Page 2

A tiny glimpse of the morning sun peeks through Kai’s curtains and I shift subtly away from it, but notice the low murmur of Kai’s voice.

“Kai?” my voice is groggy as I prop myself up on my elbows, the sheets slipping off my bare shoulders. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to me, phone pressed tight against his ear.

We barely slept and I’m fairly certain I fell asleep in his arms last night, but that might have been the only time he allowed himself a rest. He’s been frantic all night, trying to figure out what happened to Levi.

His shoulders are rigid, his head slightly bowed in fatigue. He glances over his shoulder when he hears me, eyes narrowing behind his bangs as they meet mine. There’s a storm brewing in his dark eyes, but he doesn’t say anything. He just holds up a finger, silently telling me to wait.

I sit up, letting the blanket pool around my waist as I watch him, my heart tightening.

“Just tell me where he is,” Kai snaps into the phone. “I’m not asking for details, just a fucking location.”

I scoot closer to the headboard and fix my hair.

“No,” Kai growls, standing up from the bed abruptly, “That’s not good enough. He’s my—” Kai pauses, inhaling deeply. “I have a right to know. What the fuck is going on?”

I can’t hear the other voice, but I don’t need to.

“Kai?” I whisper. “What’s going on?”

He rubs a hand over his face, not answering me right away, still focused on the person on the other end of the line.

“I don’t care what fucked up consequences you will have to face if you tell me, Dad! You would do the same if it was Uncle.”

There’s a pause.

“So, when will he be released?” Kai’s jaw twitches. “Well, he didn’t fucking kill anybody… Until the investigation is over? And what if it isn’t? …Okay.”

He finally ends the call and just sits there for a moment, staring down at the phone in his hand like he’s considering smashing it against the wall. His chest rises and falls in a slow, calculated tempo.

“Fuck.” The curse comes out of his mouth. His hands ball up into fists before slowly relaxing. “He’s… alive, at least.”

“…what?”

“He’s with the Syndicate. But no one knows where,” Kai says as he falls onto the bed beside me, his arm over his eyes as he groans. “Fucking great.”

“Don’t they operate in?—”

He cuts me off. “I don’t know where.” He sighs. “No one is allowed to know where he’s being held. I don’t think my father is telling me the entire story.”

The Syndicate is an underground organization. Powerful. Untouchable. They handle all the dirty work for families like ours. And when you’re in their hands, it’s because they don’t trust anyone else to deal with you. No one gets in, no one gets out—not until they decide what to do with you.

I only know what I have overheard from conversations with my mother. She does work for them occasionally; I hear their name only in passing.

Levi isn’t a killer. I refuse to believe that. But the fact that the Syndicate has him means someone, somewhere, thinks otherwise.

“So they think Levi actually murdered all of those people?”

“I guess fucking so. My dad wouldn’t say much more than that, but I can tell they’re playing this close to the chest.”

My fingers tremble as I tug at the sheets, trying to find some comfort in the motion. Levi’s not just arrested. He’s in a place where people go to disappear.

I’m going to be fucking sick.

Levi and I had just gotten to a place of understanding.

I need him back.

“We can’t let them keep him there. We have to get him out. There has to be a way to prove he didn’t do it.”

Kai sits on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees, his fingers loosely interlocked. His hair falls slightly into his face, messy from where he’s run his hands through it in frustration. The rose tattoo on his hand is vivid against the ink-black vines that trail up his wrist, shifting as his thumb rubs absently over his knuckles. He glances up at me, defeat written on his face, before shaking his head slowly.

“It’s not that simple, Sable. The Syndicate doesn’t let people go. If they took him, it means that he has something they want.”

“Don’t give me that shit, Kai. Levi didn’t kill anyone. He wouldn’t. And we’re not just going to sit here and wait for them to decide his fate.”

“You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t want to go in there and tear the place apart to find him? But the Syndicate isn’t like the police or some fucking frat rival. They’ll bury us if we go against them. And right now, we don’t even know who’s pulling the strings. My dad’s not telling me shit, and Silas’ dad is fucking useless.”

I hate that he’s right. The Syndicate isn’t something we can just fight head-on. But that doesn’t mean we should do nothing. I refuse to believe there isn’t a way to fix this—to find Levi before it’s too late.

It’s been a week, and the numbness still hasn’t dissipated.

I walk across campus, my bag slung over my shoulders, trying to push the fog of the past few days out of my mind. The Manor has had a thick layer of gloom over it, all of us a little lost.

