Page 58 of The Madness Within

Chapter Twenty-Three

??Death’s Bargain

Dorian

I didn’t usually take clients on a whim, but tonight, something about the calls all day long had me feeling... restless.

Every hour, another request, another case. Most I didn’t bother with, just the usual assortment of the guilty, the corrupt, the ones with money to burn and looking for a lawyer desperate enough to defend them.

But a couple of them... they piqued my interest in a way that felt a little too dangerous, even for me.

I took the cases, of course. It wasn’t like I could resist. The thrill of their arrogance, the way they thought they were untouchable, it only made my instincts sharper, more lethal.And yet, by the time their names hit my desk, their fate was already etched in stone.

It would take me weeks to finish each job, but I’d trade time for blood if it meant serving justice on a silver platter.

Anthony Treadwell — The Velvet Wolf

Anthony Treadwell had a reputation. Philanthropist. Investor. Party guest at every black-tie event from Manhattan to Marseille.

But behind the gold tie clips and crocodile skin shoes… He was something else.

A shifter. A predator.

And not the kind the public romanticizes.

His crimes?

Eight missing boys. All wards of the state. All butchered in forest preserves, organs gnawed, torsos shredded.

He needed a lawyer when the bodies surfaced. The DA was circling, and his alibi had teeth marks. He hired me to clean it up. I did. Got him off. Walked him right out the front door with a press statement and a smirk.

Of course I did because monsters recognized their own.

I tracked him for three days. He stayed at a high-rise downtown, top-floor suite, thick, glass walls and automated privacy screens. He liked to watch the city bleed light while he drank brandy and relived his hunts.

Each night, I slipped in closer.

Day one, I left claw marks on the inside of his elevator. Day two, I replaced his favorite tie with one soaked in grave soil. Day three, he began to feel it. That itch. That pulse in his spine that told him something unnatural was hunting him back.

He didn’t know my name.

But he’d heard the rumors.

So when I finally approached him at the rooftop bar of the Mercier Hotel, dressed like any other devil in silk and shadow, he smiled too wide.

He didn’t flinch when I approached. Just leaned back in his chair, swirling his drink like this was tradition. Like we’d done this before.

“Thought you might finally show,” he said, voice smooth but tight at the edges. “Been feeling you breathing down my neck for days.”

I sat across from him, slow and deliberate. “I wanted you to feel it. The fear. The inevitability.”

His lips twitched, but it wasn’t a smile. “Is this the part where I beg?”

“No,” I said, folding my hands. “It’s the part where you realize it wouldn’t matter.”

His smile didn’t falter until I said his real name. Not the one on his passport, not the one printed in glossy magazines, but the one buried under bone and blood and fur.

“Vel-Rath.”

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