Page 70 of Psycho Obsession
The Choir is back, and this time, we aren’t singing for mercy.
We’re singing for blood.
—Hallow
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
HALLOW
The air in the submersible is thick, tasting of expensive leather, and the lingering copper tang of the blood still drying on my skin. It’s a pressurised tomb, vibrating with the low, rhythmic hum of engines that sound like a heartbeat.
I’m sitting on a steel bench, wrapped in a black tactical blanket that feels like sandpaper against my raw, overstimulated nerves. Jex is beside me, his shoulder a solid, burning heat against mine. He’s finally dressed in the gear Ryker threw at us—all matte black and sharp edges—but his eyes are still fixed on me with that same starving, protective intensity.
And across from us, strapped into a high-tech medical chair, is the man who gave me life just so he could sell it.
He’s still awake. Ryker made sure of that. The silver-masked bastard is leaning over the “Father of the City,”his fingers moving with a terrifying, surgical grace as he removes the metal retractors from the old man’s eyes.
“There,” Ryker purrs, his voice echoing in the small cabin. “Now you can blink, you pathetic fuck. Don’t want your vision getting blurry. You need to see every second of what’s coming.”
Dad—I refuse to use his name, refuse to give him the dignity of an identity beyond the role he failed—lets out a wet, rattling gasp. His eyelids flutter, red-rimmed and raw, as he stares at the three of us. The terror in his gaze is the only thing keeping me warm.
“You…” he wheezes, his voice a broken crawl. “You’re… all… monsters…”
“We’re your monsters,” I snap, the words coming out as a jagged, crystalline hiss. I stand up, the blanket sliding off my shoulders, leaving me in nothing but the black tactical vest Jex cinched over my bare chest. I walk toward the chair, my bare feet silent on the grated floor. “You spent years pruning us. You cut away the soft parts, the weak parts, the parts that loved you. Did you think we’d just grow back into something pretty for your campaign posters?”
I lean down, my face inches from his. I can smell the salt-water and the bile on his breath.
“You’re a fucking corpse, Dad. The world thinks you’re at the bottom of the harbour. You have no office. No guards. No ‘Choir’ to hide behind.” I reach out and grab his chin, my nails digging into the sagging skin of his jaw. “You’re just a witness now. And I’m going to make sure you live a very, very long time to see exactly how much fun we can have in the dark.”
Ryker laughs, a dry, melodic sound that makes thehair on my arms stand up. He walks over to a console and flicks a switch. A wall of monitors flickers to life, showing grainy, thermal feeds of the surface.
“Look at the screen, Father,” Ryker commands. “The rescue teams are searching for your body. The city is in mourning. They’re calling you a hero who died trying to save his ‘distraught’ daughter. It’s a beautiful lie. Almost as beautiful as the ones you used to tell me before you sent me into the furnace.”
Jex stands up then, his presence filling the cramped space like a physical weight. He walks over to me, his hand settling on the back of my neck, his thumb tracing the line where the straps bruised me.
“He’s too quiet, Ryker,” Jex growls, his eyes locked on the old man’s trembling lips. “I think he needs to hear the music again.”
Jex leans over and grabs the medical shears from the tray. He doesn’t look at the old man’s face. He looks at me.
“He took your voice for ten years, Hallow,” Jex rasps, his eyes blown out with that dark, kinetic heat. “Tell me which part of him we should take first.”
I look at the man who sold me. I look at the man who burned. I look at the man who claimed me.
And for the first time, I don’t feel like a victim. I feel like the Architect.
“Start with his tongue,” I whisper, a slow, predatory smile spreading across my face. “He’s lied enough for one lifetime.”
Jex doesn’t hesitate. He moves with the mechanical precision of a man who has already rehearsed this butchery in his sleep. He grabs the heavy surgicalforceps, the cold steel clinking against the tray, and shoves his knee into the old man’s chest to pin him against the chair.
“Open up, Dad,” Jex growls, the sound vibrating in the pressurised cabin. “Let’s see that silver tongue one last time.”
The old man’s eyes go wide, a frantic, rolling white as he thrashes against the leather restraints. A muffled, guttural scream dies in his throat as Jex’s fingers dig into his jaw, forcing his mouth open with a sickening crack of bone against cartilage.
I lean in closer, my breath hitching, my pussy throbbing in time with the panic radiating off the man who ruined me. The smell is intoxicating—sweat, terror, and the metallic tang of the abyss.
“Hold him, Ryker,” I whisper.
