Chapter 97

NINETY-SEVEN

ONE YEAR LATER

XERO

I push open the heavy iron door with a loud creak, letting out the mingled scents of decay and filth. The cell is damp, dark, and despondent, reflecting the time I spent under Father’s control.

He lies on his back, chained to the floor, twitching and flinching with each drop of water from an overhead pipe connected to the septic tank. Every bone in his body protrudes to form a perfect outline of his skeleton, and he looks like he’s in his eighties instead of his late fifties. More importantly, he’s devoid of his nipples, testicles, and a penis.

I walk around the cell’s perimeter, unclipping his chains from the rings on the wall. They clink as Father pulls himself up to sitting.

“Xero?” he rasps, his voice barely more than a whisper. “What else are you taking from me now?”

“Your life,” I say.

He chuckles, the sound more like a cough. “You wouldn’t let me die. Not when you can prolong my misery.”

“I have something you need to see.”

After attaching a chain leash to his collar, I yank him up, eliciting a satisfying groan. I drag him out of the cell and into a dim hallway, making him crawl after me on his hands and knees.

The catacombs remained compromised until we obtained the names of Father’s outstanding associates. With the right cocktail of truth serums, he helped us locate the instructors who were absent during the raid, along with all his contacts at the police department and FBI.

Our entire team of operatives coordinated numerous simultaneous assaults, striking them down in a single night. Shortly after, we returned to the Parisii Cemetery and restored the catacombs as our headquarters.

I continue through the hallway, with Father panting behind me like a hound. Months of torture have broken his body, but his spirit remains intact. Part of him clings to the hope that I’ll overcome my so-called daddy issues and we’ll bond.

“Xero,” he says through labored breaths. “Slow down.”

I quicken my pace, my heart soaring as the walls echo with his pitiful cries. Finally, we reach our destination, a chamber where Amethyst awaits on a stone bench with a box of popcorn and a projector.

A double dog bowl sits on the floor, with one section filled with fresh water and the other a thin gruel containing every vitamin, mineral, and antibiotic required to sustain Father through his captivity.

He recoils at the sight of my little ghost, his chains rattling. “What’s she doing here? You told me her vengeance was complete.”

My lips twitch. After Amethyst took his left testicle, she forced it down his throat. The following month, she took his right and stuffed it in his ass. She spent weeks keeping Father in suspense, letting him linger in paranoia and terror of when she would take his penis.

When she finally ended the old bastard’s wait, she made it a spectacle. His screams shook the catacombs but were nothing compared to the misery he’d inflicted on hundreds of innocent children.

I thread my gloved hand into his hair. “You no longer hold her interest. This little outing is about something else.”

Amethyst picks up her popcorn. “You’re safe with me. I’ve moved onto bigger and better things.”

Father’s gaze darts between us, his haggard face contorting with confusion. “Then why am I here?”

“It’s movie night.” I take my seat beside Amethyst and gesture at the dog bowl. “We even brought you a snack.”

Stomach rumbling, he crawls to the bowl and laps at the water, then moves on to the gruel. As he gobbles the pale liquid with noisy gulps, I take my seat beside Amethyst and enjoy the show.

Father’s pride has dwindled to nothing. It’s a combination of torture, semi-starvation, and facing his sins. Every operative in our organization has had the chance to visit his cell and dole out their own form of retribution. Isabel, Camila, and Jynxson were the first in line, as they had been some of the longest affected by his manipulations.

Amethyst flicks a switch and the projector hums to life, casting an image onto a screen that spans the entire space. It’s footage from a data center deep within the Moirai headquarters.

Father sits back on his haunches, panting like a dog. “What is this?”

“Yesterday was the last Friday of the quarter,” I say through a mouthful of popcorn.

As predicted, he flinches.

“Your debt bondage scheme was a mistake. Instead of making people subservient to the Moirai, it created an entire class of employees who would do anything to gain their freedom.”

Face paling, his eyes dart between us and the screen. “I don’t understand.”

“The last Friday of the quarter is the only time when the Moirai’s entire management team crawls out from hiding to gather in a single location,” I say, my chest swelling with satisfaction.

“Graduation,” he rasps.

“After the number of graduates I poached over the years, the arena is now so heavily guarded that HQ is virtually empty.”

He turns to me, his eyes widening, his lips trailing streams of gruel. “Xero, what have you done?”

“Maintenance staff on my payroll seeded explosives into the building’s stairwells, elevator shafts, and along the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth floors,” I say, relishing his terror.

“That won’t be enough to destroy it.”

“Which is why we paired up with the Montesano family to deliver a truck full of Mercury nitrovolucite into the Moirai,” I continue.

Panic floods his features, and he shakes his head from side to side. “They wouldn’t…”

“Look.” I point at the screen.

The movie switches to drone footage of a pair of trucks driving past an empty industrial estate and down the long stretch of road that leads to the Moirai headquarters.

On the outside, it looks like an abandoned parking lot, but inside are multiple elevator shafts that lead down to a ten-story basement with three additional secret levels, containing living quarters and servers the management team wants to keep hidden from their assassins.

“Call it off,” Father croaks. “You were supposed to take control of the Moirai, not destroy it. Use poison gas or something that won’t damage the AI servers!”

Annoyance prickles at my skin, and I curl my fists. “You don’t get it. I was never power hungry like you. All I ever wanted was freedom.”

The trucks enter the seemingly deserted parking lot, and the Moirai lowers shutters to the entrance, trapping the Montesano brothers.

Father’s eyes bulge, watching the scene unfold, his knuckles turning white from gripping his knees. Amethyst fast-forwards the footage to where one of the vehicles bursts out and reverses down the road.

