When he finished, he tilted my chin upward with two fingers.
“Behold,” he announced to the crowd, “the new trend for careless staff.”
They applauded.
They applauded.
But as he raised his hand in mock triumph, his sleeve lifted just enough for me to see it: a tattoo etched onto the inside of his wrist.
A tribal-style skull. A rose in one eye socket. An hourglass on the forehead.
My stomach flipped.
I had seen it before—not online, not in a magazine. In a grainy photo texted to me by my brother, Mason, the night he disappeared. His last message:
Harper, if anything happens, look for the man with the skull and rose. Be careful.
Dominic Ravenswood wasn’t just a monster with a god complex.
He was connected to Mason’s disappearance.
And I—the shorn, humiliated waitress—was the only person in that room who knew it.
Revenge wasn’t a choice. It was duty.
That night, staring at my shaved head in the bathroom mirror, the humiliation hardened into steel. I no longer cried.
I strategized.
Dominic thought he’d made me invisible. He had no idea he’d made me dangerous.
With every dollar I had saved, I hired a discreet private investigator. I gave him one clue: the tattoo.
He delivered the truth within 72 hours.