Page 23 of The Devil's Thorn
I shut off the screen.
Her frozen expression blinked into blackness, but it lingered behind my eyes—etched in quiet detail, like a splinter under the skin. I didn’t move for a moment, fingers resting on the edge of the console, knuckles pale from how tightly I gripped it.
Then I exhaled once, slow, measured.
Let the tension bleed out.
One breath at a time.
My steps echoed as I left the room, the heels of my shoes striking the floor in quiet rhythm as I moved through the empty corridors of the upper floor.
The casino was closed now—early morning still settling over the city. The floor below slept beneath darkness, velvet ropes strung across the entrances like false protection. No laughter. No lies. Just silence and faint, stale perfume still hanging in the air.
The emptiness never bothered me. In fact, I preferred it this way.
At night, the world inside these walls was loud—flashing lights, thick smoke, greed disguised as glamour. But in the hours between dusk and daylight, it was honest. Stripped bare. Every corner, every inch of tile, belonged tome.
I descended the back stairwell instead of taking the elevator. My footsteps, slow and deliberate, carried me down the spine of the building like a predator in its own cage.
Not even the security cameras tracked me here. That was intentional.
Below the floor level of the public casino was a door with no name. No markings. Just a biometric scanner and a silence that buzzed.
I placed my palm against the panel, and the light blinked green. The lock released with a soft hiss.
I stepped inside.
This office wasn’t for show. No designer shelves. No glass walls. Just concrete, cold air, and function. A desk bolted to the floor. A chair that didn’t swivel. A drawer that only opened with my fingerprint. And on the wall across from me—maps. Blueprints. Photographs.
A full view of the network.
This was where the real decisions were made. Not upstairs. Not in boardrooms.
Here.
I lit a cigarette I didn’t need and stood in front of the map pinned across the wall.
Lines stretched between territories. Crews. Names. The flow of product. The movement of weapons. Money. Blood. My kingdom. And now, somewhere between all of it—her.
A name I didn’t trust. A presence I couldn’t ignore. She wasn’t a risk yet, not officially. But there was something in mychest that hadn’t stopped tightening since I saw her—like a hand slowly curling into a fist.
She didn’t belong here.
And yet…
She fit.
Too easily.
I dragged in a slow breath of smoke and let it spill out between my lips, eyes scanning the photos on the wall again. Rivals. Allies. Corpses.
Everything had a place.
Everyone had a role.
The only variable was her.
And the longer I watched her… the more I started to think—maybeI didn’t want to eliminate her.
