Chapter 294: The Devil I Hid

David’s POV

The TV anchor’s voice cut through the room like a blade.

“Breaking news: Police are investigating a brutal murder in an apartment complex downtown. The victim, a woman in her early twenties, was found stabbed multiple times in what authorities are calling a targeted attack. The apartment belongs to local businessman Johnson Cole. We’re getting reports that this is the second violent incident tied to that neighborhood in the past hour—”

Norman’s face went white. “David…have you gotten through to her? Holly? Where is she?”

I was already yanking my phone out, hands shaking so bad I almost dropped it. Holly’s name glowed on the screen as I hit call. Straight to voicemail. Again. Again. Again.

“Fuck!” I screamed, loud enough that Norman flinched.

The anchor kept talking, volume rising as channels flipped in the background.

“Sources confirm the victim has been identified as Victoria Lawson, daughter of—”

I tuned the voice down in my head as several thoughts clashed inside me.

That same apartment? The one I’d had two guys watching 24/7 ever since that day? They were supposed to keep eyes on the building, keep anything shady out, and report to me if they noticed anything unusual in the regular pattern. They’d texted me an hour ago…All clear.

Now someone is dead?

Another channel cut in, graphic footage blurred but unmistakable: police tape, flashing lights, a body bag on a stretcher.

Norman grabbed the remote, voice cracking. “Jesus Christ, man…this isn’t even the first one tonight. Look, they’re saying another stabbing just came in, same MO, different building same neighborhood—”

I didn’t hear the rest.

My brain short-circuited.

Justin.

It’s all happening again.

Holly took Justin inside her apartment less than an hour ago.

Justin Hunt.

The little brother I’d always written off as a reckless fuck-up with a smart mouth and a hero complex.

The Dark Prince of Manhattan, whispered about in the circles I’d buried deep…the ones tied to Jameson and to blood debts.

The same brother I took a fall for years ago.

I’d ignored the doctor’s warning to have him locked up in a psychiatric hospital. Because I was honoring my father’s last sane request. The one that involved me protecting Justin with my life.

It can’t be a coincidence. The knife work was the same as years ago. The fact that he’d shown up tonight exactly when he needed to look like the good guy.

He’d let me beat him bloody in the street so Holly would run to him.

And I’d left her there.

With him.

Was she his next target? But why? Aren’t they supposed to be friends or something?

“Fuck!” I roared again, snatching my keys off the coffee table so hard and storming towards the door.

Norman lunged after me. “David, wait…call the cops. You have to report him. Let it go. You’ve protected him enough already all these years. Don’t—”

“I’ll call you later ,” I said and was already out the door, slamming it behind me, sprinting to my car. The engine turned over with a growl that matched the one in my chest.

I shouldn’t have left her.

I should have sensed it.

The way he didn’t fight back.

The smug little smile through the blood.

The way he’d looked at Holly like she was already his to protect…or to play with.

And Justin doesn’t play like normal humans.

I peeled out of Norman’s driveway, tires screaming against asphalt, phone pressed to my ear again.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

Voicemail.

“Holly, pick up…please, baby, pick up. If you’re there, if he’s there…lock the door, call 911, anything.,.just stay away from Justin. He’s not…he’s not safe. I’m coming. I’m coming right now.”

I threw the phone onto the passenger seat and floored it downtown, running reds, weaving through traffic like a maniac.

The city blurred past…neon lights streaking into red and blue emergency flashes in my rearview.

I’d built every wall I had to keep my family safe from the dark.

And I’d just handed Holly to the darkest part of it on a silver platter.

I kept driving, hoping I could somehow teleport to Holly’s side as my hands tighten on the wheel.

The city outside the windshield wasn’t Manhattan…different skyline, different streets…but grief doesn’t care about geography. It drags memory behind it like a corpse tied to the bumper.

Suddenly my mind traveled back. It always starts the same way.

Manhattan, years ago.

Before the whispers had a name.

Before the Dark Prince.

Girls began to disappear in twos and threes. Not at once…never dramatic enough to spark panic immediately. Just enough to feel like a coincidence. A college student who missed her morning class. A barista who never made it home after a closing shift. A teenager who texted her mom I’m on my way and then went silent forever.

The city kept breathing.

Subways still screamed.

People still laughed in bars.

But something had changed.

You could feel it in the air…like the city was holding its breath.

Bodies came later.

Dumped in alleyways, folded into abandoned buildings, dragged out of the river bloated and pale like secrets that refused to stay buried. They were always wrong in the same way. Too still. Too broken. The kind of damage that said this wasn’t an accident…this was the work of a monster.

Mothers started gripping their daughters’ wrists tighter. Fathers walked their girls home with keys between their fingers. Women learned to check shadows like it was second nature.

And in our house… We watched the news every night.

Justin sat on the couch, legs pulled up, eyes glued to the screen. Too focused in an unsettling manner. He’d ask questions that made my skin crawl.

Did they say what time she died?

Was the body found intact?

How did they know it was the same person? Do you think the girls were scared?

I told myself I was paranoid.

I was the bad son after all.

The jealous one. The screw-up with crooked ties and grades that never quite lived up to expectations.

Justin was golden.

Justin was fragile.

Justin was loved.

Then the hammer showed up two nights after another body was found. It was wrapped in a towel and stuffed under his bed like a dirty secret.

Blood crusted into the metal head, dark and sticky. He cried when I confronted him about it. Swore he didn’t know where it came from.

His mother held him like he was still a child.

My father looked at me like I’d planted it there myself just to accuse him.

“You’ve always resented him,” his mother said.

“I should have sent you away, David,” my father would say with so much disappointment.

And I believed…for a moment…that maybe I was wrong.

Until his mother found the items in his room one fateful summer.

I still see her there when I close my eyes, laying on the concrete floor like a broken mannequin... Surrounded by proof of her son’s evil.

Hair clips tangled together like a child’s bracelet.

Backpacks with names written inside. Wallets.

Stuffed animals, soft and innocent and ruined just by being there. Lives reduced to keepsakes.

She didn’t scream… She just…collapsed and died on the spot, as though she couldn’t bear the truth…the ugly cold truth about her precious son.

I ran to my father and told him everything I knew and everything we found.

He laughed. Then he cried. Then he broke… lost his mind.

Every time I corrected him…every time I said It wasn’t me and threatened to go to the police…his condition worsened. His mind splintered until reality became a suggestion instead of truth.

So I stopped correcting him. I stopped telling him that Justin was the murderer. Not me.

I took the blame. I became the monster the Hunt family needed to protect their golden boy.

I became the Dark Prince.

And Justin?

Justin believed it too.

The family doctor said grief had split something in him. That his mind rebuilt the world in a way he could survive. In his version, he was the innocent brother and I was the killer. I destroyed his family.

They wanted to lock him away but my father made me promise.

“Keep him safe,” he said, eyes empty. “That’s your duty.”

So I did.

I changed countries…moved my family around a lot. I struck a deal with Jameson to protect our image.

I paid people to watch him when he moved out of my house. I built walls around us. I buried the past so deep I almost convinced myself it was dead.

Almost.

The present slammed back into me like a fist to the throat.

Red light but I didn’t stop. I need to get to Holly.

What have you done now, Justin?

Have I been hiding the devil instead of banishing it? But I thought he was all better…his routine has been normal for the past years. So what changed? What triggered him?

I felt sick to my bones. This is all my fault. I should have done the right thing from the beginning!

I drove faster.

Because if this is happening again… If tonight is proof that I was wrong… Then I didn’t just protect my family.

I unleashed him on the world.