⚠️ Content Warning:
This chapter contains emotionally intense content, including implied violence, grief, and the discovery of a character's death. Reader discretion is advised.
She be couldn't move in time.
The gunshot cracked through the night air.
Pain exploded through Annie's leg as the bullet tore past, grazing deep—but missing anything vital.
She hit the ground hard, clutching her thigh, adrenaline overriding the scream that caught in her throat.
The attacker didn't stay.
They turned and bolted into the shadows, disappearing just as quickly as they came.
Annie forced herself to grab her phone, hands shaking as she dialed emergency services.
"I've been shot," she managed, breathless. "Near the subway... Please hurry."
Sirens arrived minutes later.
Sirens arrived minutes later.
By the time Kayla and Rose heard the news, Annie was already in a hospital bed—hooked up to IVs, her leg wrapped and immobilized.
The doctors said she was lucky.
Too lucky.
Any higher, and it wouldn't have just been her leg.
Kayla seeing her best friend shot was the final string.
She and Rose stayed by Annie's side that night in the hospital, never leaving her alone. But the very next morning, Kayla made a decision.
She snuck into a suspected Rose Shadow Garden meeting—determined to record evidence, expose their faces, and bring them down from the inside.
Big mistake.
She was caught before she could even lift her phone.
No one saw her again.
When Rose broke the news to Annie, still bedridden, her heart dropped. She refused to believe it.
Days passed. Then weeks. Then months.
No leads. No answers. No Kayla.
Until a blood-stained shirt was found floating in the river near the school.
It was hers.
Annie cried for days.
Kayla's family grieved in silence, but when Annie—still in a wheelchair—attended the funeral, they embraced her with kindness.
"I'm sorry…" she whispered to the grave, tears rolling freely.
"I shouldn't have let you go. I should've stopped you. This is all my fault."
Kayla's parents comforted her. Even in their pain, they told her she wasn't to blame.
Years passed.
But the Garden never stopped.
They weren't bullies anymore—they were a fully grown crime syndicate now.
Kidnapping. Murder. Drug trafficking. Money laundering.
And Annie?
Annie was still alive.
Still hollow.
Still haunted by Kayla's smile.
Rose never left her side. Quiet, supportive, always near. She didn't speak much—but she stayed.
She saw what Annie was becoming.
Until one night… Annie stood.
Her legs had healed.
Her heart never did.
She told Rose to stay at her house—"For your own safety."
And then she left.
To the warehouse. To the core of the Garden.
Armed. Cold. Focused.
This wasn't justice. This was war.
Gunshots echoed through the night.
One by one, they fell.
No hesitation. No mercy. No tears.
"I didn't make the mistake," Annie whispered as she walked deeper into the carnage.
"The Garden did."
After clearing the warehouse, Annie stood alone in the silence—her breath steady, her hands steady.
Everything else inside her was not.
Bodies lay scattered. The Rose Shadow Garden's dealers, guards, and foot soldiers… gone.
She didn't care about the screams. The blood. The weight of what she'd done.
Only one thing mattered now: the Black Rose.
She walked through the warehouse, snapping photos of faces—those still breathing, those not. Documents. Phones. Anything that could lead her further down the chain.
She needed a name.
A lead.
A path to vengeance.
She returned home hours later, her clothes soaked in smoke and sweat, her expression empty.
Rose looked up from the couch, saw her, and didn't speak.
There was no need.
Annie went straight to work—dumping the photos onto her computer, scanning each one, digging into names, searching every scrap of data she'd taken.
"Any clue. Anything. Just one thread."
She sifted through the files.
Video after video. Document after document.
Nothing. Names. Deals. Faces she'd already erased.
And then—she clicked on a corrupted file hidden in the attacker's burner phone. It flickered at first, the video grainy, low quality.
Then it played.
An alley.
A riverbank.
Kayla.
Bloodied. Weak. Barely conscious.
Two masked Garden members dragged her toward the water. Their movements were swift, calculated. Kayla tried to fight, even in that state—but they shoved her down hard.
She screamed once.
Then silence.
A final splash as her body vanished beneath the surface.
Then came the voice.
Cold. Confident. Female.
"Good job. One sneaking rat gone."
"We, the Shadow Garden, don't tolerate rats."
Annie's heart stopped.
Her hands trembled.
The cold, emotionless shell she'd built shattered.
Tears streamed down her face, first in silence, then in sobs so raw they scraped her throat.
Rose burst into the room at the sound, rushing to her side.
"Annie?! What—?"
Annie didn't answer.
She collapsed into Rose's arms, shaking, broken.
The video played on behind them, looping in the background.
The video played on behind them, looping in the background.
The splash.
The voice.
The silence.
And in that silence—Annie cried like she hadn't since the day Kayla disappeared.
Not as a weapon.
Not as a machine.
But as a girl who had lost everything.