INFAMOUS: A Dark Serial Killer Romance, page 24
It belongs to him.
To the man in the shadows who watches like he owns the air I breathe. His stillness is a challenge, a command. Every breath I take, every slow turn of my hips feels like an offering to that unseen hunger between us.
The lights blur. The world narrows. All I can hear is the blood in my ears and the whisper of fabric sliding against skin. My heart doesn’t care about the music - it’s moving to something older, darker, more dangerous.
A language written in the space between us.
I slide a hand down my throat, over my chest, the movement almost reverent. The air shivers with tension. It’s not just performance anymore; it’s confession - the kind you make with your body when words don’t work. I move closer to the edge of the stage, bridging the gap between us.
The spotlight sweeps the audience again. Empty chairs. Shadows. Then his outline sharpens - a dark figure, elbows on knees, eyes fixed on me like I’m the only thing keeping him alive.
Lucian. Jude. Both. Neither.
I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. They merge in the light - one heart, two ghosts, the past and present colliding in the fever dream of my mind.
The music fades, but the rhythm doesn’t stop. It’s inside me now, low and steady. I take one more step forward, bare feet against the wood, breath catching in my throat.
“Who are you?” I whisper.
No answer. Just the echo of my voice across the empty theatre and the faint rise of a man’s shadow - standing now, walking toward me, slow and certain.
The light flickers.
And for a heartbeat, I think I see both faces - Lucian’s smirk, Jude’s grief - layered perfectly over each other.
I don’t know which one I want to reach for.
I only know I want him.
The spotlight flares. The music drops.
And the dream breaks open.
61
LUCIAN
She’s here.
I can feel it with every part of me.
People talk about twin flames like it’s some cosmic pull. But this? This is a burn that starts under my ribs and spreads until breathing feels wrong. This is the kind of tether that drags you through hell to find the person on the other side.
There are no cars in the driveway when we reach the ranch. But that doesn’t mean it’s empty.
The whole place sits in darkness, the kind that eats at the edges of your vision. A few overhead beams cut through the black, slicing the yard into strips of silver and shadow. It’s too still. Too quiet.
The convoy fans out like a deck of cards being laid on the table. Engines cut. Doors open in near silence. Everyone moves without needing to be told, each man a piece of a well-oiled machine built by blood and war. But my head isn’t in the plan. It’s somewhere else.
In the air. In the faint trace of something I can’t mistake. The smell of her. The ghost of her breath caught in the wind. I close my eyes for half a second, and I can almost hear it - that soft, uneven rhythm that could only belong to Nadia.
She’s here.
I can feel it in my bones.
We hit the front door hard. The lock gives with a crack, splinters skidding across the porch. The house exhales dust and silence as we move in.
Scar signals left, Mason right, Jayson behind me - every step rehearsed, every breath timed. The air is thick with the smell of copper and something sharper, a chemical sting that crawls up the back of my throat.
The first hallway is empty. Nothing but stale air and a single chair tipped on its side. We clear each room as we go - a kitchen, stripped bare; a dining space with plates still on the table, dust thick enough it will need to be scraped off. The house looks like it hasn’t be lived in for years.
We move deeper. The second hallway stretches out before us, narrow and endless. The floor groans under our boots, each step echoing too loud in the empty space.
The smell hits harder here - antiseptic and copper, sharp enough to sting the back of my throat. It clings to the walls, to the ceiling, to my skin. Two gurneys sit abandoned along the far side, sheets stiff with old stains - dark, rusted patches that can only be blood.
This isn’t a home. It’s a place built for cutting. For taking things apart. A cold certainty sinks into me. We’re in the right place. My pulse hammers in my throat, heavy and uneven. Fear curls tight in my gut, choking out every rational thought. What have they done to her?
“Son of a bitch…” Scar mutters.
Mason lifts a hand - a signal to stop. We listen.
There it is. A hum. Faint. Electrical. Coming from below.
Scar motions toward the far end of the hall, where a cupboard sits at an odd angle - too deliberate to be careless. Someone moved it, recently, to hide what’s behind.
Jayson shoves it aside, the scrape of wood slicing through the silence. A door waits there, narrow and unmarked. When we pull it open, a set of stairs yawns beneath us, disappearing into a pit of black.
There are no windows and no light. Just the sound of our breathing and the low, steady hum of machinery drifting up from below - the heartbeat of something living underground.
I go first.
The steps groan under my weight, dust rising in lazy clouds around my boots. The air gets colder the deeper we go. It smells like bleach and blood. My hand tightens around my gun. Each heartbeat feels like it’s dragging me closer to something I’m not ready to see.
The last step gives way to concrete. A corridor stretches out ahead - narrow, low-ceilinged, walls streaked with old water stains. A single light flickers at the far end, a weak pulse in the dark.
Then we hear it.
A sound - soft, unsteady. Some sort of a machine.
I follow the sound to a half-open door, push it wider with the barrel of my gun. The hinges moan, loud in the silence.
And then - there she is.
Nadia.
