Page 52 of Ruin My Life (Blood & Betrayal #1)

Monroe and Chavez stay tight at my back as I push open the reinforced metal doors that lead to the heart of it all.

To Matthias’s office.

It hasn’t changed. Not a damn inch.

No windows. No light. Just four concrete walls, a dark red rug designed to hide blood, and a thick silence that hums in the stagnant air.

Wall-mounted monitors flicker with grainy footage from his surveillance feeds. Behind his desk, the map of New York glows—red veins crawling across the city’s skin, marking what’s his.

When the door latches behind us, the heavy deadbolts sliding into place, the hair on my neck prickles.

He built his office like a vault.

Completely impenetrable.

No one gets in unless he wants them in.

And no one gets out unless he lets them leave.

Matthias sits behind his massive mahogany desk, fingers steepled beneath his chin. His blue eyes pin me where I stand.

He’s older, but not softer. Silver hair slicked back to cold perfection. The scar through his left brow deeper than I remember. A gold canine flashes when he smirks.

A man who built his throne on the bones and debt of people who never had a chance.

He was made for this life. Molded by it.

“Damon,” he drawls, voice dripping amusement and quiet malice. “I must say—I’m shocked. Crawling out of your hole just to visit an old man like me?”

I stop a foot from his desk. Stand tall.

His presence presses down on me—an old weight I wore like chains. Once, it crushed me. Made me believe he was the monster I should fear most.

But now?

Now we both know better.

Because the thing he made—the thing he tried to leash—is the one standing in front of him.

And I’m no longer his monster.

I’m his reckoning.

“I’ve come to talk,” I say simply, hooking my thumbs into my belt loops. “It’s been a while. And I think we both know there’s much to discuss after some… recent events.”

Matthias’s jaw ticks.

He knows exactly what I’m referring to.

“We drew lines in the sand, Damon. And those lines—your lines—were crossed,” he says, his voice low, dangerous. “By you. By the company you keep. I’m a man of my word. But you? Seems you’re not. Burning down your little bar was a warning. A slap on the wrist for betrayal.”

“I’m well aware of the deals we struck two years ago,” I reply, holding his stare. “But Xander changed the game the second he hurt The Black Rose and her family.”

“Ah.” He sneers, leaning back in his chair. “ The Black Rose. ”

The disdain in his tone is clear enough, but it’s the flicker in his eyes—the sharp calculation that sends heat crawling under my skin.

“She’s the one who pulled the trigger, isn’t she?”

I hesitate.

He doesn’t need the answer. We both know he’s seen the footage from Xander’s compound.

“She did,” I say anyway. “It was her revenge for what he did to her sister six months ago. If you ask me, Xander got off easy—”

“But I’m not asking you, am I?” he snaps, cutting me off like a whipcrack.

The vein at his temple pulses. His fingers curl tight around the desk edge, knuckles blanching like he’s restraining the urge to break something.

“Xander was my son,” he snarls. “My boy. Reckless, yes. Arrogant? Absolutely. But he was still mine. His death will not go unanswered.”

He stands.

Chavez and Monroe tense at my sides—ready, but not moving. Not yet.

Matthias leans forward, palms flattening to the polished wood. His lips twist into something that might pass for a smile, but there’s nothing in it but murder.

“I’ll tell you what,” he says slowly, every word dipped in poison. “You and I have had a long-standing agreement—no bloodshed, mutual respect. I’ve held up my end, Damon. Don’t let one girl’s vendetta ruin that.”

My jaw tightens. “What exactly are you implying? ”

He straightens, smooths a phantom crease from his lapel—like we’re negotiating a merger, not bartering over flesh and blood.

“Give me The Black Rose,” he says coolly. “Hand her over. Let me make this right. And we’ll return to the way things were. Songbirds out of Kings. I’ll even cover repairs on your little bar—call it a gesture of goodwill.”

The words suck the air out of the room.

It’s so neat. So fucking calculated.

Matthias O’Doyle doesn’t offer repairs. He doesn’t make nice. Not unless he knows he’s already bleeding out.

