The carnival was an assault on every one of my senses, and I loved it because she did. The air, thick with the greasy scent of frying dough and spun sugar, was a far cry from the sterile, filtered atmosphere of my office or the rarefied air of L'Astre. The cacophony of tinny carnival music, shrieking children, and the mechanical groans of rides was a chaotic symphony that should have set my teeth on edge. Instead, it was the soundtrack to Althea's unbridled joy, and therefore, it was the most beautiful music I'd ever heard. It was the sound of my success the living, breathing proof that my poison had done its work, that the sharp, grieving edges of the Tyrant had been sanded down into this glorious, carefree creature who saw wonder in a tawdry lightbulb and a rigged game.
She was a different person here. The polished, emerald-clad songbird of the restaurant was gone, replaced by a woman in a grey hoodie, her hair escaping its messy bun, her eyes wide with a childlike avarice as she scanned the midway. This was the amnesiac Althea in her purest form: unburdened, impulsive, and utterly captivating. Every laugh that escaped her lips was a bullet directly into the black, hardened thing I called a heart, chipping away at the calcified darkness.
Mine, the thought was a primal, possessive drumbeat in time with the thumping music. All this joy. It's mine. I created this. I preserved this. The violence of the warehouse, the cold precision of the morning's sedative, they were the fertilizer for this fragile, blooming happiness. The connection was direct, causal. No darkness, no light.
Her gaze landed on a shooting gallery booth, its shelves groaning under the weight of garishly colored, cheaply made plush toys. Her eyes zeroed in on the grand prize: a truly monstrous, lime-green dinosaur plushie that was at least five feet tall. It was hideous. It was perfect. A testament to terrible taste and glorious absurdity.
She turned to me, and the full force of her puppy-dog eyes a look she had undoubtedly perfected from watching Sushi was unleashed. It was a weapon of mass destruction, and I was a willing casualty.
"Haven," she pleaded, her voice a sugary whine as she clutched my arm. "Pleeease? I need him. Look at his stupid little arms! He needs a home! And… and he reminds me of you!"
I raised an eyebrow, a genuine smile tugging at my lips. The monster inside me preened at being compared to something so powerful, even in plush form. "Of me?"
"Yes! You're my T-Rex!" she declared, her eyes sparkling with a mischief that felt like sunlight on my shadowed soul. "T-Rex. 'T' stands for 'Top'! HAHAHAH! Get it? Because you're a top-tier Alpha! And you know," she added, leaning in conspiratorially, her Vanilla Strawberry scent enveloping me, "in dinosaur language, a rawr means 'I love you'."
The absurdity of it, the sheer, goofy affection in the comparison, sent a warm, unfamiliar sensation spreading through my chest. I was a CEO, a predator, a woman who had just hours ago orchestrated a man's psychological dismemberment. And she was comparing me to a plush dinosaur whose roar meant 'I love you'. The cognitive dissonance wasn't just dizzying; it was addictive. It was proof I had built a world where such a thing could be true. I loved it. I loved her for it.
I reached into my wallet, a slim, black leather folio that held a collection of cards capable of buying small islands. Nestled amongst them was a modest wad of cash. Modest for me, perhaps. It was enough to sustain an average family for a year. I peeled off a few bills and handed them to the bored-looking carny running the booth. The man's eyes flickered with a greedy recognition of the denomination.
"For my wife," I said, my voice neutral, but my Grape Old Wine scent carried a subtle, unmistakable command: Make her happy, or there will be consequences.
Althea practically vibrated with excitement, grabbing the ridiculously lightweight toy rifle. The game was, of course, a complete scam. The sights were misaligned, the triggers had a terrible lag, and the targets were designed to wobble unpredictably. I could see it all, a map of deception laid bare to my analytical eyes. It was a microcosm of the world: rigged, unfair, designed to take from the hopeful and give to the house.
She took her first shot. Missed.
Second shot. A glancing blow that didn't register.
Third, fourth, fifth. All failures.
