back to the city.

Instead, I retreat to an old safe house—one I haven’t used in years.

It’s nothing more than a crumbling flat above a boarded-up tailor shop, the walls thin and the windows layered in dust. But it’s quiet. It doesn’t ask questions.

I lock the door behind me, bolting it twice out of habit.

The weight of tonight clings to me, thick as smoke. I peel off my gloves, watching the dried blood crack against the leather.

I drop my weapons on the table. The knife glints under the weak light, still stained in places I missed.

My hands tremble faintly, not from weakness, but from something deeper, something I don’t have the words for.

I sit on the edge of the old cot with my elbows on my knees, staring at the floorboards as my breath slows.

I drag my fingers through my hair, gripping it tightly.

I tell myself this is what had to be done. That there was no other option. That men like Vescari and Dunlay, even Rourke, don’t deserve last chances.

But the truth claws at me in the silence.

It’s not just vengeance that drives me.

It’s her.

Celeste.

Every time I close my eyes, I see her. Fighting, bleeding, and burning through every chain they wrapped around her.

I see myself in her rage, in her agony. I hear my mother’s screams layered beneath her voice.

It terrifies me how much I want to burn everything for her.

How much I already have.

I wonder, as I sit there in the dark, how much of me is left. How much of me ever existed beyond the blade and the hunt.

And somewhere deep inside, a voice whispers that maybe there’s nothing left to save.

That maybe I never wanted to be saved at all.

I lean back, my head resting against the cold wall.

Outside, the wind howls through the alleyways.

But inside, I let the monster stretch its claws in peace.

Tonight, there’s no guilt.

Only a steady pulse of what still waits ahead.