Page 108 of Tricked By Jack
She whips around, eyes wide with surprise that quickly shifts to something else—something like triumph. Then she’s gone, melting back into the shadows of the warehouse interior.
I launch myself through the hole, concrete scraping my shoulder as I squeeze through. The darkness swallows me whole, my eyes struggling to adjust after the brightness outside. I take two steps forward, gun raised, senses straining.
That’s when I hear it.
A scream tears through the darkness—high and broken and filled with so much pain. Eve’s scream. The sound hits me like a physical blow, punching the air from my lungs. It reverberates inside my skull, through my bones, into the marrow itself.
Pain and fear and desperation distilled into a single, piercing note that splits me open from throat to gut.
“Eve!” Her name erupts from me as I plunge deeper into the warehouse, the sound of her agony pulling me forward like a hook buried in my flesh.
I burst through into the warehouse’s hollow heart, gun extended, every nerve ending raw. The stench hits me first—copper and rust and rot. Then my eyes adjust to the half-light, and I see Ned. He’s sprawled face-up on the concrete, arms flung wide like a broken puppet.
Blood pools beneath him, so much blood, black in the dim light, spreading in a perfect circle like spilled ink. His eyes stare upward, cloudier now than they were in life, seeing nothing. I don’t need to check for a pulse. My friend is gone, another body left in the wake of my failure.
But I can’t stop for him. Can’t mourn. Can’t think. Because there, in the center of the warehouse, is Eve.
She hangs suspended from a rusted hook, arms stretched painfully above her head, toes barely grazing the floor. Her dress—something tattered and wrong—hangs in shreds around her thighs.
Her skin is split open, each lash bleeding, crimson rivers running down her body. Shelby stands behind her, arm already pulled back, whip unfurled. Her face distorts, and her features twist into something feral and hungry.
As I watch, the whip arcs through the air, its crack splitting the silence a heartbeat before Eve’s body jerks with the impact.
Red floods my vision. Something primal rips through me, tearing past bone and sinew, a roar building in my chest that I swallow back.
My finger is already tight on the trigger. I’ve killed before. I’ll kill again. For Eve, I’ll burn the world down and salt the ashes.
“Shelby!” The name tears from my throat, raw and ragged.
Eve’s head snaps up, eyes finding mine across the space between us. There’s dried blood on her cheek, but it’s the recognition in her gaze that guts me—the way relief and terror war across her features in a single, fractured moment.
“Jack! Run!” she screams, voice broken with desperation. “She’ll kill you!”
Run? The word doesn’t compute, doesn’t register as anything but static. Run from what? From Eve? From the woman who’s carved her open? Something hot and dangerous floods my veins, scorching away hesitation, burning through restraint.
“Let her go,” I growl, advancing, gun trained on Shelby’s head. One clean shot. That’s all it would take to end this. One bullet between her eyes and Eve would be safe.
Just as I pull the trigger and release the bullet in the chamber, Shelby moves. In a blur of motion, she lunges sideways, fingers clawing into Eve’s hair, yanking her close. Using my wife as a shield. Using her like a fucking prop in her sick revenge fantasy.
“No!” I roar, agony ripping through me.
Time stretches, warps, fragments like shattered glass. I see it all in excruciating detail—the flash of the muzzle, the jerk of recoil against my palm, the spray of blood. But not from Shelby. From Eve.
My wife’s body jerks, a sharp, surprised gasp escaping her lips. Her gray eyes widen, meeting mine across the space between us.
“No.” The word is more breath than sound. “No, no, no, no…”
My brain fractures, reality splintering around me. This isn’t happening—it can’t be happening. Not again. Not Eve. Not by my hand.
Fuck.
Ruby’s face superimposes over Eve’s in my mind. History repeats itself with cruel precision. Something breaks inside me. Something fundamental holding me together snaps like a wire pulled too tight.
The roar that tears from my throat isn’t human. It’s the sound of something feral and wounded, reverberating through the warehouse rafters, shaking dust from the beams above.
“Eve!” Her name is a prayer and a curse and a plea all at once. “Eve, look at me. Open your eyes. Please. Please…” She doesn’t move. Doesn’t lift her head. Just hangs there.
I killed Ruby. I killed Valentine. And now I’ve killed Eve—the only person who saw through the monster to the man underneath. The only one who made me feel something beyond the rage and grief that’s consumed me for months.
