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“But…”

“I know, but this time he had to die with a story. A very simple one.”

I hate it. I hate it. I hate it!

The gardenias with their white petals freckled with pink reminded me of the crime scene photographs of Sophie Ortiz. White gardenias scattered around the bed, the petals stained with crimson droplets.

Noah had created the flowers to relive the memory of his mother’s death.

We walked past rows of gardenia pots, their sweet perfume thick enough to coat the back of my throat. The fragrance was suffocating.

Grant Mercer was still in Onyx. Enzo would make sure he stayed there while Ryden and I spent a little time with Noah Mercer—Noah Ortiz.

We found him in the living room, slouched against the couch with a cold bottle of water pressed to his forehead, eyes half-closed.

For a fleeting second, he looked painfully ordinary. It was a sight that didn’t shake me anymore. Monsters almost never looked like monsters anyway.

They looked human. Polite and kind. Soft. Forgettable.

He stood up, startled and panicked when he saw us there.

I sneaked behind him, plunging the syringe filled with fentanyl into his blood. He would feel everything, but he would not be able to stop it.

“Mr. Sinclair…” His voice cracked. The bottle slipped from his fingers and hit the carpet with a dull thud. “How did you—”

He blinked when I joined Ryden.

“It doesn’t feel good, does it, Noah Ortiz?” Ryden said, lifting the gun. “Being the one with nowhere left to run.”

The color drained from Noah’s face. This time, he wasn’t the one watching from the shadows. He was the one being watched.

His eyes darted around. Looking for something.

I wondered if this was what his victims looked like in their last moments—not just frightened, but desperately searching for an escape, a way out.

His gaze locked onto the weapon. His brother’s gun. Ryden had found about the gun from Enzo, and after that, it was very easy.

Recognition flickered across his face.

He knew this was the end. His end!

“Those girls…” Ryden took a sharp breath. “What you did to them…”

He was an animal. He mauled them.

Noah was staring at Ryden. Only Ryden.

“You would’ve killed my mother,” he whispered. “She was a... I...”

Not all monsters are made, but Noah was made by his mother, and by the men that had frequented his home.

I felt a second of sympathy, before it was buried under the mountain of bodies he’d left behind. Beneath every terrified scream, every stolen life. Those girls didn’t deserve to pay for someone else’s mistakes.

“You killed your mother, but you should have stopped with her.” Noah shook his head. He kept shaking his head as tears stained his cheeks. He wasn’t mourning the lives he had taken; he was mourning the loss of his innocence. “You killed innocent women. They were as innocent as you once were.”

He had taken the violence done to him and sharpened it into a weapon. And then pointed the same weapon at other women.

“No.” His breathing hitched. “They would have grown into her.” His eyes squeezed shut. “They would have become my mother. They would have hurt me.”