Page 224 of Sins of the Hidden

And my fucking wife.

"You ready to go back to the past?" Law asked, his voice low, understanding what that question meant. The sacrifice it required. The monster it would unleash.

I looked at the marks coating my hands—Chet's life, drying to rust. I looked at the destruction surrounding us then at the crumpled note in my fist, a summons from hell itself.

For a brief moment, I'd believed I could be something else. Something close to human. For Oakley, I'd tried to be a man who could build instead of destroy. I’d laid the floors in our bakery. I'd installed ovens. I'd picked colors for walls. I'd made thosependants from the boys who'd hurt her, thinking suffering could be transformed into something beautiful.

I'd played at being normal while the monster inside me grew hungrier by the day, fed by every moment of pretending.

The bakery I'd destroyed stood as a monument to my delusion—shattered glass, splintered wood, the jewelry made from dead men scattered in the wreckage. I'd torn it apart with my bare hands when I thought she'd abandoned me. Now I understand it was never meant to be.

Monsters didn't get bakeries.

Monsters didn't get wives.

Monsters got endings written in a tombstone.

I picked up my bat from where it had fallen, grip finding the worn grooves shaped to my hand over years of use. I felt its weight—familiar, comforting in a way the ring box never was. This was who I truly was. This was what I was made for.

The man Oakley tried to resurrect was dead.

I would get my fucking wife back.

My past wanted the monster back? They'd get it.

And they would pay for every second she was gone.

Rain crashed around us like artillery fire, turning the ground to mud. We ran toward Law's nightmare, each second away from Oakley feeling like watching her slip through my fingers grain by grain.

The storm intensified, wind howling like a living thing hungry for flesh, forcing us to seek temporary shelter. Every fiber of my being screamed to keep moving, to find her, but the downpour had become a curtain of steel needles. Through the gray veil, I spotted a shack that squatted like a wounded animal in the clearing. The door exploded inward under my shoulder, wood splintering with the sound of breaking bones, wind shrieking behind us like it wanted her soul too.

Inside the cramped shack, a woman had collapsed against the back wall, her entire body convulsing with violent tremors. She was down to just her underwear, pale skin mottled with cold and terror. A soaked green dress lay crumpled in the corner like a discarded flag, water still pooling beneath it. She shook so hard her teeth chattered audibly, the sound echoing off the weathered walls like bones rattling in a coffin. Fear had bledher dry, pupils blown wide and black as tar pits. Long scratches painted highways down her arms and shoulders, the wounds still weeping like fresh cuts on a butcher's block.

The space reeked of fear and stale air, chaos spread before us like a crime photographer's wet dream—furniture overturned like scattered bones, dark smears painting the walls in abstract patterns, a lamp reduced to glittering fragments that caught the weak light like fallen stars.

Her legs gave out completely as we crowded through the doorway—Law, Tyrant, Husk, Grim, Sarge, Knight, and myself filling the cramped space until shoulders pressed against shoulders. Seven massive bodies in a room meant for two. She hit the floor hard, a broken sob tearing from her throat as her body folded in on itself.

Tyrant pushed past Husk and Knight, dropping to his knees beside her before anyone else could react. The rest of us pressed back—Law and Grim flattening against the left wall, Sarge and Knight taking the right, Husk lingering by the door. I remained near the entrance, watching. Tyrant’s massive hands hovered just above her shoulders, not touching but close enough to catch her if she collapsed further.

Her breathing came in rapid, shallow gasps that sounded like drowning, chest rising and falling too fast, eyes darting wildly between our faces. Panic consumed her completely—pupils blown wide, trembling so violently her teeth chattered like broken glass.

"Can't—" she gasped, hands clawing at her throat. "Can't breathe?—"

Tyrant's voice transformed completely—rough edges smoothing like river stones, all the hardness melting away until only gentleness remained. "Hey, sweetheart, I need you to look at me." He waited, patient as stone, until her wild eyes found him. "That's it. Can you tell me your name?"

She shook her head frantically, still hyperventilating.

"Okay, that's okay. You don't have to tell me anything." Tyrant quickly shrugged off his jacket from beneath his cut, the movement swift and practiced. "You're freezing. Let me help." He wrapped the warm fabric around her trembling shoulders like armor made of kindness. "There. Better?"

She managed a tiny nod, still gasping for air.

"Good. Now, I need you to breathe with me." His hands settled on her shoulders with the delicacy of handling spun glass. "In and out. Just focus on my voice. You're safe now."

Slowly, her wild gaze focused on the patches stitched to our cuts. Something shifted in her expression—desperation mixing with fragile hope.

"You are..." she was breathless still. "Oakley's friends?"

Moving without thinking—pure instinct, pure dread coursing through my veins like liquid lightning—I shoved past Law and Grim, crossing the small room in three strides. My hand found her throat, fingers wrapping around the delicate column like a vise, pinning her against the far wall where the wood grain pressed patterns into her spine. "Where the fuck is she?" The words tore from my throat as raw as gravel, nothing human left in the sound that escaped me. "Where the fuck is my wife?"

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