With each miss, her adorable excitement curdled into frustration. She stomped her foot, a little cloud of dust rising from the sawdust floor, her Vanilla Strawberry scent spiking with a sharp, tangy note of irritation.
"This is rigged!" she declared, pointing the toy gun at the carny with a theatrical flourish. "This is a travesty of justice! I demand a retrial! My T-Rex is being held hostage by a corrupt system! RAWR!"
The carny, a lanky man with a stained t-shirt and tired eyes, just shrugged, a practiced smirk on his face. "Sights are true, ma'am. Maybe you just need a steadier hand." His gaze slid over her, dismissive. He saw a pretty, frustrated Omega and an Alpha who'd already paid. He thought the transaction was over.
Althea's face fell. The genuine, profound disappointment in her eyes was a physical pain to me. It was an irrational, overwhelming response. This stupid, overstuffed piece of fabric had become the most important thing in the world because she wanted it. Its acquisition was now a matter of cosmic significance. An obstacle to her joy was an insult to my entire purpose.
Before I could offer to simply buy the hideous thing for an exorbitant sum a solution my CEO mind presented a colder, more familiar instinct took over. This wasn't about money. This was about a principle. Her whims were my commands, and any obstacle to her happiness was a personal insult to be removed. Efficiently. Permanently. The carny's smirk was a challenge. His dismissal of her desire was a sin. He would learn.
My movements were fluid, practiced, a ghost of the violence I'd enacted in the warehouse translated into this absurd context. I stepped slightly behind Althea, using her body and the bulk of the booth as a shield from the rest of the carnival. In one smooth motion, I reached under my own simple jacket and pulled out the compact, matte-black pistol from its shoulder holster. The silencer was still attached from my earlier work, a cold, cylindrical promise. I sidled the real steel up alongside the toy rifle she was still holding, my larger frame and the plastic weapon perfectly concealing the deadly one. The contrast was obscene: her small, warm hands, the bright colored plastic, and the lethal, oiled metal in my grip, guiding hers.
"Try again, my love," I murmured in her ear, my voice a low, intimate whisper that vibrated through her, a secret shared in the midst of the crowd. "Aim for the clown. The center of its smile." It wasn't just instruction; it was an invitation into my world. See how I fix things for you.
She glanced back at me over her shoulder, confused for a split second, then her eyes widened as she felt the real weight, the cold, unforgiving reality of the gun in her hands alongside the toy. A flicker of something not fear, but a thrilling, dark understanding passed through her gaze. She trusted me implicitly. She nodded, a tiny, almost imperceptible movement. In that moment, we were conspirators. The most beautiful and terrible team in the world.
She didn't even aim properly. She just looked at the smug ceramic clown with its painted, mocking grin, her expression shifting from frustration to serene focus, and I guided her finger to squeeze the trigger of the real gun.
Phut.
The sound was swallowed by the carnival's din, a soft, insignificant puff of air. The ceramic clown's head ceased to exist. It exploded into a cloud of fine dust and jagged fragments, the pole it sat on now holding only a sad, decapitated stub.
For a moment, there was silence at the booth. The carny stared, his jaw slack, his face draining of all color, the smirk wiped into a rictus of terror. He looked from the obliterated target to Althea, who was now innocently holding only the toy rifle, the pistol already vanished back into the shadow of my holster. She smiled at him, a bright, dazzling, utterly convincing smile.
"Jackpot!" she chirped, her voice pure, gleeful victory. "I believe I win the dinosaur. See? Thanks for the tip you told me I just needed a steadier hand." She winked, a masterful performance. "The universe finally aligned for true love. RAWR!"
The man scrambled, his hands trembling so violently he fumbled twice with the giant hook. He finally wrestled the massive lime-green plushie free and practically threw it at her, wanting nothing more than for us, and the memory of that silent, destructive phut, to be gone. Althea caught it with a triumphant squeal, burying her face in its synthetic fur, her body nearly disappearing behind its bulk.
