Chapter 109 This is personal

Chapter 109 This is personal
Seraphina’s POV: 

The world had narrowed to the rough fabric of Malakai’s shirt against my cheek, the suffocating weight of his arms around me, and the silent, roaring void in my chest. Roxie. My Roxie. The image of her emerald ring on that severed finger was seared onto the back of my eyelids, a brand of pure, undiluted guilt. Every sob that wracked my body was a testament to my failure. She was dead because she had been my friend. Because she had cared about me.

Malakai held me, his grip a steady, grounding force, but it couldn't reach me. I was lost, adrift in an ocean of grief. But as the initial, gut-wrenching agony began to subside, a new, colder thought began to snake its way through the fog of my despair.

This wasn't just a hit.

I pulled back, wiping at my tears with the back of my hand, my mind suddenly, terrifyingly clear. The men were watching me, their faces etched with concern and fury, but I was barely seeing them. I was seeing the note, the elegant scrawl, the specific, pointed threats.

"This isn't just about the bounty," I said, my voice hoarse, but steadier than it had any right to be. "A bounty hunter, a hired killer… they would have just come for me. A sniper's bullet, a car bomb, something clean, impersonal. This…" I gestured toward the box, my stomach clenching. "This is a message. This is psychological warfare."

I started pacing the length of the office, my mind racing, connecting dots I hadn't even known were there. "He's not just trying to destroy you three to get to me. That would be strategy. This is personal. He knows about Roxie. He knows she was my best friend. He knows what that ring meant to me. He's not just trying to kill me; he wants to break me. He wants to destroy me from the inside out, starting with the people I care about the most. He wants me to be alone again, terrified, with nothing left to lose."

I stopped in the middle of the room, my heart hammering against my ribs. A cold dread, far deeper and more chilling than anything I had ever felt, began to creep up my spine.

"This person knows me," I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. "He knows my history. He knows my weaknesses. Not just you three, but the ghosts of my past."

Cassain was watching me, his green eyes sharp and analytical. "Who from your past would have this kind of reach? This kind of viciousness?"

My mind raced, flipping through a rolodex of enemies, of targets, of men I had put in the ground. None of them fit. They were monsters, but they were straightforward monsters. This was something else. This was personal.

And then, a name surfaced from the deepest, darkest recesses of my memory. A name I hadn't allowed myself to think of in over a decade.

It could only be one person.

My last foster dad before zero. Richard.

The memory hit me like a punch to the gut. The smell of stale whiskey and cheap cologne. The sound of his heavy footsteps on the stairs. The cold, calculating way his eyes would follow me around the house. He hadn't been like the others. The others were neglectful, cruel in their indifference. 

Richard was different. He was sharp, intelligent, and sadistic. He saw the fear in me, the broken, angry little girl, and he hadn't seen a child in need of saving. He had seen a raw material. A project. I was always something he wanted to show off, to mold to the perfect monster. He would take me to lavish parties to show everyone what he created. 

He was the one who had first put a knife in my hand, not to teach me to defend myself, but to see if I had the stomach to hurt someone. He was the one who had locked me in the basement for days, not as punishment, but as an "experiment" in survival. He was the one who had cultivated the darkness in me, who had taught me that the world was a kill-or-be-killed playground, and he had enjoyed it.

I had escaped him. I had run away, and I had never looked back. I had his death all planned out, slow and painful. I had heard he died a few years after I ran away. The papers said it was a heart attack. But did he? A man like that… a man who reveled in control and manipulation… would he just die? Or would he fake it, disappear, and reinvent himself as something bigger, something more powerful?

My blood ran cold. The Shark. The name echoed in my mind, and suddenly, it made a sickening kind of sense. Richard had always been fascinated by predators. He used to call me his little shark in training, a lone hunter who had to be ruthless to survive.

"Oh god," I breathed, my hand flying to my mouth. "It's him."

The men were looking at me, their expressions a mixture of confusion and alarm.

"Who, Seraphina,” Soren asked, his voice gentle.

I looked at them, my eyes wide with a terror I hadn't felt since I was a child. "Richard. My last foster dad. The one who… the one who trained me before Zero. The papers said he had a heart attack, but what if he didn't? What if he's the Shark?"

The pieces clicked into place with a horrifying finality. The personal knowledge, the psychological torture, the desire to break me rather than just kill me. It was him. It had always been him. He wasn't dead. He was back. And he was coming for me. Richard, the one who got away, who was supposed to die by my hand is back, and he wants me to know it.