OLIVER
I had seen Halston Redd kill men for power, for territory, and for disrespect.
I had watched him end lives.
It was always cold, always calculated.
But this wasn’t calculation.
This was madness.
The estate felt heavy with the suffocating pressure of a storm that had been building for the past twenty eight hours.
Halston hadn’t slept.
He hadn’t eaten.
He hadn’t even changed his clothes.
He stood outside the iron door of the interrogation room, the white linen shirt he’d worn still stained with the stiffened map of Kaira’s blood.
He looked ruined, dark bruises of exhaustion carved deep beneath his eyes.
I had been by his side for a decade, yet somehow, I couldn’t recognize him.
“He’s inside,” I said, my hand resting on the heavy steel lever of the door.
“We intercepted him, he was driving the heavy transport vehicle that struck them from behind.
The front bumper still has the silver paint scraped off the car.”
Halston didn’t look at me.
His eyes were fixed on the steel door, flat and lifeless, like two obsidian stones.
“Open it.”
The word didn’t carry its usual commanding edge; it was completely hollowed out, stripped of any human cadence.
He felt far away, like whatever made him human had stepped out and left only a shell behind to pilot his body.
The man tied to a chair in the center of the room was already a ghost.
The bright bulb overhead caught the sweat slicking his forehead, his eyes darting around in fear, but the real terror didn’t hit him until Halston stepped into the light.
The assassin looked up, his eyes locking onto the dark bloodstain covering Halston’s chest.
I watched the man’s soul leave his body.
He didn’t even try to struggle against the leather straps binding his wrists.
He just froze, paralyzed by the gravity of the man standing over him.
Halston pulled out a chair, sitting down directly across from him.
He simply stared, letting the absolute silence stretch until the assassin’s breathing turned into a ragged, pathetic wheeze.
“Who gave you the order?” Halston asked.
It was so calm it was sickening.
“The Mask!” the man sobbed, his chest heaving.
“It’s her!
The Mask!
I was just hired for the job.” The man shrieked, his voice bouncing off the walls.
“And how did she hire you?
Have you seen her?” Halston leaned back.
“I swear to God, man, I have never met her, never had any dealings with her till this.
I just know her as The mask, and that is all I know of her.” His shoulders trembled.
“I got the drops on my burner, a location, and a wire transfer!
That’s it!
That’s all!”
I watched Halston’s jaw tighten, a muscle ticking in his cheek.
He was studying the man.
He was looking for a lie, but there wasn’t one.
The terror rolling off the assassin was genuine.
He was just a blind, disposable link in a chain meant to keep the architect invisible.
He was entirely useless.
Halston stood up from the chair, slowly.
This was the part he would give orders for the man to be killed or tortured while he watched or left his men to it, but he didn’t say a word.
He reached down to his cuffs, unbuttoning the links, and began to roll his sleeves up to his elbows, folding the blood-stained fabric.
The man watched him, his eyes widening to the size of saucers.
“No, no, please…
I told you everything!
I told you everything.”
He walked over to the brick forge in the back of the room, where the coals were glowing an intense, blinding orange.
Resting directly in the center of the heat was a heavy plank of solid iron, its flat edge turning a bright red.
He wrapped a heat-resistant leather hide around the base of the handle and pulled it from the fire.
“Please!
No!
God, please—”
He brought the metal down, pressing it flat against the soles of the man’s bare feet.
The scream that tore out of the assassin’s throat was deafening.
The sickening scent of burning flesh filled the air, white smoke curled up toward the bulb.
Halston’s face remained completely expressionless as the man’s body convulsed against the leather straps.
Finally, he lifted it away and tossed it into the corner.
The man was panting, his head rolling against his shoulders, his eyes glazed with tears.
Halston wiped his hand on his shirt like he was only getting started.
He walked back to the metal table, pulling on a pair of thick rubber gloves, then slid a pair of clear safety goggles over his eyes.
At this point, he was unpredictable, even to me.
From the bottom shelf of the cart, he lifted a heavy glass beaker filled with sodium hydroxide— a highly corrosive liquid that sat perfectly still in the glass.
The man watched him through bleary, tear-filled eyes, his voice nothing more than a broken whisper.
“What…
what are you doing…”
Halston dropped the acid on a table close to him before moving to the man.
He extended his left hand, gripping the man’s jaw and locking his head against the headrest.
With his right hand, he reached for the man’s left eye, twisting, and plucking the eye clean from its socket.
The man let out a choked gurgle, his body going rigid as blood poured down his cheek like a river.
Before the assassin could pass out from the agony, Halston held the eyeball over the glass beaker and dropped it into the sodium hydroxide.
The chemical reacted instantly, hissing, bubbling and churning into it as the tissue began to dissolve and melt right before the man’s remaining eye.
Halston didn’t even give him time to process the horror.
While the chemical was still boiling and reacting inside the glass, he lifted it.
Using his left hand, he forcefully pried the man’s jaw open, squeezing his cheeks until his mouth gaped wide.
He poured the mixture down the man’s throat.
The assassin didn’t even have the breath left to scream.
The acid began to dissolve everything from within.
A choking sound vibrated in his chest as smoke rose from his open mouth.
