INFAMOUS: A Dark Serial Killer Romance, page 13
Haha girlfriend, the joke’s on you. What are the chances that you would meet not one, but two serial killers in your lifetime?
I brush off my internal voice and cross my arms. “Your aunt, huh?”
He shrugs, the corner of his mouth curving. “What can I say? I’m a family man.”
“You look tired,” he says softly, studying me the way surgeons study wounds.
I laugh, brittle. “You should see the others.”
His smile turns real. “Coffee?”
The word hits like oxygen. I shouldn’t. But I nod anyway. “There’s a place down the street, if you don’t mind leaving the hospital?”
We walk out together, the hospital lights giving way to the hum of the city. The café is small, warm, the kind of place that offers peace in a city bustling with noise. When he holds the door open, our hands brush. It’s nothing, yet it’s everything.
I’m halfway through ordering when a familiar voice cuts through the air.
“So this is why you won’t talk to me, huh?”
Michael.
My blood runs cold. He’s standing at the doorway, making a fool of himself as he raises his voice. “Who’s the guy, Nadia? Another one of your projects?”
I start to speak, but Jude steps between us and his presence shifts the room. “Leave. If you know what’s good for you, turn around and walk away.”
Michael lets out a sharp, high-pitched laugh - one that’s more like disbelief than humor. “Back off, hero.”
It happens fast. Michael stalks in and grabs for my arm. Jude catches his wrist before I can react. His movement is clean, silent, controlled. Michael jerks back, hissing.
“Leave,” Jude says quietly.
This time it’s enough. Michael stumbles out, throwing curses over his shoulder that no one listens to. The café hums again, pretending nothing happened.
My hands shake. Jude notices but doesn’t call me on it. He just takes off his jacket and rolls his sleeves up, like violence is something that can be folded away neatly.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “You don’t owe me an apology.” His voice drops lower. “He shouldn’t have touched you.”
Something in my chest breaks loose. The kindness in his tone is worse than my anger at Michael, and it undoes me.
“You okay?” he asks, as we take our seats.
“I will be,” I lie.
He studies me, quiet, unreadable, and yet everything in him feels achingly familiar.
Outside, the city keeps moving. Inside, it’s just us—two people sitting too close, pretending this is nothing. But when he looks at me again, I know it could be something.
33
LUCIAN
Nadia sits across from me, her coat hanging off the back of the chair, fingers curled around a cup that steams in the soft café light. She looks tired—beautiful in that fragile, unguarded way that pulls something sharp in my chest.
I stir my coffee once. Twice. Watching her from under the quiet weight of thought. The encounter with her ex still lingers on her skin, like a bruise that hasn’t yet faded. Her voice is softer now, sadder, her smile thin and careful, as if it might crack if she lets it stretch too far.
I lean back. “Your ex,” I say finally. “He doesn’t seem like the type to take no for an answer.”
Her lips twitch into something that isn’t quite a smile. “He’s… persistent,” she says. “One of those people who think obsession is just another word for love.”
I tilt my head. “Why do you think people do that? Hold on when they should let go?”
She looks at me for a long moment, eyes distant, violet ringed in fatigue. Then she shrugs, a slow exhale slipping past her lips. “Maybe it’s not about love at all. Maybe it’s about control. Some people can’t stand the idea of being forgotten.”
I smile at that. “Control,” I echo, tasting the familiar word like it’s an elixir. “Yeah. That makes sense.”
The corner of her mouth lifts a little. “What about you?” she asks. “What do you do, Jude Mercer?”
For a second, I let the truth bloom and die on my tongue. Then I say it anyway, because I want to hear her laugh. “I’m a serial killer, remember?”
She blinks, and then she laughs. A real laugh, the kind that comes from somewhere deep, belly and throat and history all tangled together. It’s the same sound I used to live for, the sound that made the rest of the world feel like background noise. It hits me so hard my fingers tighten on the cup.