"Oh, he's perfect! I'm naming him… Rex Hartwell-Vale! My T-Rex!" She hugged the dinosaur tightly, its absurd limbs flopping, then turned her beaming face to me. "RAWR, Haven! RAWR!"
It was the most terrifying and beautiful 'I love you' I had ever received. A declaration sealed not with a kiss, but with a silenced gunshot and the destruction of a carnival clown. Our love language was chaos and possession. It was perfect.
As she turned her back, adoring her prize, whispering secrets to Rex, I stepped forward. I placed the entire remaining stack of cash easily five thousand dollars—on the counter. The bills were crisp, a silent, more comprehensible threat. I met the carny's terrified eyes and brought a single finger to my lips in a slow, deliberate shhh. The message was clear: You saw nothing. You say nothing. This money is for your silence and your remodel.
His head bobbed in frantic, birdlike understanding.
I then made a subtle gesture, a flick of my wrist near my hip that would have been meaningless to anyone else. From the crowd, two of my "civilian"-clad Blackwood operatives a man and a woman pretending to be a couple sharing a funnel cake detached themselves and drifted towards the booth. Their job was to ensure the carny's continued silence with more substantial persuasion, to retrieve the bullet casing from amidst the sawdust and shattered ceramic, and to dispose of the evidence. My wife's whims required a full cleanup crew, even at a carnival. There could be no traces. No whispers. The story would be that a lucky, persistent wife won a giant dinosaur. That was the only truth that mattered.
We moved away, Althea staggering slightly under Rex's weight. I took the plushie from her, slinging it over my shoulder with ease. The contrast a fearsome Alpha in a simple t-shirt carrying a giant lime dinosaur was not lost on me. This was my life now. Guardian of a songbird, bearer of pastel horrors.
The rest of the evening was a whirlwind of her glorious, enthusiastic failures and my quiet, efficient, often morally bankrupt victories. Althea's competitive streak, once unleashed, was a sight to behold, with Rex the dinosaur presiding over it all from my arms like a bizarre, fuzzy chaperone.
At the ring toss, she hurled rings with the fury of a scorned goddess, her tongue peeking out in concentration. All of them bounced off the glass bottles with a mocking, tinny clink.
"This is rigged!" she fumed, hands on her hips, Rex's head lolling over my shoulder as if nodding in agreement. "The laws of physics do not apply here! This is a pocket dimension of lies! Right, Rex? RAWR?"
I, on the other hand, stood still as a statue. I calculated the weight of the rings, the parabolic arc needed, the slight warp in the bottles from years of use. It was a simple physics problem. I won her a small, sad-looking goldfish swimming in circles in a plastic bag of water on my third try. She took the bag with reverence, her disappointment instantly forgotten.
"His name is 'Justice'," she declared, holding the bag up to Rex's face. "See, Rex? Justice has been served! He's a victory for the little guy!" The fact that "Justice" was won through cold calculation rather than fair play seemed lost on her, and I adored her for it.
At the hammer strike, she brought the mallet down with a grunt of effort that made her face turn pink, barely making the bell flinch.
"My entire life is a lie! My strength has abandoned me!" she wailed, dramatically draping herself over Rex's torso, which I was still holding. "Comfort me, my T-Rex! Tell me I'm still strong! RAWR!"
I handed Rex and Justice to her, stepped up, adjusted my grip not for show but for optimal force transfer, and put my core into it. The puck shot up the rail and hit the bell with a satisfying, metallic DING! that echoed across the midway. I won a ridiculously large, rainbow-colored unicorn with a sparkly horn. She named it 'Bartholomew,' declaring he was Rex's noble, glittery steed for their adventures.
At the water gun race, her stream was pathetically weak, spraying everywhere but the target.
"This nozzle is defective! It's a conspiracy! The system is cheating! RAWR!" she growled, shaking Rex at the game operator, who took a step back, eyeing the giant dinosaur with newfound wariness.