A war between us would cost me everything—maybe even my life. But he knows exactly who I’d come for first.

And he knows he wouldn’t survive it.

“Not a chance in hell, O’Doyle,” I say, my voice low enough to make the floor itself flinch. “Come near her, and I’ll peel the skin off your body—inch by inch—while you’re alive to feel every goddamn second of it.”

His brow arches—then he barks a sharp laugh that echoes too loud in the windowless tomb he calls an office.

“The Damon I knew would’ve weighed the cost,” he sneers. “You’re risking your entire circle—for her .”

I step closer. Close enough for him to feel what’s been tempered into my bones since the day I walked away from him.

“The Damon you knew was the beaten-down product of a harsh world that broke him over and over until he crawled to your doorstep for scraps,” I say, aiming every word like a blade ready to kill.

“That kid that you used to control—the soldier you built to obey, to bleed, to die for you if it served your cause—he died the day you told him he couldn’t leave.

The day you made an example of Isabella. ”

Something flickers across his face. Shock, recognition.

But never regret.

Matthias O’Doyle doesn’t regret a single corpse he’s left behind.

“What came after,” I finish, my voice low, lethal, “is a man you will never again have the pleasure of controlling. ”

Matthias stares at me. Unreadable. Ice and calculation behind those pale blue eyes that once made me cower.

Then, slowly, he exhales and sinks back into his leather chair, like a king weighing the cost of war one final time.

“Damon, you don’t want this war. And for what it’s worth… I don’t either,” he says. The edge bleeds from his voice, but the weight of his words lingers. “At one point, you were like a son to me. I’d hate to lose both you and Xander in the same breath.”

I stare back at him.

Part of me wonders— even now —if this is his last performance. Fatherly sentiment as a disguise for a trap. He taught me how to see that. Taught me mercy always came with a price.

“Then we’d better start negotiating,” I say, lowering myself into the black leather chair opposite his desk.

He opens his mouth—

But a sharp buzz cuts him off. His phone vibrates across the polished wood, the screen lighting up like it’s begging for his attention.

Matthias’s eyes narrow. He snatches it up, thumb flicking the screen. At first, he barely reacts. But then—

A flicker of shock.

His brow furrows. His eyes widen, then narrow again. His jaw locks so tight I half expect his gold canine to crack.

Then he laughs.

A harsh, cracked sound. Bitter. Resigned. A predator forced to step inside his own trap.

“Was this your plan all along?” he snarls, his rough voice scraping like flint across my ribs.

I tilt my head, tone steady but a hint of real confusion bleeding through. “What the hell are you talking about?”

He slides the phone across the polished desk toward me. “Seems your Black Rose has done all the negotiating for you.”

I catch it before it slips off the edge, the smooth glass cold against my palm.

The email on the screen is from an encrypted address.

But the words ?

The more I read, the more certain I am about who wrote them.

Every line drips with her brand of venom-laced charm—bold, merciless, and entirely unafraid of lighting the match if it means burning a man like Matthias to ash.

Matthias O’Doyle, Part of me wishes our first interaction could have been face-to-face, but considering I killed your son, an email will have to do—for both our sakes.

First, let’s be clear: Damon bears no responsibility for Alexander’s death.

He tried to stop me. But as I’m sure you know by now, any man stupid enough to stand between a strong woman and her fire—well, he gets burned.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, here’s the deal—one I strongly advise you not to refuse.

You will return to business as usual, abiding by the same rules Damon laid out for you and your Songbirds two years ago.

No operations in Kings. No retaliation. No harm to your men.

I’ll honour these same terms. In return, I won’t send the attached file to the police.

It’s a long one, but the TLDR is this: You, Matthias O’Doyle, have been covering up your schemes for years, but all it takes is one very good, very pissed-off hacker to find all the skeletons in your basement.

If you’d like to spend the rest of your days free rather than rotting in a cell, I suggest you accept my gracious offer.

As a gesture of good faith, I’ve also wired you $500,000.

