Page 118 of Infamous

The mistress screams - high and useless.

He jerks upright, naked under the single swinging bulb, sweat making him shine. He fumbles for the sheet and fails; his face goes pale when he sees me. He looks small, ridiculous - a man who thinks power will save him and doesn’t know where fear really lives.

He stumbles back, eyes wide. “Don’t-” he starts, then spits, “Who the hell-”

“Don’t bother,” I cut him off. My voice is flat, bored. “You have no right to any questions.”

Recognition flashes across his face - that moment a predator knows the hunt has flipped. His hand darts for the phone on the nightstand. I shoot it before he can touch it. The room explodes with noise.

The woman screams and curls against the headboard. Blood hits her thigh in hot, ugly droplets.

“Listen,” he gasps, breath trembling. “We can-”

I step closer until I can see the fear in his eyes. His words fall away.

“You shouldn’t have touched her,” I say. The sound of my voice surprises me - older, harder than it used to be. “You had no right to lay a hand on her. No right to even whisper her name.”

He scrambles off the bed, naked, sweating, hands up like he’s begging for mercy. “Please. Money. Name it - anything-”

“You can’t buy your way out of this.”

“Name your number,” he hurries on.

“There isn’t enough money in this godforsaken world to buy me. Not when you touched what was mine.”

He starts to beg, words twisting into excuses. “She was collateral.”

That word lands like a punch. Collateral. The same word used to make other girls disappear. The same word that once took Billie.

I raise the gun. He drops to his knees, fat hands pressed together, eyes empty. “I didn’t touch her. I swear - ” he pleads, voice breaking.

“I know,” I say, stepping closer. “But you made sure someone else did.”

He flinches. The truth lands harder than the barrel between his eyes. For a long second the room holds its breath - his ragged panting, the bulb’s weak hum, the rain tapping against the window.

Then I pull the trigger.

One shot. Clean. The sound cracks the air. He folds, blood splattering the cheap wallpaper and the sheets, a red bloom spreading like a stain that won’t come out.

The mistress screams again - a sound raw and jagged, as though her voice is tearing its way out of her throat. She’s trembling, streaked with his blood, mascara bleeding down her face. And for a fleeting moment, she’s not just one woman. She’severyone of them. Every girl who came before her. Every man, woman, and child desecrated by a monster in a suit who believed their flesh was his birthright.

“Get dressed,” I tell her. “Leave. Don’t tell anyone you were here.”

She nods, sobbing, clutches the sheet, and moves. I don’t wait for her to finish. I walk out.

Rain pounds, cold across my face. It soaks through my shirt and washes the heat from my skin. My heartbeat slows into something steady and blank. He’s not going to get the luxury of an outcry, a funeral, a press cycle. He’s just gone.

The city won’t notice for a day or two. They’ll find his car, his silent phone, and someone will cry on camera. But tonight the world feels cleaner. The rain keeps coming, thin and merciless, and I let it fall.

68

LUCIAN

The hours turn into days, and they in turn melt into weeks. Every minute away from her is another slow death - a quiet, cruel kind that no bullet could compete with. I try to work, to distract myself with the mechanics of violence, but every job feels hollow. Every name on my list fades behind hers.

Nadia.

The world still moves without her, and that’s the part that breaks me most. The streets still hum, the night still breathes, but nothing feels right. Nothing tastes the same. I tell myself she’s safe in the clinic - that she needs time, peace, distance from all the chaos I drag behind me - but peace feels like a word invented for people who haven’t been broken yet.