My stream was a laser-focused jet, filling my balloon in seconds while my opponent, a teenager, gawked. I won a neon-pink flamingo with legs that were too long for its body. She named it 'Steve,' deciding he was the trio's quirky, stylish sidekick who knew all the best gossip.
With each of my wins, she would whine and pout, blaming the machines, the games, the alignment of the stars, the humidity anything but her own lack of skill. "Why can't I get anything right? Is the universe personally victimizing me today, Haven? RAWR!"
And I couldn't help but adore her. Because the real Althea, the Tyrant, wouldn't have whined. She would have coldly assessed her failure, deemed the game beneath her, and moved on with a contemptuous sniff. Or she would have had the booth shut down through a phone call. This Althea, with her theatrical despair and her immediate, resilient joy upon receiving her ridiculous consolation prizes, was a creature of pure, unadulterated light. A light I was desperately trying to focus solely on me, to keep from shining on the ugly truths of our past.
"Perhaps the universe knows I enjoy winning things for you," I said, handing her the flamingo, my voice barely containing the swell of possessive pleasure. Your failures are my opportunities. Your desires are my purpose.
She blushed, hugging Steve the flamingo to her chest alongside Rex's leg. "Well… when you put it like that, I guess I can allow it. But only because you're my wife. And because you're my T-Rex. RAWR."
Then came the rides. She dragged me onto a spinning contraption called 'The Scrambler' that slammed us into each other with violent centrifugal force. I spent the entire ride with one arm braced against the side of our car, my body forming a living cage around hers to keep her from being jostled too hard, while my other arm secured Rex, Bartholomew, and Steve in the seat beside us. She screamed with laughter, her head thrown back, the sound pure and free, while I mentally calculated the shear stress on the bolts holding the thing together and identified the two quickest exit paths.
Next was 'The Zipper,' a monstrous cage that flipped end over end in a nauseating arc. Her bravado lasted until we were suspended upside down for the first time, the world turning on its head, our menagerie of plush toys tumbling around us like pastel meteors.
"OKAY, I REGRET MY LIFE CHOICES!" she shrieked, her fingers digging into my bicep like talons, her hold the only anchor in the dizzying chaos. "HAVEN, IF I DIE, TELL SUSHI I LOVE HIM AND THAT HE CAN HAVE MY PILLOW! AND TELL REX I'LL ALWAYS LOVE HIM! RAWR FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!"
"You're not going to die," I said, my voice calm, though my own stomach lurched in a way it never did during boardroom coups or violent interrogations. My focus wasn't on the ride's questionable mechanics, but on her. On the wild pulse hammering in the delicate hollow of her throat, the way her Vanilla Strawberry scent had shifted to a sharp, electric ozone of fear. I found I liked it. I liked being her sole anchor in the chaos. It was the only role that felt true, the only one that justified the monster. I am the calm in your storm. Even the storms I create for you.
When we stumbled off, she was green-tinged but grinning wildly, immediately checking on Rex for 'whiplash' and 'psychological trauma'. "Never again. My soul is still spinning. So, what's next?" Her resilience was a miracle.
We refueled on carnival junk food, a culinary category my body usually regarded as biological warfare. She bought a cloud of pink cotton candy so large it obscured her face, and a tray of nachos covered in a neon-orange cheese substance that glowed under the lights, balancing it all while trying to keep a grip on Rex.
"Here, try it!" she insisted, shoving a chip laden with the viscous, radioactive-looking cheese towards my mouth.
I eyed it with deep suspicion, my CEO mind running a rapid risk-assessment. "Althea, that 'cheese' has a half-life longer than some isotopes. It's not food; it's a chemical experiment."
"Don't be a snob! It's part of the experience!" She pouted, and I was lost. Resistance was futile. "Even Rex wants you to try it. Don't you, Rex? Tell her! RAWR!"
I took a bite. It was horrifying. A slick, salty, artificially sharp affront to every culinary principle I knew. And yet, watching her triumphant, cheese-smeared smile as I forced myself to chew and swallow, it was the most delicious thing I'd ever tasted. It was a sacrament. A communion of shared, terrible choices.