Think of it as insurance that you’ll keep to your word—but remember, I can just as easily take it back with a single keystroke if you cross me or anyone else in Kings again.

I trust we understand each other. Hope we never have to meet, The Black Rose.

My jaw slackens.

I reread it again. And again.

Questions slam through my skull faster than I can untangle them.

When the hell did she find the time to dig up that much leverage?

How long has she been planning this—without me even noticing?

Where the fuck did she get half a million dollars?

But even through the shock, one feeling barrels to the surface—louder than confusion, sharper than the echo of betrayal.

Pride .

Pure, raw, chest-deep awe.

She didn’t just protect herself. She protected me. Protected my people. Protected my city.

And she did it in the most Brie way possible.

Bold. Calculated. Quietly ruthless.

She became the weapon I didn’t even know I needed. And somehow—she made it look easy.

Matthias sighs, long and weary, folding his hands over the desk like a prideful ruler conceding a lost battle but already plotting the next war.

“Well, I’d be a fool not to accept... considering what I stand to lose. The terms stand. No retaliation. No more trouble for you—or your little girlfriend .”

A muscle ticks in my jaw. My hands flex, ready to curl into fists. But I don’t flinch.

He wants the reaction—wants to pull me back down to his level.

So I give him nothing but ice.

“Then it’s agreed. No more bodies in Kings. That includes your Songbirds, and the women I’ve helped. I don’t want any more blood showing up on my doorstep, O’Doyle—not unless I’ve spilled it myself.”

Matthias arches a brow, something like curiosity flickering beneath the frost. “Women? ”

I lean in, voice low, clipped. “You know damn well your men killed Jennifer Pietro. Left her in a dumpster behind my apartment building. Same way Isabella was found.”

For the first time, something cracks in his mask—just for a breath.

Not guilt. Not smugness.

Confusion. Genuine confusion.

He shakes his head, slow and deliberate, like he’s trying to decide if I’m testing him or if he’s missing something enormous.

“Contrary to what you think, I don’t let my people operate that way anymore.

That was Xander’s sickness—his stain. I cut him loose so they’d remember who they answer to.

No freelance hits. No collateral bodies without my say-so.

And I sure as hell didn’t authorize that one. ”

A cold weight roots itself in my gut.

“No,” I say through clenched teeth. “It had to be one of yours.”

Matthias doesn’t flinch. His gaze stays steady—steady enough that it chills me deeper than any denial could. “I’m telling you, it wasn’t,” he says, calm and certain. “Seems there may be another threat in Kings that neither of us knew of.”

A new threat. Impossible.

But my mind reels through the last few weeks—

Every warning. Every red flag we’ve written off as typical Songbird behaviour.

Brie’s faceless contact. The job she was given—hacking into my network.

The breach into King’s Eye. Someone sifted through every feed—Brie’s apartment included. We keep it all on that server. Everyone we’ve ever helped. Every contact. Every name.

What if they didn’t just kill Jennifer to taunt me.

What if they wanted her found.

Lee still hasn’t traced the hacker. No location. No digital fingerprint. Just a ghost behind a screen.

Then—like a match striking dry kindling—Xander’s voice echoes back, sharp and smug in my skull .

I can’t wait to see your face when you realize who it is.

His partner.

The second masked man.

The one who helped him slaughter Brie’s family.

The one who carved those scars into her skin.

The one still out there.

And whoever they are… I know them.

But who?

Before I can tear that thought open, a shrill alarm shatters the silence—sharp enough to spike my pulse straight to my throat.

My phone.

I rip it out of my pocket. The screen glows with a single alert.

It’s from the prototype we’ve been testing—a covert panic system. A silent alarm, triggered with a single tap on the King’s Eye panic button we built into the app. One day, it’ll broadcast a high priority alert to my entire network, triangulate the location, deploy help in seconds.

But right now?

Right now, it pings only me.

This one came from Lee’s phone—through the beta version he installed last month.

Triggered from inside my apartment.

Brie .