I called my mom later that day, demanding that she tell me more about the Syndicate and try to help me get Levi released. But she has been avoiding my calls. Purposely ignoring me. Which means that she knows what has happened and has no intention of helping me.

The Syndicate isn’t just a secret society—it’s the secret society. Buried so deep within the elite that even people like us, people born into privilege and power, barely scratch the surface of what they do. The 1 percent of the 1 percent. The kind of people who make decisions that ripple out into the world, silently pulling the strings behind closed doors.

The rumors say they control everything from government decisions to global finance. But no one ever talks about the Syndicate openly. Everyone knows of them, whispers about their power, their reach—but very few actually know who is involved, or what they’re doing. Most think it’s just rumors.

And while my mother would just tell me that the Syndicate is just an organization for the elite to protect us, I know better. They control people. Blackmail, manipulation, bribes, and, in Levi’s case, silencing those who might step out of line.

The Syndicate doesn’t make mistakes. If they’ve taken him, it’s because they believe they own him now—or worse, they’ve marked him as a loose end. And the thought that they get to decide what happens to someone I love makes me sick.

The Syndicate moves in the shadows, and the louder we scream, the more we’ll lose.

My classes feel pointless now, like they’re part of a distant life I don’t recognize anymore. No one meets my eyes when I walk into the room. They glance away quickly, their silence louder than anything they could say. When I sit, they scatter.

The day drags to an end, and I follow the path back to the Manor. My legs move mechanically, the route so familiar it’s like I’m being pulled by an invisible thread. The stone archway comes into view, its shadows stretching long in the fading light. I pause for just a heartbeat, a flicker of unease twisting in my chest before stepping beneath it.

I make my way up the stairs, but something makes me stop—a large manila envelope sitting on the welcome mat. My breath catches in my throat. There’s no return address, no stamp, nothing to show where it came from. Just my name scrawled in frantic, messy handwriting across the front.

Sable Wilson

My heart pounds as I stoop down to pick it up, my fingers trembling. Every instinct tells me not to open it, that whatever’s inside will only make things worse. But I can’t ignore it.

With shaking hands, I tear the top open and pull out a thick stack of photos. My blood turns to ice as I flip through them.

Levi.

Each image is grainy, taken at night, with harsh lighting that casts deep shadows across his face and body. He’s standing near what looks like a body, blood splattered across his clothes. It looks like Victoria. Her lifeless form sprawled out on the ground, blood pooling around her.

No. This can’t be real.

He’s holding something—a knife? Is that blood? His face is partially obscured by shadows, but there’s enough to make out a grim smile spreading across his lips. His expression is one of satisfaction.

I flip through more photos, my hands trembling uncontrollably.

My vision blurs. Every fiber of my being screams no, but the photos look too real. They feel too real. My mind races as I look around, half-expecting someone to jump out from behind the hedges or the doors. But the street is quiet, and I’m alone.

A note slips from between the photos, fluttering to the ground with a soft, almost taunting, rustle. My breath catches. My hands tremble as I reach for it, every nerve screaming for me to stop. Don’t pick it up. Don’t read it. But I do.

The handwriting is frantic, slanted like a scream etched into paper.

Don’t trust the Horsemen. They’re next on your list, Sable.

A hollow, ringing silence fills my head, blotting out everything else. My knees go weak, my grip on the note slackening. The Horsemen.

A punch lands in my chest. My breath shatters into pieces. Levi—he promised me. Swore on everything that mattered. I can still see the way his eyes locked with mine, unflinching, steady.

But the photos.

The note.

My stomach twists. I clutch the railing to keep myself upright as doubt worms its way in. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. But what if…?

What if they all lied?

My chest tightens. I can’t breathe.

A jolt of adrenaline propels me forward. I don’t have a plan. Only the raw, unshakable instinct to run. I run up the stairs, taking them two at a time. My heartbeat thundering in my ears, drowning out every sound except the one screaming in my head. Get out, now .

I can’t stay here. Not with the walls closing in, not with this gnawing feeling in my chest. I’ll suffocate. I snatch my bag, stuffing everything in there that I need for a few days. My hands shake so badly I can barely stuff the note and photos into the side pocket. The zipper catches as I try to close my bag, and I nearly scream.

I’m out the door before I’ve caught my breath. The cold air bites my face as I sprint to my car. The keys jangle in my hand, and I nearly drop them trying to shove them into the ignition of my shitty car.

The engine roars to life. The tires screech against the pavement as I floor it, the Manor shrinking in the rearview mirror.

I don’t look back

For the first time in what feels like forever, I’m truly, utterly alone.

And it feels like the beginning of the end.