PROLOGUE
ENZO
THE RAIN POURS all around me. The wind whips against my face. And my yacht rocks, high then low, as the water creates hurricane size swells.
But I grip the railing unmoving—nothing can push me anymore.
Not the sea.
Not the wind.
And sure as hell not the rain.
Because today, I lost everything, and no act of nature is going to be able to move me—I need revenge, for everything. For every loss, I need an equal act of vengeance. I need a loss for a loss.
But even that’s not enough to bring back what I lost. Because I lost everything…
It started with my mother, and then continued, wiping out and affecting everyone I ever loved. I knew I shouldn’t have let myself fall in love. I knew love would be the death of me, but I didn’t realize it would also be the death of life as I knew it.
They ended me, so I will end them.
They think they will be ready for me. They will have their armies ready. Their weapons aimed at me. While I’m just one single man. I shouldn’t be able to take down their entire army. I shouldn’t be able to win.
But they can’t kill a ghost. I’ve turned into nothing but a whisper of a shadow in the night. Barely a memory of the man I once was. There is nothing more they can take from me. And physical pain doesn’t touch me, not anymore, not after what they did.
Mother.
Zeke.
Langston.
Liesel.
Kai.
All the people I loved—gone.
Why couldn’t they take me instead?
My death should have been enough. It should have been enough to prevent all the people I loved from dying.
But they wanted me alive. They wanted me to live. They aren’t finished with me yet.
But they will pay—for every single death. They kept the wrong person alive. If they had let Kai live, she might have been able to let my death go. She may have let them live.
I laugh. If they had killed me instead of Kai, she would have taken her time torturing every single one of them. It would have been worse off for them.
I don’t plan on slowly torturing them, I plan on killing them all at once. Because I can’t live with this pain. I need them gone. I need to get rid of this enormous ache in my chest, this emptiness in my belly, this loss of myself. This loss of love.
The wind lashes through me again, trying to thwart my plans.
My eyes turn red, and my heart stone—nothing will stop me now. Not until I wipe out every person who took my love from me.
I am unstoppable.
My heart has shattered. It no longer resides in my chest; it is scattered throughout my body embedded into every muscle, vein, and bone until all that is left of me is my heart. It encompasses everything I am. My bleeding heart is all that is left of me. I need to stop the bleeding. And the only way to do that is to kill them—all of them.
Blood for blood.
Death for death.
It’s the only way.
And then I can let go. Then I can let the world consume me.
Somehow the wind picks up. Somehow the ship rocks harder. Somehow the rain pelts my face harder. And I don’t know if mother nature is on my side, agreeing with my plan or trying to stop me. It makes no difference, because nothing can stop me, not anymore.
My body shudders, though, and the tears finally fall—hard, and I realize the sky is crying with me. Because my life isn’t fair. My life is brutal. My life is gone. And I’ve had enough.
How do I live without everything that matters? The world may have thought by taking everything I loved it would turn me into the ruthless leader my father tried to develop. Instead, all that is left the empty cavity in my chest where my heart once resided.