"See? Now you're living!" she declared, before taking a massive bite of her own and getting a glob of the neon cheese on her chin.
I reached out, my thumb gently wiping it away. The gesture was so intimate, so tenderly domestic, it startled us both. My hands, which had earlier held a gun to ensure her victory, now performed this soft, caretaking act. Her eyes met mine, and for a moment, the noise of the carnival—the bells, the screams, the music—faded into a distant hum. There was just us, and her ridiculous dinosaur, under the cheap, blinking lights, surrounded by the scents of grease and sugar and her. It was perfect. It was a lie I had built with blood and poison, and I never wanted it to end.
As dusk began to settle, painting the sky in shades of bruised violet and molten orange, she pointed a sticky finger towards the giant Ferris wheel, its outline a graceful, slow-turning circle of light against the darkening sky.
"The Ferris wheel! They said there's a fireworks show soon. What better view than from the top? Rex wants to see! He deserves a beautiful view after his traumatic day!"
My instincts screamed again. Trapped. Exposed. A slow-moving, glass-walled target. A perfect tableau for an assassin's rifle. But her hand was in mine, sticky with sugar, her eyes full of reflected stars from the rising wheel lights, and I would have walked into an active warzone for that look. I would have used my own body as a shield against any threat. The calculation was simple: the risk of a theoretical attack versus the certainty of her disappointment. There was no contest.
We boarded the gondola, piling our menagerie of won plush toys Rex, Bartholomew, Steve, and the bag with Justice the goldfish sloshing gently onto the seat opposite us. The attendant closed the flimsy door with a clank, and we began our slow, creaking ascent. The world fell away, the carnival becoming a diorama of twinkling lights and muffled sounds below. The city skyline glittered in the distance like a bed of diamonds. It was breathtaking. It was the world I ruled, seen from a vulnerable, peaceful distance.
Althea was pressed against the glass, her nose almost touching it, adoring the view, with Rex's face smooshed against the window next to hers as if he were looking too. Then, she fumbled for her phone, her brow furrowed in concentration as she typed with one thumb.
"Haven! Haven!" she said, turning to me, her face alight with a new, profound discovery. "Look! It says here you should kiss your true love when you're at the very top of the Ferris wheel! It says that if you do, you'll be together forever!" She swung her phone in front of my face, displaying some cheesy, ad-filled online article titled "10 Carnival Myths That Are Actually TRUE!"
My heart, that treacherous, wounded organ, gave a painful, wrenching lurch. Together forever. The words were a fairy tale, a children's story. My version of forever was a gilded cage with a syringe full of sedatives on the bedside table, a locked drawer of medical files, and a security detail monitoring her every breath. Her version was a magical kiss under the fireworks, sealed by carnival myth. The gulf between them was an abyss over which I'd built a rickety bridge of lies.
"Is that so?" I managed, my voice slightly hoarse, caught between the urge to scoff at the superstition and the desperate, clawing need to believe it. To believe that a kiss could overwrite my sins, could cement this beautiful illusion into something permanent and real.
"Yes! It's a rule! We have to!" she insisted, scooting closer to me on the bench, the gondola swaying gently with her movement. Our knees touched. The warmth of her leg seeped through the denim of my jeans. "Right, Rex? It's the rule! RAWR!"
"And what if I don't believe in carnival magic?" I teased, wanting to prolong this, to savor the anticipation shining in her eyes, to memorize the curve of her smile in the dim light of the ascending car.
"Then believe in me," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, suddenly serious, all the goofiness gone. Her gaze was unwavering, deep amber pools holding mine captive. "I might not remember our forever, Haven. But I want a new one. With you. Starting tonight. At the top."
The words were a physical blow, so full of a trust I was systematically betraying. They were a gift offered to a thief. They were a vow she was making to a ghost, to the persona I had constructed. The guilt was a sharp, sweet poison. I drank it in. It was my penance and my reward.
