Chapter Ninety-Five: The Cost of Vengeance
The warehouse stank of rust, rot, and fear.
I stood in the center of the concrete floor, the dim light from a single bulb casting long shadows across the walls. Before me, two men knelt on the cold ground, their hands bound behind their backs, their faces already bruised and bloodied from the beating that had brought them here.
Leo had found them in forty-three hours.
Forty-three hours of watching the footage frame by frame. Forty-three hours of tracking, hunting, following the thin threads of evidence until they led to a basement apartment on the city's east side. Forty-three hours of hoping—hoping that she was still alive, still fighting, still waiting for me to come.
The hope died when we found the apartment empty.
No Aira. Just the tools of their trade—ropes, tape, stained mattresses, and photographs. Dozens of photographs. Women of all ages, all backgrounds, all frozen in moments of terror and degradation.
The police would call them trophies.
I called them a death sentence.
Now the men knelt before me, and the hope that had kept me moving for days had curdled into something far worse. Something cold. Something absolute.
"You know who I am," I said.
My voice was quiet. That was the terrifying part. No rage. No screaming. Just the flat, dead calm of a man who had already accepted the worst.
The larger one—the one who had held the chloroform rag—spat blood onto the floor. "Royce. The rich guy. We saw the news. Your wife's dead. Funeral and everything."
"She's not dead." My voice didn't change. "She's missing. And you're going to tell me where she is."
The smaller one laughed—a broken, desperate sound. "We don't know, man. We swear. We picked her up, yeah. She was a gift from the street, all alone, begging for it—"
I moved.
The crack of my fist against bone was loud in the empty space. The smaller man's head snapped back, blood spraying from his nose. He crumpled sideways, moaning.
"I'll ask once more." I straightened, flexing my hand. "Where is she?"
The larger one's eyes were wide now, the bravado crumbling. "We don't know! I swear to God, we don't know! We did what we always do—we had our fun, and then we—"
He stopped.
The silence in the warehouse was absolute.
Leo stepped forward, holding up a tablet. The footage played—Aira fighting, Aira clawing, Aira being dragged toward the car. The same footage that had been burned into my memory, playing on an endless loop behind my eyes.
"This girl," Leo said quietly. "What did you do with her?"
The men exchanged a glance. The smaller one, still bleeding from his broken nose, looked away.
The larger one's face went pale. "She... she was different. Fought like an animal. Drew blood. We... we had to... we went harder than usual. When we finished, she wasn't..."
He trailed off.
My heart stopped.
Wasn't what? Breathing? Moving? Alive?
"Wasn't what?" My voice was barely a whisper.
The man swallowed hard. "She wasn't moving. We thought she was faking at first—they do that sometimes, play dead to make us stop. But she wasn't... she wasn't breathing."
The world contracted to a single point of light.
"We panicked, okay? We didn't mean to—she just wouldn't stop fighting. We took her to the river. The same place we always take them. Dropped her in. The current's strong there. She would have been... she would have been gone by morning."
Gone by morning.
The river.
The body bag.
The empty coffin.
My legs gave way.
I didn't fall—I caught myself on a stack of crates, my body refusing to cooperate, my mind spinning into a void so deep and dark I couldn't see the bottom.
She had fought. She had fought so hard.
And they had killed her for it.
They had beaten her, assaulted her, and when she stopped moving, they had thrown her into the river like garbage.
My wife. My Aira. The woman who had begged me for one last hug. The woman who had wanted to marry me again, in the sunlight, with roses and peonies and the scent of oranges in the air.
She had died alone. In the cold. In the dark. Surrounded by monsters.
And I had refused her last request.
The last hug. The one thing she'd asked for. And I had been too proud, too wounded, too stupid to give it to her.
Leo and Leon moved. They didn't need orders. They knew what came next.
The sounds that followed were not human.
I didn't watch. I didn't need to. I sat on the cold concrete, my back against the crates, and let the screams wash over me like rain.
They didn't bring her back.
They didn't undo the river.
They didn't give me back the last hug.
When it was over, when the men were nothing but broken things on the warehouse floor, Leo approached.
"They're done, boss. For good. No one will ever—"
"I know."
My voice was hollow. Empty. The voice of a man who had already left his body behind.
I stood slowly, my legs shaky, my eyes dry. I hadn't cried since the garage. I didn't think I had any tears left.
"She asked me for a hug," I said quietly. "Before I left. Before they threw her out. She said she had a feeling something would go wrong. She begged me to hold her. Just once more."
Leo said nothing. There was nothing to say.
"I said no." My voice cracked. "I told her I couldn't. That I'd break. And I walked away."
The warehouse was silent except for the drip of water somewhere in the darkness.
"I failed her, Leo. In every way a man can fail the woman he loves. I didn't protect her from my family. I didn't protect her from hers. I didn't believe her when she said she was innocent. And when she asked for the only thing that might have given her strength to survive—I refused."
I walked toward the door, toward the night, toward a world that no longer contained Aira Royce.
At the threshold, I stopped.
"She wanted to marry me again. In the garden. With roses and peonies. She wanted to say vows that meant something." A single tear finally escaped, tracking down my cheek. "I was going to give her that. I was going to give her everything."
I stepped into the night.
Behind me, Leo and Leon exchanged a look—the look of men who had just watched their leader die and keep walking.
They followed.
Because that's what you did when the man you served lost everything.
You stayed.
Even when there was nothing left to fight for.
---
The river was black and silent under the bridge.
I stood at the railing, staring down at the water that had taken my wife. Somewhere below, in the cold depths, she had spent her final moments—alone, terrified, betrayed by everyone who should have protected her.
I thought about the last hug.
About the roses and peonies that would never bloom for our wedding.
About the baby who had never drawn breath.
About the woman who had loved me even when I gave her every reason not to.
The river flowed on, indifferent.
I had found the men who killed my wife.
I had made them pay.
But vengeance was cold comfort when the one you loved was gone forever.
I had lost my flower.
My innocent wife.
The woman who had begged me to trust her.
And I had failed.
In the end, that was all that remained—the bitter, absolute knowledge of failure.
The river kept flowing.
And I stood alone in the dark, a ghost among the living, mourning the last hug I would never, ever get to give.