Chapter 1

SAINT.

"Wait... Please... Stop... I can't..."

That fucking unforgettable voice has been stuck in my head for eight goddamn months, constantly haunting the walls of my skull.

She was so weak that she could barely keep up with the bargain we made.

Pathetic.

And even after her incompetence, she had the nerve to steal from me.

If I ever find her again in this lifetime, hell, even in the next, I’ll make sure she regrets every single breath she took after stealing from me. She’ll wish she'd never taken what wasn’t hers.

I don’t care if it takes months or years. I’ll make her regret that night until her last breath.

I’ve always hated that miserable excuse of a town. I heard the people there were nothing but bottom-feeders... thieves, addicts, liars, and abusers. And just the first time I and Kyrie set foot in there, we got hit.

While I was robbed of my expensive Rolex watch, which could buy the entire wretched town, Kyrie had his common sense and his heart stolen by the same woman I'd give anything to see kneeling before me and begging for mercy while I decided her fate.

The good thing here is, the girl, who appeared to be around twenty or thereabout, was putting on a mask the night I and Kyrie both stuck our cocks into her.

She thought it made her mysterious. But, no. It didn’t. It only made her predictable. I’ve dealt with her type too many times. The only difference is, she got lucky.

Kyrie had her bent over the hotel mattress, one hand tangled in her hair, while the other gripped her hip like he was trying to brand her with his fingers. He was groaning like she was something special... It was almost like he’d never fucked a girl who trembled and begged before.

I stood beside them, my cock in hand, watching the way her body shook under him. Her moans were strangled by exhaustion. Her thighs kept trying to close.

She was already trembling and falling apart when I hadn’t even touched her yet.

Barley half way into the fun we had planned for the night, her mask slipped off just for a second. And in that one second, I’d memorized every fucking detail of her face – high cheekbones, parted plump lips, with deep, blue eyes full of something close to regret. That look people get when they realize they went too far and can’t crawl back.

She quickly yanked the mask back on.

She'd hoped I hadn't seen anything, and I also gave her the impression that she was right.

I met her eyes when she looked at me with panic. I closed mine, let out a breathy moan, and pretended I didn’t notice a thing.

If only she knew.

Now, I remember her face like it was burned into me and this places me at an advantage over Kyrie, because, the moment I set my eyes on her, I'd kill her without even blinking, and he might even be one of my spectators without realizing I'd just killed his beloved enchantress.

Kyrie hardly ever falls in love. Hell, he had only fallen in love once in his life. When he loves, it’s all-consuming and reckless. The kind of love that could kill him. And he’s already dying inside from the one girl who I'd do anything to kill.

Well, for both our sakes, I hope this was mere infatuation or hunger for her tight little pussy. Perhaps he didn't get enough that night. I hope it wasn't actual love. Because this could be the only thing that would rip us apart.

I knew there were gold diggers everywhere. But I always hate it when they have their way. Just like the one my father had fallen for, who was from the same shitty town full of thieves.

At age fifty-eight, he still acted like some love-struck teen with a midlife hard-on. Still blinded by love. And in two days, like a true fool, he was letting her drag him to the alter... A woman he just met three months ago.

Fuck.

It’s pathetic watching a man with that much life experience get played by someone who probably can’t spell the word ‘loyalty.’

I tried to stop him but the old fool went on and on about how she kept him happy and alive and gave him a new purpose in life.

And the icing on the cake?

She fucking had a daughter!

They were both here, ready to feed off his last name, our wealth, and my inheritance.

And since I couldn't stop the wedding, I'd have to keep a close eye on them.

I wiped the blood off my gloves with a strip of cloth I pulled from the dead man’s shirt. It didn’t matter that it stained red; I wasn’t planning to keep it.

"Clear," I said into the comms.

"Copy. East hall secured," came Kyrie’s calm voice.

I stepped over the body, motioning to Kian and Voss to fan out and check the corners. Kian, my demolitions expert, had his rifle tucked tight to his shoulder, while his eyes swept every dark crevice. Voss, the one I call a silent ghost of a man, vanished into a hallway like the shadow he was.

This was the third facility in two months... Another warehouse masking itself behind a false corporation.

We were the retribution people never saw coming.

"Target confirmed in the lower east wing," Kyrie murmured through the comm. "He’s trying to escape."

"Take the exit routes," I told Voss and Kian. "Kyrie, flush him. Keep him running. I want to see the look in his eyes when he realizes he’s trapped."

I turned the corner and passed another room with bodies sprawled out.

I liked this part. The way we dismantled human garbage without chaos or sympathy.

It wasn’t the blood that did it for me. Or the way they screamed. God, No. Because It was always like watching a movie with the sound off.

What satisfied some twisted part of me, was the accuracy. The stillness in the moment before the strike. The godlike control. The way each takedown feels like a small correction to the universe – one I was too weak to make back then when I was only thirteen.

The way we carved sin from the world cleanly, like surgeons... It made me feel like something more than a man. And less.

We don’t just eliminate threats. We rewrite the rules. And somewhere deep inside, it feels like I’m undoing that night – the fire, her screams, my hesitation. One monster at a time.

That fire had painted something permanent inside me... It was like a fucking itch I still hadn’t scratched.

"He’s cornered," Kyrie said.

Perfect.

I entered the stairwell and descended. As I opened the steel door to the lower level, the scum we were after came into view, backpedaling like a rat. He had blood on his shirt and he was breathing hard.

He turned and stopped the moment he saw me.

Realization washed him clean. "Please..." he began. But I shot him in the leg before he finished, and he crumpled to the floor.

Kyrie stood behind him, chewing gum with that same lazy confidence he always wore effortlessly. Black tactical shirt tight against his frame, rifle in hand, and a smile barely touching his lips. That same smile he wore before he beat a man until his knuckles cracked open last month.

I approached the man slowly as he pathetically tried to crawl backward.

"No names," I said quietly. "No deals. You traffic children. You die."

"I didn’t know...!"

I kicked his face in. Twice. Maybe three times. But hard enough to knock teeth out and shatter his jaw. The satisfying crunch of cartilage and blood splatter across my boots.

I stopped when he stopped making noise.

"Check for documents," I said. "Hard drives. Any backup servers. Burn everything else."

"On it," Kyrie replied, hopping on it already.

I stood over the body. The man wasn’t moving.

Good.

I opened my phone, snapped a picture of the corpse, and sent it to one of our anonymous drop boxes… Another piece of filth wiped from the earth.

"The world doesn’t need people like you," I muttered.

But the truth?

It needed people like me.

Because I enjoyed this.

And that fucking terrified me.

Kyrie returned. "You sure you’re good?"

"Yeah."

He paused, looking down at the body. "He was probably someone’s dad."

"Then someone should’ve raised him better."