The gondola reached the apex. The world seemed to hold its breath. We were suspended at the very peak of the wheel, the highest point in this realm of temporary magic. Below, the carnival was a silent, glittering constellation. The city beyond was a distant dream.
And then, the first firework shot into the sky with a sound like a sigh.
Boom.
It exploded in a shower of brilliant, dripping gold, painting the night in a sudden, ethereal glow, illuminating her face in flashes of warm light and soft shadow.
It was the moment. The perfect, romantic moment she'd read about. The universe, or my meticulously paid pyrotechnic team (I'd made a call from the car), was providing the backdrop.
But she didn't look at the fireworks. She was looking only at me. The reflected colors danced in her eyes, but her focus was absolute. I was her entire sky.
As the heavens filled with a thunderous symphony of color and light streaks of passionate red, blooms of tranquil blue, crackling silver willows that wept light she leaned forward. Her hands came up to frame my face, her touch impossibly gentle, a contrast to the violence I knew and wielded. Her thumbs stroked my cheekbones, a caress that felt like absolution.
"For our forever," she whispered, the words a vow swallowed by the next boom.
And then she kissed me.
It wasn't a chaste, fairy-tale kiss. It was a deep, searing kiss that held all the desperate confusion of her amnesia and all the blazing hope of her new beginning. It was a promise to the future. It was a question about the past. It was the only answer that mattered. Her lips were soft and tasted of sugar and strawberries and the underlying, ever-present hint of the peach tea from this morning the tea that held the key to this very moment. The irony was so profound it was poetic.
I kissed her back, a dam breaking inside me. My hands came to her waist, pulling her onto my lap amidst the pile of plush toys. Rex toppled over with a soft whump, Bartholomew's horn poked my thigh, Steve the flamingo watched with beady black eyes. The world, the fireworks, the carnival, the lies, the blood, the darkness of Warehouse 7—it all ceased to exist. There was only the taste of her, the feel of her in my arms, warm and alive and mine, the dizzying scent of Vanilla Strawberry mingling with my own Grape Old Wine, creating that unique, possessive perfume that marked her as irrevocably taken.
The kiss deepened, turning feverish, hungry. It was a French kiss, all exploring tongue and heated breath and a raw, unvarnished need that stole the air from my lungs and the thoughts from my head. I forgot the fireworks. I forgot we were suspended in a fragile glass box in the sky. I forgot everything but the feel of her, the soft sounds she made, the devastating truth that I would burn heaven and hell to keep this woman, even if I had to lie to her for every second of the forever she wanted.
The gondola began its slow, inevitable descent, the fireworks reaching their grand finale in a thunderous, dazzling crescendo that painted the inside of our eyelids with flashes of color. But we didn't see it. Our eyes were closed, our foreheads pressed together, our breaths mingling in the small, private, sticky-sweet space. The explosions were just a vibration in our chests, a rhythm for the frantic beating of our hearts.
The ride ended. The gondola door opened with a jarring clatter, letting in the wave of real-world noise. We stumbled out, disheveled, breathless, clutching our ridiculous prizes. My hair was mussed from her fingers. Her lips were swollen, gloriously kiss-bruised, her eyes hazy with a dazed, satiated happiness. She immediately turned to Rex, who I had tucked under my arm.
"Did you see, buddy?" she whispered to the plushie, her voice thick with emotion. "We're gonna be together forever. It's a rule. RAWR."
I looked at her, at this beautiful, chaotic, goofy, miraculously trusting woman who held my entire cursed world in her small, sticky hands, and I knew with a chilling, absolute, euphoric certainty that felt like both a sentence and a salvation.
I would never let her go. No matter the cost. No matter the sin. No matter how many men I had to break, how many lies I had to tell, how many ghosts from her past I had to bury. Forever was a concept I would forge myself, in the fires of my obsession, with lies and love and the cold barrel of a gun. And it had started right here, in the electric, messy, perfect aftermath of a carnival kiss, sealed with a dinosaur's roar and the silent echo of a gunshot. This was my heaven. This was my hell. And I would live in it forever.