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While seeking revenge, dig two graves—one for yourself. —Douglas Horton
two graves, one gun - Taylor Swift
Her mother liked to say she’d gone fishing and somehow bagged a great white. But what her mother didn’t understand was that Marcella had baited her hook with her prize in mind. And she’d caught exactly what she’d wanted.
She's a Mastermind...
The fastest way to kill a flame was to smother it.
The slowest way is never loving them enough... high infidelity
Perhaps she was glass. But glass is only brittle until it breaks. Then it’s sharp.
As if any of it had been his idea, his doing. “You’re nothing without me,” she said, her words unsteady. “I made you, Marcus.” She heaved against the candelabra. It didn’t move. “I will unmake you.”
And then, between one compression and the next, the horrible static line of her pulse gave a lurch, and a stutter, and finally began to beep.
Five years ago, it would have been a simple matter of flipping that internal switch, killing power to the nerves, escaping any sensation. But now—there was no escape.
Dol greeted him by leaning heavily against his side, the dog’s massive black head nestling under his palm in silent welcome.
I love this dog
Victor was still here. Still alive. Revenge had been an all-consuming pursuit. Its absence left Victor uneasy, unsatisfied. What now?
Six years he’d known Mitch. Six days he’d known Sydney. Six hours he’d known Dominic.
So reputation coded
Victor had never been fond of doctors. Even back when he wanted to become one, it had never been in the interest of saving patients. He’d been drawn to the field of medicine for the knowledge, the authority, the control. He’d wanted to be the hand holding the scalpel, not the flesh parting beneath it.
He had craved a lot of things—power, revenge, control—but sex was never one of them. Even with Angie … he’d wanted her, of course, wanted her attention, her devotion, even her love. He’d cared about her, would have found ways to please her—and perhaps found his own pleasure in that—but for him, it had never been about sex.
When her fingers grazed his skin, she saw flashes of his life—not all of it, just the pieces that left a mark.
It was a trick of the mind—after all, June couldn’t feel, couldn’t smell, couldn’t taste. A borrowed body was just that—borrowed.
June—that wasn’t her real name either, of course. She’d buried that with the rest.
hmm
He’d been looking in the wrong place. Searching for ordinary solutions. But Victor wasn’t ordinary. What had happened to him wasn’t ordinary. An EO had broken his power. He needed an EO to fix it.
“You think I’m acting like Eli? You think I’m playing God? Fine, you play, Sydney. You decide, right now, who should live. Us, or them.”
“Maybe we are broken. But we put ourselves back together. We survived. That’s what makes us so powerful. And as for family—well, blood is always family, but family doesn’t always have to be blood.”
long story short I survived
where his face hung in holographic detail, right below the word EON. “Dominic Rusher,” he said with an easy smile, “reporting for duty.”
😱
Eli didn’t need coffee, just as he didn’t need to eat or sleep, but some habits were psychological.
And then he began to cut. Dissect—that was the word for it when the subject was dead. Vivisect—that was the word when they were still alive. But when they couldn’t die? What was the word for that? Eli’s faith had faltered in that room. He had found Hell in that room. And the only sign of God was that, no matter what Haverty did, Eli continued to survive. Whether he wanted to or not.
ONCE upon a time, when the marks on his back were still fresh, Eli told himself that he was growing wings. After all, his mother thought Eli was an angel, even if his father said he had the devil in him. Eli had never done anything to make the pastor think that, but the man claimed he could see the shadow in the boy’s eyes.
oh Eli 😭
Eli had been nine years old.
Left Eli alone, trapped in a house with Pastor John Cardale.
In that moment, Eli had felt peace. Like a small sliver of the world made right.
This explains so much
Every end is a new beginning.
"every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end"
Eli didn’t know what this place was—only knew that he wasn’t being strapped down, wasn’t being cut open, and that was an improvement.
“Then act normal,” she ordered, as if that were such a simple thing. “What does normal look like?” he asked,
Soon came another family, and another chance. Another opportunity to reinvent, to modify, to adjust aspects of that act.
what if, among the lost and the deranged, there were those who could be fixed, given purpose, made whole? What if death didn’t change a person’s nature, only amplified it?
In the interest of national security.” That last sentence, like an afterthought. As if the five wolves in dark suits weren’t circling in search of profit.
sounds familiar...
You’re not blessed, or divine, or burdened. You’re a science experiment. Maybe Victor was right. Maybe Eli was just as broken, just as damned, as every other EO. It was true, he hadn’t felt that presence the night he killed Victor. Hadn’t felt anything like peace.
Nobody knew that it was all an act, that none of it came naturally.
See? Psychopath. Poor kid though....
Eli was popular, well liked, but he had always been careful to keep a measure of distance. Too close, and someone might see the seams in his facade, the subtle but constant effort of pretending. Better to be friendly, without being friends.
damn
“Victor,” he said, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Vale.” Eli cracked a smile. “Name like that, you should be a superhero.”
Angie laughed, a small, affectionate sound. “You’re such a weirdo sometimes.” “Only sometimes?” asked Victor. “I’ll have to try harder.” Those blue eyes flicked to Eli. “Normal is overrated.” Eli tensed—a small, inward clenching that didn’t reach his face. Normal is overrated. Spoken like someone who didn’t have to work so hard at it. Who hadn’t needed normal to survive.
“You want me to hunt a hunter.” Stell raised a brow. “Is that going to be a problem?” “On the contrary,” said Eli. “I’ve been waiting for a challenge.”
The theory Eli had discovered was this: that sudden, extreme trauma could lead to a cataclysmic, even permanent shift in physical nature and ability. That through life-or-death trauma, people could be rewired, remade. It was pseudoscience at best. But pseudoscience wasn’t automatically wrong. It was simply a theory that hadn’t been adequately proven.
“It’s still only a theory,”
I just realized...they are hunting Victor! They just don't know it.
“Marcella isn’t burning things. She’s eroding them.
Once upon a time he had believed he survived because God willed it. That Eli was unbreakable because He had a purpose for him. These days, Eli didn’t know what he believed, but he still hoped, fervently, desperately, that there was a reason for it.
“What do I want?” echoed Haverty, as Nick shivered, shuddered, spasmed. “What all men of science want. To learn.”
In Dom’s head, Victor went around acting like the world was one big game of chess. Tapping people and saying, “You’re a pawn, you’re a knight, you’re a rook.”
Mastermind
“Before we begin,” continued Rios, “you’re about to sign a nondisclosure agreement. If you break it, you will not be arrested. You will not be sued.” She smiled grimly. “You will simply disappear.”
Her nails, freshly painted gold, rapped against the side of her cup as she studied the subway station across the street.
another thing that reminds me of reputation!
They say people grow on you, and maybe that was true, because every time Marcella saw Tony, she felt the need to scrub him off her skin.
How many men would she have to turn to dust before one took her seriously?
Ask nice. Play nice. Marcella was so fucking tired of nice.
Ladies always rise above, ladies know what people want, someone sweet and kind and fun, the lady simply had enough