When her laughter fades, she wipes at her eyes, smiling for the first time in days. “You’re ridiculous,” she says.
“Maybe.” I grin, but there’s an ache underneath it. You used to call Lucian ridiculous, too.
For a moment, the world feels dangerously close to perfect. The light, the coffee, the woman who doesn’t know she’s sitting across from her own history.
I study her quietly, then ask, “What’s bothering you today? Other than the idiot who can’t leave you alone?”
Her shoulders slump a little. “My boss,” she says, voice low. “He wants me to go to dinner with one of the hospital benefactors. It’s not a request, apparently.”
Her boss is strong-arming her into dinner with someone she clearly doesn’t want to see. She says it like it’s nothing, but I catch the flicker in her voice, the way her fingers tighten around the cup.
I force myself to stay still, to breathe past the heat crawling up my throat. My jaw tightens anyway, a reflex I can’t hide. The thought of her sitting across from another man, smiling out of politeness, pretending to be comfortable, is enough to make my hands itch.
“There was a lawsuit against the hospital last year. We took a pretty big hit,” she continues, staring into her cup. “He seems to think a public display with someone influential will ‘reflect well’ on the hospital.”
She doesn’t have to say it. I can hear the exhaustion in her tone, the resignation of someone who’s been cornered before.
“You shouldn’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” I say, sharper than intended.
She looks up, eyes meeting mine. There’s something searching in them, something that makes it hard to breathe. “It’s not that easy.”
“It’s not,” I admit. “But sometimes the hardest thing in the world is the only right thing to do. The only thing that makes sense.”
Her gaze lingers on me for a heartbeat too long. Then she sighs, a soft, defeated sound. “You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”
I look at her, at the faint bruise under her eye where sleep should live, at the small scar on her wrist that no one else notices. “Maybe I do,” I say quietly.
The café hums around us, soft and warm. Outside, the rain starts to fall. It’s light at first, then heavier, the sound like static against the windows. Nadia turns her head toward the window and stares at the storm, lost somewhere far away.
I watch her reflection in the glass and all I can think is, If anyone touches you, I’ll end the world.
But all I say is, “You want another coffee?”
She smiles, small and tired, defeated. “Sure,” she says.
I rise, her laugh still echoing in my head, and I know I’d kill to hear that sound again.
34
NADIA
The café is nearly empty now, the hum of conversation thinning to a low murmur beneath the gentle scrape of spoons against porcelain. The lights have dimmed a little since we arrived, softened to a warm, amber hue that makes everything feel more intimate than it should. My cup sits between my hands, half-empty, the last swirl of coffee gone cold - but I’m not ready to leave yet.
Jude sits across from me, his posture relaxed, one long leg crossed over the other. There’s an ease to him, a quiet confidence that fills the space without demanding it. He’s watching me, not in that predatory way men sometimes do, but with a kind of curious patience - like he’s waiting for me to finish untangling my own thoughts before I speak them aloud.
And God, I’ve been forthcoming tonight. Too forthcoming.
I’ve told him things I haven’t said out loud in years. About my work, my frustration, the exhaustion that clings to my bones. About the way the system grinds good people down until they start to look like the monsters they swore to fight. He listens without interrupting, without pity, and that somehow makes it worse. It’s been so long since someone just listened.
I can’t remember the last time it was this easy to talk to a man.
No. That’s a lie.
I remember exactly when it was.
Lucian.
Everything always leads back to him, like gravity doesn’t apply to anyone else. Every time I let my guard down, every time I laugh, every time I feel even a flicker of something that might be happiness, my thoughts circle back to Lucian Cross.
No one’s ever measured up, because no one ever could.
And yet, sitting here now, across from Jude, I can’t help but feel that same dangerous pull. It’s familiar yet wrong all at once.
