Page 14 of Red Dreams

My pulse roars in my ears. Carlos's daughter will grow up without a father, or Kaden bleeds out on rain-slick pavement. It’s the same kind of choice I’m realizing Cassie forces on everyone—whose pain matters more?

The weight of lives I'll never meet presses down. Carlos checks his weapon, professional, practiced. A man who knows his job. A father who took blood money to give his daughter a better life.

I close my eyes. Open them. “The right guard. Take the right guard.”

“You mean David?” She taps the screen where the guard to the right of Carlos crouches. “He has terminal cancer. About a year to live without treatment. His insurance lapsed, so he took this job because Morelli had a soft spot for cancer patients. Anyway, David has a daughter, too. Tammy's only eight.” Her smile curves sharp. “You sure you want to pick David?”

I focus on the screens, filtering out her damning words and memorizing positions, calculating angles. The same analytical mind that spotted the patterns in that AI system now works to keep Kaden alive. Because that's what this is really about—the code I discovered, the one that could turn Cassie's Mafia operation into an automated nightmare. One that could predict and manipulate human behavior on a scale that would make her untouchable.

Cassie could be lying about these backstories, but she’s taking too much joy reciting their backgrounds. From what I’ve gleaned, this is exactly the kind of thing that gets her off.

My heart hammers against my ribs. On screen, David shifts his weight and checks his sector. A man with nothing left to lose but time.

“Yes.” The concession scrapes my throat raw. “I pick David.”

Her laughter spills out of her mouth like liquid mercury.

“I was hoping you'd say that.” She lifts her phone. “David, advance and engage our enemy target.”

David rises, weapon trained. Kaden remains statue-still, but I spot the micro-adjustments in his stance. The way his weight shifts as he registers the threat in his periphery.

“Tammy made him a get-well card yesterday,” Cassie says while I force my attention to stay on the screen. “Covered in glitter. Used her allowance to buy the fancy paper.”

I can't breathe. Can't think. The world narrows to the security feed, to the death warrant I've signed.

Kaden remains motionless, a dark sentinel in the heart of the courtyard. Rain sluices down his mask, his gear, but he doesn't twitch. Doesn't react. Not until David steps within range.

It happens in a blink, a blur of motion too fast for the camera to capture cleanly. Kaden moves, and then David is on the ground, his weapon skittering away across the slick cobblestones.

Kaden wrenches David’s arms behind his back, a brutal hold that must be agony because David’s mouth is wrenched open in a silent scream. The crack of bone follows, then the wet sound of a crushed throat. He drops without a sound, and I taste copper where I've bitten through my lip.

“Beautiful.” Cassie's voice holds something like reverence. “The efficiency. The control.” She lifts the phone again. “All units engage. Let's see how many more children we can orphan tonight.”

I tear my gaze away from the carnage on the screen to the mutant posed beside me, a smile on her lips and a toxic glint in her eye. An innocent little girl turned into Morelli’s impeccably cruel doll. I can barely make Cassie out through the welling tears, but I don’t have to. I’ve learned enough.

Some monsters are just made.

Others are carefully, lovingly crafted.

6

KADEN

Warm blood slides down my arms as I take my first step into the foyer of Siren’s Call. The movement costs me. My right leg drags slightly, as evidenced by the ambush in the courtyard outside and all the men I had to take out to even make it to the doors.

They were expecting me. That much is obvious.

“Mr. Black—Scythe—are you good? All clear?” Ethan’s voice crackles through my earpiece, his natural state of panic evident despite his safe distance.

I risk a single glance over my shoulder to add a visual while I answer him. “They won’t be a problem anymore.”

Despite the automatic weapons trained on me, these guards had too much faith that such machinery would shield them from a man with a decade-old grudge. I'd been outnumbered greater and outgunned worse many times before. The first two fell before they could even raise their rifles, throats opened in crimson smiles. Spinning low, I hamstrung the third, my knife finding the femoral artery as he crumpled. Only then did I resort to the two pistols from my thigh holsters.

Time slowed as I entered the hyper-focused flow state that activates in moments like these. My arms moved of their ownaccord, my wounded shoulder forgotten, lining up shot after shot with lethal precision.

Pop. Pop-pop. Pop.

Four guards crumpled with neat bullet holes centered between their eyes.

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