Chapter Eight – Shattered Echoes

The kettle screamed from the kitchen, but Marissa Carter didn’t move.

She sat curled on the living room couch, staring at the dusty photograph on the mantle—Carter’s arm around her shoulders, Elena nestled between them, grinning with missing teeth. A different time. A different life. Before the blood. Before the silence.

Her fingers trembled as she reached for the edges of the knit shawl wrapped around her frail body. The room was cold. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the cold lived inside her now—burrowed into her chest the day they brought Elena home with blood on her hands and her husband's badge in a plastic bag.

She had been folding laundry when the knock came. A young officer stood there, face pale, hat clutched tight in nervous fingers. Behind him, Elena—eight years old, shivering, wrapped in a too-large jacket. Her daughter’s eyes were blank. Hollow.

That was the last clear thing Marissa remembered before her world went black.

The doctors said it was shock. Her body had simply… shut down. Like a fuse blown in a storm. She’d collapsed at the threshold, cracked her head on the tile. For days she floated in darkness. When she woke, she thought it had been a dream.

Until the silence in her bed reminded her that Carter was never coming home.

After that, the voices started.

At first, it was just his. Whispering from the corners of the room. Then others came. Shadowed ones. Accusing. Laughing. Telling her she should have died instead.

The world fractured. Became jagged. Unforgiving.

Some days she screamed until her throat bled, clawing at the walls like she could dig her way back in time. Other days, she sat in silence, staring at nothing for hours, waiting for Carter to come home and take her hand.

But he never did.

Only Elena remained. Her sweet girl, forced to become her caretaker before she even became a woman. Elena, who tried to smile through the pain. Elena, who carried the same fire in her eyes that Carter once had.

From the couch, Marissa turned slowly toward the hallway where she’d heard her daughter’s steps the night before. A shadow passed under the crack of her door. Then, stillness.

Marissa shut her eyes and whispered to the dark.

"Bring him home."

But no one answered.

****

The side entrance of Inferno yawned open with a groan of iron hinges, swallowing Elena whole. The air inside was still, laced with lemon polish, old smoke, and a faint undercurrent of something colder—control. Not a club. A kingdom.

Elena stepped onto the gleaming marble, the quiet click of her boots ricocheting through the hush. No flashing lights. No pounding bass. Just muted chandeliers flickering overhead like watchful eyes. Even stripped of its glittering crowd, the place throbbed with a pulse she could feel in her bones.

Staff drifted like ghosts—men in black rolling liquor carts, women adjusting crimson velvet ropes with precision. No one spoke. No one laughed. This was a machine before the curtain rose, and every cog had its place.

She barely caught the woman standing near the bar until the clipboard moved. A sharp glance flicked her way, brief and uninterested.

“New girl?”

Elena nodded once.

“Locker’s down the hall. Uniform’s inside. You’re on bar today.” Her voice was clipped, efficient. 

“But erm.” Elena opened up to speak.

“No questions, Stick to protocol. You screw up, you’re gone.”

No welcome. Just the terms of survival.

Elena murmured something—thanks, maybe—and turned toward the hallway. Her fingers brushed against the steel handle of the “Staff Only” door, cold and slightly sticky. She hesitated just long enough to steady her breath, then stepped inside.

Dim fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The locker room smelled faintly of hairspray and floor cleaner. Black and crimson uniforms hung in orderly lines, their stiff collars turned like soldiers at attention. Elena trailed her fingers down one sleeve before unhooking a hanger.

The dress clung to her like a second skin. She adjusted the neckline twice, then twisted her curls into a loose bun. When she finally looked up, her reflection stared back from a cracked mirror.

Painted lips. Sharp cheekbones. Controlled breath.

But the storm was in her eyes.

The one no amount of rouge or training could conceal.

She rolled her shoulders back, the fabric taut across her spine, and left the room.

The main floor hummed with quiet activity. A man behind the bar motioned her over without a word. His face was carved from stone—high cheekbones, clean-shaven jaw, sleeves rolled neatly to the elbows. He handed her a notepad and gestured toward the back counter.

He didn’t explain what to do. He didn’t have to.

The expectation was carved into every glance, every clipped movement, every shadowed corner of the room.

Elena fell in line, mimicking the rhythm—polish, stack, stock, repeat. Her hands worked, but her eyes… her eyes worked harder. Memorizing doorways. Watching who entered which corridor. Noting how long a staff member lingered near the velvet-curtained room tucked beneath the upper balcony.

She didn’t ask what was inside. She simply remembered the door.

She remembered everything.

By the time her shift neared its midpoint, her calves ached from hours of standing. But there was no room for fatigue. Not here. Not when the walls had ears.

And every move counted.

Every detail mattered.

Elena dipped the scoop into the ice bin behind the bar, the cold nipping at her fingertips as cubes rattled into the tray. Her rhythm slowed when her eyes drifted to the far end of the club—past the rows of liquor, beyond the mirrors—where a narrow, unmarked hallway lay tucked in shadow.

Not part of the main floor.

No sign. No foot traffic.

Just a quiet pulse in the back of her mind, like a door waiting to be opened.

She checked the clock above the shelves. Lunch rotation ticked closer. Five minutes. Maybe less.

“Break,” the bartender muttered, not even glancing up.

Elena didn’t waste time. She dropped the scoop, slipped off her apron, and ducked into the hallway before anyone could stop her. The hush wrapped around her like a second skin. Her shoes barely whispered against the marble as she moved.

The corridor narrowed the deeper she went. Doors lined the sides—closed, marked only by discreet labels or nothing at all. Offices. Storage. Surveillance. Secrets. Each one radiated something private. Guarded.

She moved fast, but careful. She didn’t need to be caught. Not yet.

At the end of the hall, a door sat ajar. Not wide. Just enough to tempt. Just enough to dare.

Elena paused, heartbeat in her throat.

Then she pushed.

Warm air spilled over her skin, tinged with cigar smoke and something woody—cedar, maybe. She stepped into a quiet, walled terrace lit by the late afternoon sun. Stone walls blocked the city, muffling its chaos. A lone chair sat beside a low glass table, ashtray half-full. It looked untouched. Sacred, almost.

Then came the voice.

“I’m starting to think you have a habit of being where you don’t belong.”

Her stomach dropped.

She turned slowly.

Adrian Moretti stood in the corner, half-shadowed, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, shirt open at the collar. Smoke curled lazily from the cigarette between his fingers, a ghost rising between them. The sunlight framed his face like it had been summoned just for this—chiseling his features into sharp, unforgiving lines.

His eyes didn’t move. They pinned her like a nail through silk.