Page 7 of Ruin My Life (Blood & Betrayal #1)

Brie

D AMON K ING—THE KING OF K INGS.

Subtlety clearly wasn’t a priority when he crowned himself.

It’s not revolutionary—just cleverly marketed to people who confuse exclusivity with effectiveness.

He also owns a bar downtown called The Speakeasy that hemorrhages more cash than it makes, and a penthouse apartment across the street to match.

He donates to women’s shelters. Funds children’s programs. Shakes hands with politicians. Poses at charity galas. Blah, blah…

From the outside, Damon King looks like a hero.

The king of a city that worships him.

But no one’s that perfect.

Damon has a history with the Songbirds. A long one.

He joined them at fifteen, back when their biggest crimes involved stolen cars and bodega stickups—not the organized loan-sharking empire they’ve built today.

His juvenile records were sealed, but not well enough. It took me less than thirty minutes to peel them open.

Honestly, the NYPD should really consider updating their firewalls .

The files confirm what I suspected: priors for theft, assault, possession. Minor stuff, all things considered—especially for someone with known gang affiliations.

What’s more suspicious is what’s missing .

A gap.

A six-month void in his records.

Two and a half years ago, right after emptying the bank account where he’d cashed his dirty Songbird cheques for years… he vanished.

Off the grid. No transactions. No paper trail.

Then suddenly—he reappears.

New accounts. A building deed. Renovation permits.

And voilà —his empire is born.

Since then? His record is squeaky clean.

Too clean.

From everything I’ve gathered, the Songbirds don’t exactly hand out retirement packages. They’d rather put a bullet in your head than let you walk away.

So how the hell did Damon King manage to not only leave, but reinvent himself into some vigilante prince?

I dig deeper.

Into the places where real truths live. Where cowards and criminals go to whisper in code, confident their screens protect them. The anonymous forums.

Turns out, he has another name there.

The Coyote.

Best known predator to songbirds.

No one dares say why. But the fear in their silence says enough. Whatever he did to earn that name, it was enough to scare a gang into ghosting an entire borough.

According to the whispers, the Coyote prowls the streets of Kings, and any Songbird stupid enough to trespass is asking for a closed casket.

Interesting.

Once I’ve scraped every corner of the internet, I move on to the real test—his private network.

It’s the kind of job I usually savour. A challenge. A puzzle. But I can’t shake the feeling that it’ll be tougher than most .

After all, security is his business. If anyone should be unbreakable, it’s the King himself.

But security is a lot like a house. Everyone builds strong walls. Locks the doors. Adds cameras, spotlights, motion sensors.

And yet… someone always leaves a window cracked open.

Damon King is no exception.

I find the gap in his system easily. A vulnerability in an auxiliary server—probably something he outsourced without double-checking. One tap, and I’m inside.

From there, it’s routine: hash the data, scatter it through encrypted channels, recompile on my end.

I’m in and out in ten minutes.

No trace. No alarms. No footprints.

It’s almost disappointing.

His network isn’t terrible—but it’s not the Fort Knox I expected. Not CIA-level. Not even NSA-adjacent.

Maybe he’s arrogant. Maybe he thinks no one would dare.

Just another powerful man who underestimates the cracks in his fortress.

But now… I have everything.

Passwords. Financial records. Business documents. Private correspondence. If I wanted to know what he ate for dinner last night, it would take me two clicks.

And somehow, this still doesn’t feel like a win.

I skim through the files as I sort them into a new folder, deciding what’s worth keeping—and what’s useful enough to send to my mystery employer.

They said everything , but no one wants to scroll through thirty tabs of browser history or dig through someone’s Netflix watchlist.

They want leverage. Ammunition. Something they can use .

Damon King has several bank accounts. Two under The King’s Eye , both with steady activity. One generic personal account.

And a fourth—one that only makes outgoing payments once a month .

That one catches my eye.

Most of the expenses are routine and automated. Mortgage payments, grocery deliveries, a recurring charge to a tiny medical centre in New Shoreham, Rhode Island.

Interesting.

Why does a man with a penthouse in downtown Brooklyn also own an oceanfront house in Rhode Island? And why is he paying medical bills in another state?

Curious, I dig deeper.

The property sits on the southern edge of Block Island.

Large. Secluded. Coastal.

He bought it two and a half years ago—right around the time he disappeared from the grid.

The mortgage is set to autopay. Out of sight, out of mind. But it’s not a vacation home. Not with grocery bills and medical payments.

Someone lives there.

And whoever they are… they’re important.

Important enough for him to keep hidden.

Far from the city. Far from his empire.

It takes almost no effort to pull up his mortgage contract. From there, I have his loan number, remaining balance, next payment, and full legal address.

And just like that, I’m holding a secret he never meant anyone to find.

But the second I read the house number and street name, something settles heavily in my stomach, like wet cement.

I chew the inside of my cheek, eyes flicking over the clinic’s contact info, the grocery delivery service.

A few more keystrokes and I could phish out more records.

Medical files. Prescriptions. Names.

This is exactly the kind of thing my employer wants .

But whoever lives there? They’re not part of this.

Even if Damon’s done something to deserve it—even if he’s just another corrupt name on a long list of powerful men who don’t get held accountable—

The person in that house didn’t sign up for this war .

Still… what if I don’t hand it over?