Seconds later, the camera shakes as the parking lot implodes. It disappears into a sinkhole, which swallows the surrounding road and buildings. The truck reverses out of the chaos, barely avoiding the expanding chasm.

Father wails, his hands clutching at the sides of his face. “My legacy… You’ve ruined me. Everything I worked for is gone!”

My chest thrums with satisfaction. I smirk at the impossibly large crater that now forms under what was once the largest firm of assassins in the United States. When Father set it up with a rag-tag group of disgraced FBI agents, he expected a dynasty, an empire that would span generations. But now, it’s been reduced to rubble.

The drone zooms in on the carnage, showing twisted pieces of metal and debris that were once the foundation of the Moirai headquarters. The thirteen-story underground basement is now nothing more than an enormous cavity.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” I ask.

His mouth opens and closes. “Hundreds of millions of dollars… years of research!”

Amethyst snorts. “Watching your creation get destroyed is nothing compared to all the lives you and your partners ruined.”

Father crumples to the floor and sobs, his shoulders heaving with each wretched sound. I turn to Amethyst, our gazes meeting in a moment of shared triumph. Satisfaction glitters within their green depths. I take her hand and bring it to my lips.

“Is it time?” I ask.

She gives me an eager nod.

“Inform all the operatives. Tell the maintenance team to bring the chair.”

As she leaves the chamber, I approach Father’s trembling form. Sobs wrack his broken body, echoing across the stone walls. I pick up his chain and drag him toward the projection screen, which rises to reveal a second chamber.

Taking pride of place in its center is an electric chair.

Father recoils with a scream. “Don’t do this, Xero. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Ignoring him, I hurl his carcass onto the wooden seat and secure the straps around his wrists. He kicks and thrashes, his screams echoing across the walls.

The maintenance team enters, pushing along a cart carrying a high voltage generator. It hums to life with an ominous drone that makes my spine tingle with anticipation. As I secure the electrode cap on Father’s head, the chamber fills with operatives, who form a semi-circle around the chair.

Father jerks backward in his seat, his eyes widening. “I can’t die yet. We have unfinished business.”

“We’ve stripped your bank accounts, killed your investors and accomplices, exposed your members, destroyed your former partners, liquidated your businesses, and divided your personal assets among your illegitimate children.”

“No…” he moans.

“We took your teeth, nipples, and genitals.”

A few people in the crowd of operatives chuckle, but it’s drowned out by Father’s screams. “But I didn’t tell you about the organ business.”

“Charlotte already bartered that intel in exchange for a quick death,” I say, my lip curling.

Father convulses, his eyes darting with disbelief. “She lied.”

The information she gave us was incomplete, but we tracked down the ringleaders of Father’s organ trafficking ring to a warehouse in New Jersey, where we found cells containing eighteen former child assassins. They, along with the others, are now in our safe houses, receiving therapy.

I place my hands on his bony shoulders and gaze into his tear-filled eyes. “Any final words before we dispatch you to hell?”

“Sorry,” he cries, his features twisting with anguish. “Please, just give me another chance.”

Amethyst pushes her way through the crowd and stops at my side. Camila joins us with Isabel, Jynxson, and a few other boys who were at the underground facility when I was young.

Father’s gaze snaps to Isabel. “You can’t condone this. I never hurt you. You’re a medic.”

Isabel spits in his face and walks away.

Camila approaches Father and punches him in the jaw. His head snaps backward, his metal cap hitting the back of his chair with a clang.

I turn to the operatives. “Each of you has a chance to say goodbye to Delta. No more head injuries.”

Stepping back, I wrap an arm around Amethyst’s shoulder. She leans into my side and sighs.

“Are you ready for him to die?” she asks.

“His ending is the second thing I want most in the world.”

She directs her pretty green eyes to me, making my breath hitch. “What’s the first?”

I drop my gaze to her soft, pink lips, hungering for another taste. “You. It’s always been you.”

A radiant smile spreads across her delicate features that makes my heart soar. Holding onto my shoulder, she rises up to her tiptoes for a kiss. The warmth of her touch and the gentle press of her lips against mine drowns out the chaos of the operatives taking turns with Father.

The world falls away, and all that’s left is me and the woman who’s always been the missing part of my soul. Amethyst tastes like freedom, like victory, like sweet salvation. I thread my fingers through her curls, holding her in place. Her body presses against mine, making me wish I could claim her once more while the bastard fries.

A loud cheer breaks the moment, making us part. I turn around to find Jynxson connecting electrodes to his legs. Behind the chair, Tyler attaches the cables to the generator and gives me a thumbs up.

It’s time.

By now, Father is a pitiful mess of blood and sweat and saliva. He jerks back and forth within his restraints, mumbling an incoherent string of apologies.

“Any last words?” I ask again.

His answer is a puddle of urine that elicits a round of applause.

After waiting for a member of the maintenance crew to mop up the liquid, I pick up the thick rubber cord linking the chair’s electrodes to the generator. Silence descends across the chamber, a collective holding of breath, coupled by anticipation so solid that the molecules in the air vibrate.

“This is for my mothers.”

I plug in the cord, and the world lights up with his screams. The sound is brutal, raw, drowning out the hum of the generator. Father’s body convulses, his eyes bulging. The sweat and saliva on his skin evaporates, then turns into smoke, and finally, burning flesh.

As the chamber fills with his stench, I pull Amethyst close, my heart swelling with gratitude. “Thank you for making my dreams come true.”

She turns to me and smiles, her eyes shining with love. “Always.”

Father’s body jerks one last time before slumping on the chair, a hollow shell.

And in that moment, I know I’m finally free.