Chapter 2

I don't know how I made it out of that underground fight club.

The rain outside hit like dull knives, the West Coast wind carrying the briny stench of seawater. Every breath felt like swallowing rusted blades.

I wore no jacket, just a black tank top soaked through with blood. That leather jacket used to wipe shoes—I clutched it tight against my chest, the mud already blurred by rain.

I dragged my broken ribs and numb legs, step by step, toward Silas's clinic.

In this city, Silas was the only person who didn't operate under Cassian's thumb. He was a lunatic. Also a genius.

The clinic door swung open under my hand. A wave of disinfectant hit my face.

Silas stood at the dissection table in sterile gloves, working on a corpse. At the sound, he didn't even look up. "Cash up front. Then I stitch."

"Add it to what I owe." I walked to an empty operating table and dropped onto it like deadweight.

Silas finally turned around. He took in the blood and mud covering me, his brow furrowing slightly. He approached with scissors and cut away my tank top.

"Three broken ribs. Minor fracture in the left arm. Blood loss over eight hundred milliliters." He examined me while speaking in that flat tone. "Cassian finally trying to kill you?"

"Finished the hundred fights." I stared at the harsh fluorescent light overhead, my voice so calm I could've been talking about someone else. "Leo's treatment is paid for."

Silas's hand froze mid-air, the needle holder suspended. In the three years I'd known him, it was the first time I'd seen his hand shake.

He looked at me—really looked—then turned to get the anesthetic.

"No anesthetic," I said. "Just stitch. I need to get to the hospital to see Leo."

Silas said nothing. He picked up the needle holder, threaded the suture, and drove it straight into the deepest gash on my shoulder.

The sound of the needle piercing skin was exceptionally clear in the quiet clinic. I gritted my teeth. Didn't make a sound.

That's when my phone screen lit up on the side table.

Incoming call: St. Mary's ICU.

I stared at those digits. My fingertips felt frozen. It took a full five seconds to press accept.

In those five seconds, my brain was praying—please, let it just be about overdue bills.

"Hello." My voice trembled.

The voice on the other end belonged to Leo's attending physician, carrying that cold, bureaucratic detachment:

"Miss Ella, I'm very sorry to inform you. Your brother Leo was confirmed deceased half an hour ago."

My mind went blank.

"What did you say?" I heard myself ask, my voice floating, insubstantial.

"He snuck out of the hospital last night and participated in a black market trial for an unapproved neurotoxin-targeting drug. The trial reportedly paid a hundred thousand dollars. His body couldn't handle that dosage. It triggered acute organ failure. By the time someone found him dumped at the hospital's back entrance, it was too late."

The doctor kept talking, but I couldn't hear anymore.

A hundred thousand dollars.

The exact amount Cassian withheld from my hundred underground fights.

Leo knew what I endured in that fight club.

That idiot—he thought if he could scrape together the money himself, I wouldn't have to take another beating. Wouldn't have to kneel before Cassian anymore.

To save me, he sold himself to a black market drug trial.

And that trial facility? It was one of Cassian's operations.

The phone slipped from my hand, hit the floor, the screen shattering into pieces.

I heard my heartbeat—once, twice—then it suddenly stopped.

Not a metaphor—I literally felt nothing. My ears rang like someone had detonated a grenade inside my skull.

Silas stopped what he was doing. He looked at me, something complicated flickering in his eyes.

I didn't cry.

Tears were something that ran dry three years ago, the first day Cassian threw me into that fight club.

I just sat there on the operating table, staring at my blood-soaked hands. My throat felt stuffed with bloody cotton—couldn't swallow it, couldn't spit it out.

Not anger. A physiological response.

My fingers began to spasm violently. My stomach churned.

I leaned over the edge of the bed and vomited up all the muddy water and blood foam I'd swallowed earlier.

"He's dead." I stared at the vomit on the floor, stating the fact in an eerily calm tone.

Silas handed me a clean towel. "Sorry."

My mind suddenly flashed to an image—Cassian watching me lick his shoes, that faint smile at the corner of his mouth. Not mockery. Appreciation.

"Did Cassian know?" I asked.

"The death list from the black market trial facility lands on his desk every morning," Silas said flatly.

I closed my eyes.

So when Cassian threatened me with Leo's ventilator in that VIP room earlier, he already knew Leo was dead.

He watched me surrender all dignity for a dead man—for a brother he'd indirectly killed. Watched me strip off that jacket to wipe Valerie's shoes, lick mud off the floor.

He was enjoying the show. A magnificent joke.

I stood up, pushing away the bandage Silas offered.

"Not stitching?" Silas asked.

"No need." I grabbed that filthy leather jacket and headed for the door. "Dead people don't need stitches."

My heart, in that moment, stopped beating completely.

Cassian, you won. But you made one mistake—you left behind something more dangerous than a dead person: someone with nothing left to lose.

From now on, what's left is just a hollow shell.