Strapped to a gurney, pale as marble, her arm punctured and bruised, tubes running from her veins to machines that hum like they’re keeping her tethered to this world by force. Her chest rises in shallow bursts. Her lips move, forming something that might be my name.
The sight knocks the air out of me. The world narrows. My throat closes.
She’s here.
And she’s still breathing.
Kellerman’s there too, back turned, needle in hand.
He doesn’t hear me at first. He’s humming to himself, a low, disgusting tune, until I press the barrel of my gun to the base of his skull.
He freezes.
“Step away,” I growl. “Now.”
He tries to talk. I don’t let him. The first blow takes him in the ribs. The second cracks his jaw. When he hits the ground, I want to keep going - to drag him up and make him feel every second of what she felt. But Nadia’s sound stops me.
A soft, delirious laugh.
I turn.
She’s staring up at the ceiling, dazed, her fingers twitching against the restraints. “Lucian…” she whispers, voice slurred. “You came…”
It’s like being punched and kissed at the same time. I holster the gun and tear at the straps. “Yeah,” I say, my voice rough. “Yeah, I did.”
Her gaze unfocuses. “Lucian?” she murmurs, and for a second - I swear - she looks right through me, into someone else.
But then she blinks again, and her eyes clear just enough to find me. “No,” she whispers. “You’re Jude.”
“I’m here, sweetheart.” I brush the hair off her face, blood and sweat slick against my hands. “You’re okay now. I’ve got you.”
She shakes her head, slow, dreamlike. “You feel like him. Same fire. Same ache,” Nadia breathes, as she falls into my arms.
My chest caves in around her words. I don’t know what to say. All I can do is hold her.
Kellerman groans on the floor, but Scar’s already there - the click of his gun loud, decisive. “Stay down, or I put you down,” he says, his voice like gravel, before he orders Jayson to tie him up.
I scoop Nadia up, careful but quick. She’s weightless, fragile, whispering nonsense against my chest. She smells like blood and morphine, and still so undeniably Nadia.
As I carry her out of the room, she murmurs one last thing, voice thin and trembling:
“You found me.”
“I will always find you,” I whisper back.
And I swear, in that moment, as thunder breaks outside and the night splits wide open - I feel it.
That tether. That invisible, unbreakable bond between us.
She’s not just the woman I love.
She’s the pulse I’ve been chasing my whole life.
62
LUCIAN
She’s light in my arms. Too light.
I can feel the heat bleeding out of her with every step I take up those narrow basement stairs. Her head rests against my shoulder, her breath a thin, trembling thing that barely brushes my neck. I keep whispering to her - Nadia, come on, stay with me, sweetheart, just breathe for me - but I don’t know if she hears me.
The walls blur. The smell of my grief mixes with the salt of my sweat as I push through the door at the top. The house feels tighter now, smaller, like it’s folding in around us. Every echo, every creak, every shadow screams that I’m too late.
Scar’s voice cracks through the radio somewhere behind me, ordering Mason to clear the perimeter. Jayson’s shouting for the medic to move faster. None of it matters. My whole world has narrowed to the small, limp body in my arms.
Her skin is ice against mine by the time we reach the top of the stairs. I take one step out, and then she just - stops.
No sound. No breath. No heartbeat against my chest.
Her body goes limp in my arms, heavy in that awful, final way. For a heartbeat, I tell myself she’s just unconscious. That it’s the drugs, the blood loss - anything but this. I shake her once, twice, gentle at first, then harder as panic tears through me like shrapnel.
“Nadia.” Her name breaks out of me, rough, desperate. I pull her closer, fingers digging into her back like I can hold her spirit in place through sheer force. “Don’t you fucking do this,” I whisper against her temple, my voice splintering. “You hear me, Nadia? You don’t get to leave me. Not like this.”
She doesn’t answer.
“Nadia!”
Nothing.
The sound that comes out of me isn’t human. It rips up from somewhere deep and ugly - a wounded, breaking thing that doesn’t care who hears it, who feels it. I drop to my knees, clutching her to my chest. My heart’s hammering so hard it hurts, like it’s trying to beat for the both of us.
“Mason!” I roar, my voice cracking, raw and inhuman. The room erupts with motion as the Gatti med team floods in like a blur of white and black. They pull me back, and I fight them like an animal until Mason himself grabs me, slamming a hand against my chest.
“Lucian. Let them work.”
I don’t want to let go. I can’t. The second I put her down, it feels like I’m handing her over to death itself.
“She’s not gone,” I say, even as my hands shake. “She’s not - she’s just-”
The medics are already pressing pads to her chest, the machine whining to life.
I’m still kneeling on the ground, hands smeared with her blood, watching the medic start compressions. One, two, three - her body jerks under the force, her hair falling across her face, her lips parted slightly like she’s about to speak.
“Come on, sweetheart,” I choke out. “Don’t do this to me.”
The medic shouts, “Clear!” and her body jumps under the shock.
Once. Twice. No response.
I can feel something inside me splinter - clean, final.
Jayson’s hand lands on my shoulder, grounding, but I shrug it off. I don’t want comfort. I want her.
