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He took everything from me on a wedding night—my family, my future, my belief that I was anything more than a transaction—and now I take everything from him on the morning he was so certain he’d reclaim me.

He turned our vows into a death sentence for the people I loved.

I have simply made the contract mutual.

Till death do us part, he promised once, smiling, with a knife already in his other hand.

I always was a woman who kept her promises.

“I’ll see you in hell. But don’t fret—my loves will take such good care of you in the meantime. Lucien will see the dosage keeps it from being too agonizing. Riot will make sure his methods aren’t too cruel.” I glance at Silas, who is already smiling in serene anticipation. “Silas and Crowe will see you adorned in the very prettiest flowers for your celebration of death. A pity there’ll be no one to mourn you—but rest assured, we’ll scatter your ashes somewhere appropriately close to the pits of hell.” I straighten, smoothing my bloodied skirts. “I suppose this is the ultimate move. Checkmate…from your favorite obsession.”

I turn and walk away, the click of my heels echoing through the cathedral of his defeat.

“No,” he slurs behind me, the word gone soft and shapeless at the edges. “Wait. Come… come back.”

My giggles swell into laughter—real, helpless, ringing—as the full truth of it crystallizes inside me, bright and permanent.

I was never the Harley to his Joker.

I was the Joker all along.

The agent of beautiful chaos, the one who wrote the punchline, the architect of the whole elaborate joke whose punch he is only now, too late, beginning to feel.

Now that I’ve won—truly, finally, irrevocably won—I am free to step into the life I built in the ashes of the one he stole.

By this time next week we’ll be in Monaco. New names, new faces, new papers, our funds released and our pasts scrubbed clean down to the bone—a fresh beginning, every one of usreborn. All of it owed to Blackthorn Institute:the unlikely cradle of empowerment for the psychotic Omegas of this world, the ones finally ready to dismantle the lives of the Alphas who dared to break them first.

Somewhere warm, I told Riot on a cliff at sunset, with a pinky hooked around mine.

Where the sun doesn’t apologize for itself, where we travel under names no one can trace and live the lives we actually deserve.

It is a promise then, I whispered, and meant it, and now—blood drying on my skirts, my husband’s screams a fading overture behind me—I get to keep it.

The hollow that defined me is full.

The board is cleared. The empire my father built and my husband died trying to steal will fall into my hands and mine alone, with three men beside me who would rather burn than cage me.

I did not survive my life.

I outplayed it.

There is a difference, and I have finally, at the cost of everything, earned the right to know it.

The screaming starts before I’ve even managed to pull the heavy door shut behind me.

Outside, in the clean salt air, one of my bodyguards waits with a bouquet cradled in his arms.

He bows and offers it up to me, and the scent of it reaches me first—roses and white lilies and something sweetly funereal underneath, an arrangement that could only have been designed by one particular pair of pale, devoted hands.

“The car to the safe house is ready, so you may change in peace, Miss Valentine,” he says. “These are from your men. To their Pretty Darling Psycho.”

I grin, accepting the flowers, ridiculously proud of our little code of a title.

“See to it my men reach the destination safely,” I instruct, lifting the blooms to breathe them in. “And don’t forget to remind our friends in the black market of my return. We’ll have to celebrate together, properly.” I pause. “Oh…and make certain Puddin is there.”

“Puddin, ma’am?” he asks, unable to help himself.

I giggle, turning proud eyes on him.