~~ LIACH POV~~~
For days I've been going through Sinveer ledger secretly.
Sourcing for potential adrenaline.
Which led me to this warehouse.
The warehouse smelled like copper and wet rot — the kind of place where blood didn't scream anymore. It soaked. It stayed. It became part of the concrete.
Perfect.
I walked between rusted meat hooks and black-streaked tiles, the cold air settling on my skin like a shroud. The man strung up in the center of the room was stripped to the waist, wrists chained above his head, feet barely touching the blood-slicked floor. Every shiver of his body made the old chains creak.
He was young, maybe mid-thirties. Coco Caldera. De Luna's personal "cleaner" — a man who made bodies disappear, women cry, and people silent.
Sinveer wouldn't miss him immediately.
But he'd feel the hole.
And that's what I needed.
Coco looked up when he heard my boots. His face was bruised from when I'd bagged him. His lip split. A ragged cut above his brow bled sluggishly. He was already trembling.
Good.
I didn't speak.
I just took off my coat, folded it neatly, and laid it on a steel table beside my tools.
Scalpels. Wires. Bone shears. Clamps. Saline. A single rose stem, stripped of petals. And three thin iron rods, each no longer than a forearm.
"Please," he rasped. "I don't— I don't know what this is—"
I selected the first scalpel.
Heat bloomed in my chest, low and soft, like a secret I'd missed.
I didn't enjoy killing.
I enjoyed the precision of it. The control. The rhythm of it, like a ritual.
One breath. One cut. One truth.
"I'm going to cut you open," I said, voice calm, clinical. "Not to find something."
I looked up. Held his eyes.
"Just to watch you come apart."
He screamed when the first slice opened his right bicep. Clean. Diagonal. Blood welled, bright and fast.
I didn't rush.
I placed a basin beneath him to collect what I needed.
Over the next two hours, I worked like an artist.
Fingertips first. I split each nail from the bed with the scalpel. Not torn — sliced. He shrieked, tried to twist, but the chains held. I watched every flinch, every raw sound tear from his throat. His body shook, piss trailing down one leg.
The pain wouldn't kill him.
But it would make him beg for death.
"You killed a girl in Medellín last spring," I said softly as I threaded piano wire through the soft skin of his inner thighs. "She was seventeen. She bit you when you forced her mouth open. You broke her jaw. Then her ribs. Then you burned the body."
"How—how the fuck do you know that—"
I smiled faintly.
"I was there."
That wasn't true.
But he didn't know that.
He sobbed now. Ugly, guttural.
When I peeled the skin from his left forearm — inch by inch with a wire loop — he passed out.
I revived him with ammonia.
Then inserted the first of the rods into the muscle of his calf. Not deep enough to sever anything vital. Just enough to make standing impossible.
He howled like a dog.
I leaned in close, my voice a whisper.
"Did you know the nervous system keeps feeling pain three seconds after death? Not long. But long enough if you do it right."
He babbled something incoherent.
I kissed his forehead.
Then drove the second rod into the other leg.
By the time I reached his ribs, he couldn't scream anymore. His throat was raw. His eyes, bloodshot.
His body sagged in the chains, barely conscious.
I whispered one word against his ear.
"Bloom."
Then I slid the third rod under his sternum, lifted his chin, and sliced his carotid clean.
He bled fast.
But not quietly.
When it was done, I cleaned my blades.
Drew a rose on his chest — not a real one. Just the outline. Thin, shallow cuts. Petals, thorns, stems.
Then I tucked the bare rose stem into his mouth.
It jutted out between his bloodied lips like a final insult.
Like a secret.
Sinveer would understand it.
He would know this wasn't a message from the Cisco family.
It was from me.
~~OUTSIDE ~ 4:30 AM~~
The sky was starting to pale when I walked out, gloves stripped, sleeves rolled. Blood soaked into my boots, still warm.
I didn't rush.
Every step left a print in the cold dust.
And when I looked back at the warehouse door, I smiled.
Because this time…
I wasn't killing for my father.
I wasn't killing for orders.
I was killing for the woman Sinveer tried to crack open.
And she wouldn't break.
She would bloom.