He leans back in his chair, the fabric of his shirt stretching across his chest. His sleeves are rolled to the elbow, forearms resting casually on the table, veins running like quiet rivers beneath his skin. His hands are steady, capable, deceptively gentle and they’re wrapped around his cup.
Lucian’s hands were like that.
My throat tightens. I force myself to look away, but it’s too late; the resemblance has taken root.
Jude is bigger than Lucian ever was. He’s broader, fuller, but the shape of him, the way he moves, the small, unconscious gestures all strike something deep inside me. He looks different, but something about him feels deceptively familiar. A shadow I’ve already loved and lost.
I don’t understand it. I shouldn’t feel drawn to a stranger. But I do. And it terrifies me.
I press my palm to my cup to ground myself. The ceramic is cool now, but his gaze is still warm on my face. I meet it and try to smile. “This has been… nice,” I say softly, surprised by the truth in it. “I didn’t realize how much time has passed.”
He shoots me a small, crooked smile that sends a pulse through me. “You know what they say about time flying when you’re having a good time...”
I chuckle, shaking my head. “You know, I think I’m actually going to take your advice.”
“About what?”
“The dinner.” I take a breath. “I’m going to decline the senator’s invitation. I’ll tell my boss tomorrow.”
His brows lift. “Even if it gets you fired?”
I shrug, trying to sound braver than I feel. “Is that the worst my boss can do to me? There are plenty of other hospitals. I shouldn’t have to compromise on my ethics.”
He studies me for a long moment. There’s something in his eyes I can’t place. It feels a lot like admiration.
“That’s a rare kind of courage, Nadia.”
“It’s not courage,” I say, half-smiling. “It’s exhaustion. There’s a difference.”
He laughs under his breath, and the sound ripples through the space between us. I glance at his mouth, at the faint scar on his jaw that catches the light, and my chest constricts. That scar looks… old. Familiar. I feel a strange tug in my memory, but I can’t place it.
“You know,” I say quietly, “you have this way of making things sound simple. Like the world isn’t as complicated as it actually is.”
“Maybe it isn’t,” he murmurs.
“Then you’ve never worked in a hospital,” I tease, and he grins - just enough to make me forget, for a heartbeat, that something about him doesn’t add up.
The clock on the wall ticks softly. Outside, rain whispers against the windows. I think about how close he feels even across the table, how dangerous it is to feel this kind of comfort with someone I barely know.
But I don’t stop. I don’t pull away. Because for the first time in years, the ghosts in my chest are quiet.
And the man sitting across from me - this stranger with kind eyes and a familiar smile - feels like the only person in the world who might understand what it’s like to live haunted.
35
LUCIAN
We’re all serial killers in our own quiet ways.
People like to put us in boxes. Mafia. Monster. Savior, depending on who’s telling the story and which side of the river they sleep on. The truth is uglier and simpler. We are all serial killers in the way we repeat ourselves - repeating sins, repeating loyalties, repeating the violence we claim to hate in everyone else.
Scar kills with his rage and reputation; Mason kills with inevitability and a look that makes men obey; Lucky kills with risk and a grin that dares the world to answer him. Me? I kill the part of me that remembers mercy. Bit by bit, I carve away softness until what’s left is efficient, useful, terrifying.
These three men now sit at the table in front of me. Scar. Mason. Lucky. Different sins, same ghosts.
I drop the folder on the table. It hits with a soft, final slap. It’s full of gala photos, hospital memos, patient logs, shipping manifests. Paper that already smells like rot before you read a single line.
“This,” I say, voice flat, “is what’s eating the city from the inside.”
Scar’s eyes are brass, all hard angles. “Start talking.”
I tap the top sheet. “Victor Kellerman. Head of trauma at St. Andrew’s. On paper he’s a saint in a suit - board-certified, donor-chair at every charity gala. Off the record he runs the hospital’s organ traffic hub.”
Silence presses us. Even the ventilation seems too loud as it hisses cold air into the room.
