Page 1 of Blades of Obsession

Prologue

BLADE

Three Years Ago

“Kill him or I’ll kill you.”

A gun is pressed to my temple, its cold barrel a grim reminder that whether the trigger pulls is entirely up to me.

The gaze of the man on the other side is cold and calculating as he delivers his ultimatum, voice dripping with malice. The weight of what he’s truly saying comes crashing down on me. I’m trapped, cornered by forces beyond my control.

When I don’t respond, lost in the maze of my thoughts, a punch with brass knuckles slams into my gut, propelling me off the chair and onto the hard concrete floor.

It’s cold and stinks of mold in this room.

“I’m not supposed to be an assassin. I’m a hacker,” I spit out, clutching the bruise forming on my stomach.

“Look, kid,” the man starts. “I picked you to take over my position when I retire for a reason. You’ve done excellent so far in your tests. After two days in this cellar, with my best men on the job, you still haven’t waved the white flag. Your last job is to simply kill a man, that’s easy enough, right?”

I shake my head, my voice hoarse and raw from everything he’s put me through. “I’m not a killer. And you’ll never make me one.” Blood spits out of my mouth with each word I speak, the bitter taste of iron lingering on my tongue.

He takes a few slow, eerie steps towards me and crouches down until we’re at eye level. “We’ll see about that,” he whispers, a sadistic smirk curling his lips.

A sharp whistle chimes in the air, and moments later, three large dudes who could cosplay as sumo wrestlers enter the room, stepping before me.

They each wield a distinct weapon that I can just barely see in the dim light. The guy on the left grips a rope in one hand, a butcher knife in the other. The middle guy has a shovel, and the last one has a heavy metal bat with spikes jutted from its surface.

It’s obvious this isn’t their first rodeo—their movements are practiced, coordinated. The cruel smiles on their faces tell me they enjoy what they do. Torturing souls for a living.

I close my eyes and prepare for the worst.

Two Days Later

“Okay! Okay!” I scream, my body convulsing as another nail drives into my thigh, the nail gun shredding through muscles and nerves.

They’ve finally broken me. The walls I built, the armor I swore I’d never let crack, shattered. Splintered into a million little pieces, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get them back together to be whole again.

I swore I would never do this. Never let this organization corrupt me. They drove my dad to be an alcoholic. But I’m stronger than him, I swore.

I swore.

The man snaps his fingers, signaling the other man in a black mask to retreat from the relentless nail gun attack. “That’s enough, Harvey!”

I’m depleted of energy, starved, my body a canvas of slashes and wounds from every weapon imaginable—some ofthe weapons even altered to be more deadly. Who the fuck thinks to sharpen the edges of a shovel and use it to hack away at human flesh?

It’s barbaric.

Between clenched teeth and ragged breaths, I manage to say, “Give me the fucking information.” Usually, no one would dare speak to him this way, but I’m way past pleasantries and holding my tongue.

This is it.

Once you make your first kill, you can never go back.

It’s too late though, I’m blinded by revenge. That fucker, whoever he is, is going to pay for everything I’ve endured these past four days. And then some.

“Good choice,” the man says. “We’ll get you cleaned up and—”

“Fuck that,” I interrupt, snatching the paper from his hand with the little energy I have left. “Drive me to my car,now.” Rage courses through me, burning hotter than the pain of my wounds. I have never wanted to hurt someone more in my life than I do right now, to gain back some control. To be the one on the giving end.

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