BANG!

The clay pigeon shattered into a thousand razor-edged shards against the afternoon sky, each fragment glittering like bone splinters as it rained down in a brief, cruel confetti of destruction.

Marcus lowered the shotgun—a Purdey, hand-engraved, worth at least four figures—and cracked the barrel open. Smoke curled from the chamber like a departing soul screaming its last.

Behind him, the sprawling Heavenchild estate stretched across manicured acres, every blade of grass trimmed to aristocratic perfection as if even nature itself had been broken and taught to kneel.

"The doctors," he said, not turning around. "All of them?"

Chief Harrison stood three paces back, sweating despite the mild weather. He’d been Chief of Police after Chief Morrison was arrested. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

And he’d watched Morrison deal with these families and also learned his predecessor had made the mistakes and one of them was asking questions. Harrison had learned from that example —learned not to put his hand back into the fire after the first time it melts the flesh from his bones.

"All of them, sir. Doctors, the detectives and everyone who knew about the girl’s death and took the money, Morrison gave them." He consulted his tablet with trembling fingers. "Seventeen people total. All dead within forty-eight hours of each other."

"Cause of death?"

"That’s the... the unusual part, sir. Strange black cuts, but no blade we can identify. Some of them opened from throat to groin in one continuous line, organs still perfectly arranged inside like they were waiting for inspection.

"Others had their eyelids sliced off while they were still alive—eyes wide and staring at whatever carved them. Coroners are baffled. The wounds don’t match any known—"

"Pull."

The trap machine launched another clay disc. Marcus tracked it with casual grace, squeezed the trigger, and watched orange fragments rain down against the blue like the last hopes of the men and women who’d just been erased because of his past mistake.

"Continue."

Harrison swallowed hard, throat clicking like a dry hinge. "We’ve suppressed the investigation. Officially, it’s being classified as a series of unrelated incidents. Heart attacks. Accidents. One suicide."

"Witnesses?"

"None that matter, sir."

Marcus reloaded. The shells clicked into place with satisfying finality —the sound of coffins being nailed shut.

"And the footage? Did the cameras catch anything?"

Harrison’s silence stretched a beat too long.

Marcus turned his head. Just slightly. Just enough for the Chief to see the edge of his profile, the cold calculation in his eye that promised the same precise death if answers didn’t come fast enough.

"I... we’re still investigating the technical failure from all the loactions where they died, sir. The IT department believes it was a—"

"Pull."

Another disc. Another explosion of clay and sky. Another shell ejected, smoking.

"You’re telling me," Marcus said, voice soft as silk wrapped around a blade, "that seventeen people connected to one case are dead, the security footage conveniently vanished, and you have no answers for me about who’s responsible."

"We’re working on—"

"Man the trap."

Harrison blinked. "Sir?"

"The machine." Marcus gestured with the shotgun barrel. "Go pull the lever. Personally. I find the automated timing... unsatisfying."

The Chief of Police—the highest law enforcement officer in tea,legs moving on puppet strings of pure terror.

He positioned himself beside the launcher.

Waited.

"Pull."

Harrison yanked the lever. The disc flew. Marcus obliterated it without looking.

Some things never changed in Paradise.

You could remove one Chief, install another, shuffle the deck however you liked—but the next card drawn would always be a puppet.

The only question was which Legacy family held the strings, and how many others they’d agreed to share him with.

Harrison had three masters so far. The Heavenchilds. The Maxtons. The Montgomerys.

Today, he served only one.

"Pemberton."

The name echoed across the grounds. Footsteps approached—quick, precise, forty years of anticipating the needs of people who never waited for anything.

The butler appeared at Marcus’s side. Ancient. Immaculate. A relic of old British service tradition transplanted to American soil and preserved in aristocratic amber.

"You summoned, Young Master?"

"The report. On the Phei."

Pemberton produced a leather folio from somewhere within his tailcoat. "Phei has been observed extensively since your last inquiry. Apart from spending considerable time with his... companions, he appears to engage in no training of his awakened abilities. No combat practice. No power development exercises. Nothing that would suggest preparation for conflict."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing of note, sir. The young master has nothing to worry about. The only unusual activity was a dinner visit to the Montgomery residence before departing with Miss Sierra. She subsequently fled her family home, and her mother appears to be—"

Marcus moved.

The shotgun swung up and discharged in a motion too fast for conscious thought—instinct wrapped in fury, a progenitor warrior memory compressed into a fraction of a second.

The blast carved past Pemberton’s head. Close enough to kiss. The shot didn’t just graze—it ripped a fist-sized chunk from the side of the butler’s skull, ear and cartilage and bone shredded in a wet red spray that painted the grass behind him like abstract art.

Blood gushed in thick arterial pulses, soaking the pristine white collar, flooding down his neck in hot rivers that steamed faintly in the afternoon air.

Marcus threw the Purdey aside. Two hundred thousand dollars of craftsmanship clattered against stone.

He crossed the distance in three strides. His hand found Pemberton’s throat. Lifted. Squeezed until the old man’s windpipe creaked like dry kindling under a boot.

"What did you just say?"

The butler’s feet dangled. Blood poured from the ragged crater where his ear had been, pattering onto Marcus’s knuckles in warm, sticky drops. His eyes bulged—forty years of faithful service, and this was how it ended. Veins burst in the whites of his eyes.

His mouth opened in a silent scream that produced only a wet gurgle.

"N-nothing to worry—"

"NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT?"

Marcus’s leg swept out. Pemberton’s feet—already barely touching ground—flew from beneath him entirely.

The butler crashed onto his back with Marcus’s grip still locked on his windpipe, pinned to the manicured grass like a butterfly in a collector’s case,spine jarring against the earth hard enough to drive the air from his lungs in a strangled wheeze.

"That asshole," Marcus snarled, face inches from Pemberton’s, spittle flecking the butler’s purpled cheeks, "took what’s meant to be MINE. Took MY woman. And she RAN from home to be with HIM."

He squeezed harder. Pemberton’s face purpled to a deep, mottled plum. A thin trickle of blood leaked from one nostril. His hands clawed feebly at Marcus’s wrist, nails scraping uselessly against unyielding flesh.

"What else? WHO else?"

"A-Amber—" The butler choked out the words through a throat that could barely function, each syllable a wet, broken rasp. "Amber Castellano. Yuki Tanaka. Maddie Whitmore. All departed with him. And... and Elena. Elena Ashford. They’ve just boarded a private jet to Hell’s Paradise Island and—"

"MINE."

Marcus’s grip tightened to crushing, the cartilage in Pemberton’s throat giving a sickening pop under his fingers. The butler’s legs kicked once, twice, heels digging useless furrows in the perfect grass.

"He took what’s MINE?!"

The delusion was almost impressive.

Here was a man whose cock hadn’t risen to any occasion in years—a limp, shriveled legacy that no amount of Legacy bloodline could fix—screaming about stolen women like a child whose favorite toy had been snatched.

Women who’d never touched him. Never would. Women who’d taken one look at the dragon and forgotten Marcus Heavenchild existed.

But sure... why not? Stolen. From him. The man who couldn’t fuck his way out of a wet paper bag without paying for the privilege.

Pemberton’s eyes rolled back. A thin stream of urine darkened the front of his trousers.

"Now, now—relax, old friend!"

The voice came from above. A sing-song dripping with amusement.

He’d been watching this tantrum unfold with popcorn and a front-row seat.

Marcus didn’t turn.

But Pemberton did—eyes rolling upward despite the hand crushing his throat. And Harrison, still standing uselessly by the trap machine, fell backward onto his ass as his gaze found the sky.

A figure descended.