Reiss had a neck like a roast and eyes like grease.
He ran the brothel before Mirelle took it over — not with charm, but with a belt and a lockbox full of secrets.
He liked the young ones. Called them lambs.
Broke them down, then sold them off.
Mirelle didn't forget.
The place was quiet when she came in — no music, no men, just the air thick with dust and memory.
She found him in the back, drinking tea with a shaking hand.
"I heard you were dead," he muttered.
She smiled. "Wishful thinking?"
He stood. "Look, I only did what I was told. Leon gave the orders. I was just—"
She pulled a chair out, sat down across from him like they were old friends.
"You know the difference between you and me, Reiss?"
He swallowed. "What?"
"I remember faces. You forget names."
She slid a folder onto the table. Inside: photos. Girls. Scarred. Missing teeth. Some still missing. One was only nine.
He stared.
"I thought they were sold clean," he whispered. "I didn't know—"
She stood and backhanded him so hard his lip split open.
"Don't lie," she hissed. "You always knew. You just didn't care."
She didn't kill him. Not yet.
She dragged him downstairs, into the cellar beneath the brothel — the place where girls used to be locked up when they disobeyed.
It was cold. Damp. The walls had claw marks.
She chained him to the same radiator he once used to "discipline" them.
Then, she brought the girls.
The survivors.
One by one, they stepped into the room.
Some shook. One laughed bitterly. Another spat on him. One cried, then whispered something in his ear before turning away.
Mirelle said nothing. She let them choose.
A bat. A blade. A scar.
No one killed him — but no one left him whole, either.
When it was done, she walked in.
He looked up at her, broken, sobbing.
"You're a demon," he croaked.
She crouched beside him. Smiled sweetly.
"No. I'm what's left when your kind runs out of excuses."
She left him alive. Blind in one eye. Crippled. Speech gone.
She renamed the brothel: "Hollow House." A place of healing. No men allowed without permission. No women working without choice.
And Reiss?
He lived in the cellar. A ghost.
A warning.