Chapter 20: Ballad of Brokenness.

Violet Virgilson.

The safehouse was too quiet.

The kind of quiet that doesn’t soothe—it suffocates.

Every tick of the old clock on the wall thudded in my ears like a countdown. Countdown to what? To Daigo’s return? To Marco’s next betrayal? To Vincent finally snapping and burning the whole damn city to ash?

The silence pressed in, dragging Marco’s smirk back into my mind. That smile—the kind that says, I’ve already won.

And maybe he ...