What if this is the piece that makes or breaks the deal?

What if holding back means I lose my only shot at finding the bastards who murdered my family?

What if I never get another chance like this?

I hover the cursor over the file. Nail pressed to the mouse.

Just one click. That’s all it would take.

I don’t owe Damon King a thing. Whatever mess he’s caught in, he created it—maybe this is just karma finally catching up.

But it’s not their karma.

I exhale sharply through my nose and drag the cursor across the screen.

The file drops into the recycle bin, and I shred it into oblivion with two quick clicks.

No recovery. No backups.

Gone.

Just like that.

I sit there for a moment, staring at the empty space it used to occupy.

I might be a monster now. A ghost in the wires. A shadow trailing the worst of the worst.

Maybe I am half as bad as the men I’m hunting.

Maybe even half as bad as Damon King.

But I’m not without morals. Not yet.

They haven’t been stolen from me.

Not completely.

I encrypt the remaining contents of Damon’s files—everything useful excluding Rhode Island—and prep the package for delivery.

My laptop purrs as it powers down.

No one should be able to hack into my system. Not unless they’re me. But I’d be stupid not to assume someone might try.

I disconnect my laptop from the dock and slip it into the top drawer of my desk. The interior is lined with copper mesh—a makeshift Faraday cage to block all signals, in or out. Just in case .

I lock the drawer and rise from my light purple chair, stretching my spine until it cracks.

My limbs ache. My eyes burn.

I’ve spent the better part of four hours compiling that file. And even though I technically have two days left before the deadline—I’m done.

The longer you lurk in someone’s system, the higher the chance you get burned.

I drag my feet across the light wood floor, leaving my cluttered little office behind for the night.

If anyone saw this place, they’d never believe someone like The Black Rose lives and works here.

Plain white walls. Minimalist furniture. A cheap IKEA bookshelf stuffed with old textbooks I keep saying I’ll donate. A pastel keyboard. A mouse with a cloud-shaped wrist support. And my chair matches, of course—lavender, soft-cushioned, with extra lumbar support.

Cute. Innocent. Unsuspecting.

Unless you know what to look for.

Like the Faraday drawer. The gun safe embedded beneath the desk—right where my knees sit. The motion detectors in every corner. The triple-reinforced lock. The silent alarm that triggers if someone so much as touches my door without disarming the code.

I don’t take chances.

Not anymore.

The rest of the apartment follows the same rules: simplicity layered over strategy.

The walls are sparse, but not bare. A framed photo of Banff hangs between my office and bedroom doors—my family smiling on a day when everything still made sense.

Bright-coloured appliances. Fuzzy rugs. A few hardy plants that I somehow haven’t killed yet.

Too much minimalism is suspicious. So I’ve left traces of who I used to be all over the place.

Scattered pieces of a girl who’s gone…

But not forgotten .

I push open the bedroom door and start peeling off my clothes, tossing them toward the hamper without looking.

After a hot shower and a quick brush of my teeth, I tug open the dresser drawer—only to remember I still haven’t done laundry.

Of course.

All that’s left are the lacy little things I save for the rare nights when I want to feel… something other than rage.

Sexy, maybe. Confident. Powerful.

Tonight, I’m not in the mood for sexy.

Like every other night, I’m just tired.

Still, I pull on a pair of cheeky black panties, the sheer lace hugging my hips as I catch sight of myself in the mirror. It’s the kind of lingerie that could make even a hermit feel like a goddess.

But the admiration doesn’t last.

My eyes drift upward. From my hips to my chest.

And that’s where the fantasy ends.

The scar down my sternum is pale, raised, obvious . It splits my chest like a zipper someone forgot to close.

It’s healed as best it can, but the bullet wound just over my heart still looks angry—darker, more puckered. Like it’s still trying to hold itself together.

“Trauma scars never heal the same way surgical ones do.”

That’s what Dr. Kim told me during a checkup.

“It’s hard to predict what they’ll look like in a year. But you might learn to wear it like a survivor’s pin.”

But all I see is the wound that ended everything.

The physical mark of the day I died—

And came back wrong .

I tug a loose grey T-shirt from the middle drawer and pull it over my head. It hangs long, covering everything—but my chest still feels exposed. My heart pounds behind the scars like it’s trying to outrun the memory.

My eyes catch on the photo sitting on my dresser.

Me and Amie. My high school graduation.

She’s beaming, cheek squished into mine, her smile taking up more space than her face could hold. The tassel on my cap had fallen into my mouth, and we were laughing so hard we could barely breathe.

“At least you’re still hot. The nerd hasn’t taken over yet.”

She used to joke that computer science would turn me into a cave goblin. Said I’d forget how to function in daylight and never wear a real bra again.

Even now, looking like this—bruised, scarred, broken—Amie would still call me beautiful.

She’d roll her eyes and say, “You’re not hot in spite of the scars. You’re hot because of them.”

And she’d smack me if I said otherwise.

The thought alone is enough to ease the tremor in my chest.

I climb into bed and wrap myself in cool sheets, tugging the blankets tight around my body like a cocoon.

I close my eyes and breathe in deep.

Just for tonight, I hope the memory of her smile is enough to pull me under.

And if I dream, I hope it’s of her.

Before the gunshots.

Before the blood.

Before my world ended.