“Again!” the medic yells. Another shock. Her body arches, then falls still, and the medic falls back on the balls of his feet.
And then I’m gone.
The rage comes first. It’s pure and colorless, a heat that burns everything else out of me. I stand, pacing away from the team because if I stay too close, I’ll start breaking things - people - everything and anything. My fists slam against the wall, hard enough to crack plaster. Once. Twice. Again.
Scar calls my name, sharp. “Jude - ”
“Don’t,” I snarl, voice shredded raw. “Don’t fucking tell me she’s gone.”
But she is.
I know it the way you know a storm before it hits - the air is too still, the sound too quiet. I turn back, and she’s lying there on the ground, small and still, the defibrillator whining flat.
I drop beside her again, fingers tracing the curve of her cheek, wiping blood and dirt away like it matters. Her skin is cooling fast. My voice breaks apart when I whisper, “You were supposed to be safe with me. I was supposed to protect you.”
And that’s the truth that guts me - not the loss, not the blood, but the failure. The unbearable weight of it pressing down until I can barely breathe.
I press my forehead to hers, whispering her name over and over, as if I can call her back through sheer will. Around us, the world goes on, but I don’t hear any of it.
It’s just me and her.
And the silence that follows when the person you’d die for stops breathing.
Then, faint - a sound. A hitch. A puff that’s barely a breath.
“Wait,” the doctor says, voice tight.
I lift my head.
The medic leans forward, pressing fingers to her neck, then his eyes snap wide. “She’s got a pulse!”
For a moment, the world stops again - not from grief this time, but from the impossible light flickering in the dark.
I grab her hand, hold it against my chest. “That’s it,” I whisper, every word breaking. “Stay with me, Nadia. Stay the fuck with me.”
And as she’s lifted onto a gurney and wheeled into the makeshift hospital room the med team has set up, I swear I feel it - the faintest squeeze of her fingers against mine.
It’s enough to pull me back from the edge.
Enough to make me believe again.
“She’s got a deep abdominal wound,” the doctor tells us. “Deep, through the wall. We need to open her up. Now.”
“How bad is it?” My throat burns.
The doctor doesn’t answer. He’s too busy calling for saline, clamps, pressure.
But I know the look in his eyes. The pity. The calculation. The quiet verdict. No one survives a wound like that.
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head like I can undo the world. “She pulled through before. She’s going to make it.”
Blood stains my hands, my sleeves, my soul. I can’t tell where she ends and I begin. Mason keeps a hand on my shoulder, steady and heavy, the only thing keeping me from falling face-first into her death.
She moans, barely there, but it’s enough to gut me, and I’m beside her in an instant, refusing to let go.
“Hey,” I whisper, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “Open your eyes, Nadia. Look at me. Look at me, sweetheart.”
She doesn’t. Her lashes flicker once. That’s all.
“Her blood pressure’s tanking!” someone yells. “We’re losing her again - ”
“No!” I slam my palm against the wall, the sound cracking through the hall. “You’re not losing her! Do your fucking job!”
Mason’s voice is low, breaking in ways I’ve never heard, as he holds me back from the med room.
“They need space, Jude. Let them fight for her.”
“She is my fight,” I rasp. My throat feels like I swallowed glass. “You don’t get it, Mason. They took everything from me once. I won’t let them take her too.”
He doesn’t argue. Maybe because he knows there’s nothing left to say.
I collapse against the wall, sliding down until I’m sitting in her blood. My shaking hands cover my face. I can still feel her heartbeat on my palms, still taste the salt of her skin, still hear her laugh from another lifetime.
I begged the devil once to bring me peace. He gave me Nadia instead.
Now he’s come to collect.
Minutes blur. Hours. Time bleeds out like her life on that floor.
The surgeon finally steps out, his face streaked with sweat. His eyes don’t meet mine.
“She’s still in surgery,” he says quietly. “It’s bad. The blade hit her stomach, liver, and possibly her artery. We’ll try to repair what we can, but…”
He hesitates.
“But she might not make it.”
My world caves in.
Mason’s hand is still on my shoulder, but I barely feel it. I’m somewhere else - back in the cell where I counted the years by her name. Back in the dark where I dreamed of her face every night, where survival meant imagining that one day I’d find her again.
And I did.
I found her.
Only to lose her like this.
I stand, numb, and stare through the doorway into the makeshift operating room. They’re cutting her open, hands moving fast, frantic, desperate.
The beeping is erratic.
The line trembles.
“Come back to me, Nadia,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “You hear me? You don’t leave me like this. Not again.”
When the monitors flatline, I stop breathing.
And when they bring her back with a jolt, I drop to my knees and start to pray.
Not for mercy.
Not for forgiveness.
Just for her.
Because the world can take everything else.
It can take my name, my peace, my goddamn soul.
But if it takes Nadia too - then it’s me they’ll need to bury next.
63
LUCIAN
The world is red.
Not from the blood on my hands, though there’s plenty of that. Not from the emergency lights still pulsing outside the ranch. It’s red because I can’t see anything else. Not Scar’s men clearing rooms, not Mason barking orders - none of it.
