It was the middle of nowhere.
No street names. No houses. Just wind, dirt, and the kind of silence that presses down on the lungs like weight.
Nyx stood alone in a rusted shipping container buried beneath the bones of a collapsed barn. Her arms trembled as she struck a match against the metal wall. Once. Twice. Then—fire.
She lit the old oil lamp and let its glow spill across the steel walls. The light revealed the truth of her world: a cot, a cracked mirror, a crate full of death.
Knives. Guns. Wire. Vials of poison. A worn journal filled with names and blood.
She'd once buried it all—literally. Tools of her past life. A life she swore she would never return to. A life that killed everything she loved.
But peace had never belonged to her. And what they took could never be forgiven.
She wasn't Nyla Monroe anymore. That woman had died the day her child's scream was swallowed by gunfire.
Now there was only Nyx.
---
For five years, she had prepared.
Not just healed. Not just survived.
She'd become a shadow in their world. A ghost that watched, listened, and remembered.
She knew Don Severin Adrano's blood pressure, his medication, the mistress he visited on Fridays, and the housekeeper who covered for him.
She knew Dario Adrano still snorted cocaine before torturing his enemies — and that he was terrified of snakes.
She knew that Clara Adrano loved lilies and cheated on her husband with her stepson. That Luca Adrano paid someone to steal cars on his behalf and sold them clean.
She even knew the name of the dog that sniffed out the back entrance to her home the night they came for her family: Rocco.
Every name.
Every detail.
Every sin.
She remembered them all.
---
In the first year after the massacre, Nyx couldn't speak. Her tongue had forgotten how to form words.
In the second, she started whispering her daughter's name before bed just to hear it again. Zara. It hurt like swallowing glass.
By the third year, her whispers became a vow.
By the fourth, she began collecting tools.
By the fifth… she became death in the making.
---
The cracked mirror reflected her transformation.
Hollow cheeks. Dead eyes. Scars tracing her collarbone and lower abdomen — souvenirs from the night everything was taken.
She removed her shirt, stood bare in the cold, and looked at the torn lines across her stomach. The child that had grown inside her — gone. A baby she never got to name.
Her hand shook, but she didn't cry.
Tears had no use here.
She reached into the crate and pulled out the first photo — a faded printout of Severin Adrano, smiling in a garden, surrounded by grandchildren. She pinned it to the wall.
One by one, the faces joined him.
Dario. Luca. Clara. Enzo. Marco.
Even Rocco. The dog would be first.
Then came the smaller pictures: staff. Servants. Cooks. Cleaners. Guards. Drivers. Lawyers.
Anyone who had stood by and done nothing.
Anyone who had laughed when her world was burning.
She pinned the last one — a blurry image of a teenage boy wearing Adrano colors and dragging a bag of bloodied clothes.
She didn't know his name. But he had smiled in the surveillance footage as he dumped the bag in the sea.
He would not be spared.
---
Nyx sat cross-legged on the ground and opened her journal. She flipped past pages filled with shaky handwriting, diagrams, blueprints, street maps, and surveillance logs.
At the back, written in thick red ink, were three names.
Zara. Elias. Margot.
Her daughter. Her husband. Her mother-in-law.
Three lives. Three reasons.
She closed the book and kissed the cover. Then she spoke aloud, her voice low, rough, broken from disuse.
"I haven't forgotten.
I will never forget.
And I will never forgive."
---
She rose to her feet and began her daily ritual.
Five years hadn't dulled her instincts — they'd sharpened them.
She dropped into a crouch, then burst forward into a sprint, her feet pounding the dirt in rhythm with her heart.
Every morning: six miles barefoot.
Every night: an hour of knife drills.
Between: shooting practice, breaking locks, breathing techniques to lower her heart rate and mimic death.
She trained to become everything they feared. Everything they never expected her to survive long enough to become.
---
At noon, she returned and bathed in cold water collected from the rain. Then she dressed: black cargo pants, thermal shirt, boots. She tied her hair back into a tight braid, then pulled on gloves.
There would be no fingerprints.
Not now.
Not ever.
She opened a drawer and retrieved her first burner phone — a secure line linked to one of Clara Adrano's disgruntled ex-drivers.
He'd sell her info for a few thousand dollars and never ask questions. In six months, he'd overdose. Nyx had already predicted it.
For now, he was her window into the Adrano daily routine.
She dialed once.
"Clara's shopping again," the voice said. "She took the kid this time. Security's light. You thinking what I think you're thinking?"
Nyx said nothing. She ended the call.
Her mind was already moving.
---
It had to start with the dog.
The animal that barked when Zara opened the back door.
The signal that alerted the guards.
That small moment had cost everything.
He lives in their countryside estate now, she thought, staring at the pinned photo. Sleeping on white linen. Being fed prime meat. Wagging his tail for murderers.
She picked up a vial and tucked it into her coat pocket.
It wouldn't be messy.
Not yet.
---
As night fell, Nyx returned to the mirror.
She stared at herself. This time, she didn't flinch.
"I see you," she whispered.
"I know who I am now."
She touched the photo of Severin Adrano and pressed her thumb over his eyes.
"Tell your gods," she said softly, "that I'm coming."