“How certain are you?” Lucky asks, like certainty is currency.
“Short of catching him with a scalpel in his hand, every road points to him. He’s selling body parts quietly, harvesting the expendable: terminal cases, overdoses, the unclaimed. He picked the wrong market with your man Ezio.” I watch their faces. Reactions are the same as ever - hairline fractures.
“Ezio had no blood kin,” Lucky says.
“What he didn’t count on was Ezio’s found family. He didn’t know that he answered to the Gattis.”
Mason’s voice is low, clinical. “How does he move them?”
“Signed cause-of-death reports, third-party clinics, freight runs. Organs hit brokers masked as research shipments, then vanish on manifests tied to export runs.” I slide a printout across. “Procurement receipts, employee rosters, shipping manifests. The kind of receipts that read like somebody built a meat market inside a hospital and left invoices on every slab.”
Scar goes still. Mason’s mouth thins. Lucky swears under his breath.
“I dug through hospital systems,” I say. “Kellerman signed off on at least half a dozen deaths where nothing obvious was wrong. Not mercy killings. Murder. And there’s a trail: clinic fronts, freight lines, shell companies laundering payments. Bank transfers dressed up as medical grants. Someone up top signs the checks; Kellerman is the hand in the theater.”
Scar slaps the tabletop hard enough to make the whiskey tremble. The glass tilts but doesn’t fall. “So he’s the butcher, not the puppetmaster.”
“Exactly.” I push a gala photo of Kellerman across the wood - clinical lights reflected in his gold watch, smile calibrated for donors. “He schedules ‘auto-donations,’ skips next-of-kin searches, routes tissue through clinics that don’t exist on any registry. I flagged account numbers, shell names, a call log tying a clinic to a warehouse in the port district.”
“How close are you to the top?” Mason asks, ash falling from his cigarette.
“Nowhere near,” I tell him. “He covers his tracks like a surgeon sutures a corpse. Squeaky clean.”
Scar studies the manifests, then looks up with the patient ferocity of an animal considering his next hunt. “How deep does this run?”
I bite my lip. There’s a part of this I don’t want to say out loud — because saying it is a promise I can’t always keep. “Deep. Kellerman has privileges at Mercy General. We can’t rule out a second market there. He thinks he’s invisible because arrogance smells like immunity. But we can surely change that.”
“I need names.” Scar’s voice is a flat stone.
“You’ve got routes,” I say. “Clinic fronts, manifests, timestamps. I traced transfers to a broker using legitimate-sounding companies. There’s a customs code tied to a warehouse in the port. Hit the logistics node and the chain peels back. It’ll be messy and loud, but it’ll make associates panic - and panicking people talk.”
Mason snuffs his cigarette with slow, calm hands. “We can’t have public blood. Not after the docks raid. That drew eyes we don’t want.”
“Quiet and surgical,” Scar says, watching me. “That’s our kind of clean.”
“There will be fallout,” I warn. “This runs into hospitals, shipping, money laundering. It won’t die quietly.”
“We’ve done quiet before,” Lucky says. “We can do it again. We hit the clinic, take the warehouse, then eliminate the couriers. Cripple the route. Make Kellerman the example that scares copycats. Then we watch who turns up to his funeral.”
Scar is practical: “He’s a high-profile surgeon. He’ll be missed.”
Mason meets my eyes and says the thing we all know but never say in the light: “Then we put everything out there. If we’re going to erase him, we make the world read why. Investigation closed.”
Scar’s hand flattens on the manifest. He’s already moving through supply chains in his head. “Assemble a team. Jayson and Lucky take logistics. Mason, you and Kanyan handle hits inside the network. Jude, you stay on the hospital. Watch Kellerman. Do it quietly. Give us a permanent solution to dismantle this organisation.”
My stomach tightens on the work ahead as I look at them. It won’t be clean. It’ll be necessary and ugly and it will leave us all smelling of blood.