Halston stepped back, setting down the glass, pulling off the rubber gloves and tossing them onto the table alongside the safety goggles.
He didn’t look at the dying body of the man.
His body slumped forward against the leather restraints as the life finally drained out of him.
Halston walked over to the door where I stood, pulling down his sleeves and smoothing out the cuffs.
“Burn the body,” Halston told me flatly, his eyes staring right past me as if I weren’t even there.
He pushed past me, leaving the room.
***********
Two days had passed in utter silence, with the doctor coming and going, telling Halston to be hopeful, a word we both knew he hated.
I stood by the half-open door, my hand resting against the frame as I watched him.
I had never seen him look small.
Until now.
He was sitting in on chair by her bedside, holding her hand like it was made of glass, pressing his forehead against her knuckles.
His eyes were closed, he barely seemed to breathe.
The quiet radiating off him was worse than any rage I had ever witnessed from him.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and knocked lightly on the doorframe, hating myself for breaking the quiet.
He slowly raised his eyes, turning his hollow gaze toward me.
“Boss,” I said, stepping fully into the room but keeping my distance.
“Darion is awake.
The medical team cleared him this morning.
He’s demanding to be brought down here to see his niece.”
Halston’s jaw clenched, a flash of cold fury flaring in his eyes.
“No.”
“I don’t think he would listen.”
“No one comes near her or sits in this room but me.”
I nodded, expecting the refusal.
“I figured you’d say that.” I took a pause before I spoke again.
“He gave me something before I left his room.
He told me to show it to you.
It is the copy of the security footage from the night Kaira’s parents died.”
His posture shifted slightly as he laid Kaira’s hand back down onto the white sheets, still keeping his thumb resting against her wrist.
“Go on,” he muttered.
“Darion found something on the tape before the incident,” I explained, pulling out the tablet I had transferred the footage to.
“Darion traced the logo on the vehicle.
It belonged to a commercial rental company.
I contacted the agency this morning through one of our shell companies and forced them to hand over their records.
The man who rented the vehicle was a gofer who worked for the assassins she used that night.”
Halston’s eyes narrowed.
“And the assassins?”
“Dead,” I replied flatly.
“Darion found them all dead.”
Halston stretched his hands for the tablet, watching the video.
“From the look of things, she’s a standalone assassin who hides herself among the mercenaries she hires, blending into the crowd to execute the order, and then wipes them out to ensure she remains untraceable.”
He handed me the tablet, turning his face back to Kaira, his gaze locking onto her pale, sleeping face as his fingers tightened around her hand once more.
**************
The basement of the estate had become an absolute slaughterhouse.
I stood by the door, my arms crossed tightly over my chest, watching the scene play out in front of me.
Six of our highest-ranking men lined the wall, their expressions entirely frozen, none of them daring to breathe too loudly.
In the center of the room, Halston stood, calmly wiping blood off his knuckles with a white towel.
He finished, tossing the stained towel onto a pile of bloody rags in the corner, and casually flicked his fingers toward the chair.
“Take him away,” I ordered the guards.
They moved, unleashing the restraints, and dragging the lifeless body of the contract killer, out of the room.
This was the tenth man in forty-eight hours since his order to hunt down and bring him every standalone assassin, mercenary, and contract killer operating within the city.
If The Mask hid herself by blending among other assassins she hired, Halston’s solution was simple: eliminate the entire pool.
Kill every mercenary on the black market until there was no one left for her to hire or hide behind.
I watched Halston slowly lose his mind, going beast mode, burning the entire world down just to see Kaira’s eyelids flutter.
The door groaned open again, and two guards hauled the next assassin into the room.
They dragged him to the center, hooking heavy chains around his wrists and hoisting his arms above his head until he was hanging from the reinforced ceiling beams beside the chair, his toes barely scraping the bloody floor.
The man could already feel death in the room, his eyes darting, taking in the splatters on the walls, the guards, and finally, Halston.
Halston walked over to the steel cart, picking up a long, curved hunting blade, his eyes entirely blank.
The metal caught the harsh glare of the bulb above, reflecting the complete emptiness in his face.
“Please,” the hanging man choked out, his voice cracking with desperation.
“Forgive me.”
He begged for his life, even though he didn’t know what he was begging for or why he was about to be killed.
Halston drove the tip of the blade deep into the flesh of the assassin’s shoulder.
The man let out a scream that echoed in the room, his legs kicking uselessly in the air, while Halston gripped the handle with both hands and began to drag the blade downward through his skin.
The screams that filled the room would have sickened any normal man but he just kept pulling the knife, completely detached from the torment he was inflicting.
Suddenly, the heavy door clicked and swung open.
A guard stumbled into the room, panting heavily, his face pale as he looked past the hanging, screaming man, straight at Halston.
“Boss!” He called.
“The nurse…
the nurse just reported.
Mrs.
Redd is awake!”
The blade stopped instantly.
The room froze.
The lifeless mask in Halston’s eyes shattered, humanity flooded his expression again.
He dragged the knife out of the assassin’s skin, letting it clatter against the floor as he pushed past the guard at the door, and threw himself into the hallway.
Thank you for reading.