Clara Beaumont POV:
Dudley stumbled, slamming the bowl of soup onto the nightstand. The force was violent, but clumsy. The bowl tilted dangerously, dark liquid surging up one side, threatening to spill completely. It teetered on the edge of disaster, spinning in wobbly, frantic circles on the polished wood.
For one suspended heartbeat, I watched it dance. Watched the dark broth slosh against porcelain walls, climbing higher, higher—
Then gravity won. The bowl settled. It spun once more, slower, and came to rest.
Most of the soup was still inside. Only a few black droplets had escaped, arcing across the pristine white carpet in a violent spray. A stain. Just like him.
Rage contorted his features. He was about to lunge, to finish what he started.
"Don't move."
The words were ice. They weren't loud, but they sliced through the air and stopped him dead.
He froze, his body tensed. His gaze dropped from my face to my hand, and his eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated shock. He was staring at the silver pistol, at the black, unblinking barrel aimed squarely between his eyes.
My expression was placid. My blue eyes, which he had so often called as gentle as the summer sky, now held the frozen emptiness of a winter lake. There was no fear. No hesitation. Only a chilling, absolute calm.
He couldn't reconcile the image. The weak, pliable Clara Beaumont he thought he knew was gone. In her place sat a creature of cold fury, a goddess of vengeance returned from the grave.
I spoke again, my voice steady, each word a carefully placed stone on his tomb.
"Drink the soup."
He stared at the gun, then at me, a bead of sweat tracing a path down his temple. He tried to laugh, a choked, nervous sound. "Clara, what are you doing? Put that down. It's just a normal calming soup."
A humorless smile touched my lips. I gestured with the barrel of the gun toward the bowl on the nightstand. "Is it? Then prove it. Drink it for me."
I remembered what this "calming soup" did. I remembered the fire that had consumed me, the uncontrollable, primal urge that had stripped away my humanity and left me at his mercy. It was a potion designed to trigger a she-wolf's heat, violently and uncontrollably. It was designed to ruin me.
Dudley's face drained of all color. He knew. Of course, he knew. He wouldn't dare drink it.
The silence stretched, thick with his mounting terror.
With a deliberate, slow movement, I pulled back the hammer of the pistol.
Click.
The sound was deafening in the quiet room. It was the sound of his options running out.
"I'm going to count to three," I said, my voice as flat and final as a judge's sentence.
"One."
His whole body was trembling now. The false bravado, the predatory confidence—it all melted away, revealing the sniveling coward beneath. He was a rogue, a bottom-feeder. His life was the only thing he truly valued.
"Clara, please," he stammered, his eyes darting between the gun and the bowl. "Don't do this. We can talk about this."
"Two."
I didn't waver. My hand was as steady as stone. The memory of my grandfather's coffin, of the cold earth on my own unmarked grave, was all the strength I needed. There was nothing to talk about. There was only payment.
His gaze fell on the bowl of dark liquid. He saw his reflection in its murky surface. He saw his death.
The instinct for survival, raw and desperate, finally won.
He lunged for the nightstand, his hands shaking so violently he almost knocked the bowl over. He snatched it up, his knuckles white.
I didn't say "three."
I didn't have to.
He closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and poured the entire contents of the bowl down his throat. He gulped it down in desperate, choking swallows, the thick liquid dribbling down his chin.
He finished. The bowl was empty.
He stood there, panting, his chest heaving, the stench of the potion and his own fear filling the room.
I watched him, my finger still on the trigger. I watched the man who had destroyed my life swallow his own damnation.
And I felt nothing but the cold, satisfying certainty of a debt being paid.
The first of many.
