The Anchor of the Void

Chapter III

Levi

I didn't have a funeral for my brother. In a place as godforsaken as Blackwood Bay, a funeral was just an invitation for the police to ask questions or for enemies to finish the job.

Instead, I carried him to the edge of the world.

I chose a jagged cliff overlooking the sea, a place where the wind never stopped howling. I wanted him to have what he never got in life: freedom. I built the pyre myself, my hands raw and bleeding from the wood, until the flames finally took him.

I stood there for hours, the heat of the fire a sharp contrast to the freezing salt spray. I stared at the charred branches and the glowing embers as they danced into the black sky. As the smoke thinned, I realized I wasn't just burning his body—I was burning the last piece of my own humanity. There was no sadness left in me now. There was only the ash in my lungs and the cold, hard weight of the gun at my hip.

I went to see the Boss that afternoon. He spent the first twenty minutes screaming, his face a mottled purple as he raged about the lost shipment and the professional embarrassment I’d caused him.

I didn’t blink. I sat on the leather sofa across from him, a cold bottle of beer in one hand and a cigarette burning low in the other. I felt nothing—no remorse for the cargo, no fear of the man behind the desk. His threats sounded like static. The only thing that mattered was the name burning a hole in my mind.

“Are you even listening, Levi?” he barked, slamming a fist onto the mahogany.

I took a slow drag, exhaled a cloud of grey smoke, and met his eyes with a stare so hollow it made him pause.

“I don't care about the drugs,” I said, my voice flat and dead. “And neither do you. We both know you have insurance for the product. What I want is information.”

I leaned forward, the shadows of the room clinging to me. “Tell me everything you have on the Sawyers.”

The Boss took a long, slow drag of his tobacco, the smoke drifting between us like a physical barrier. He looked at me with something that might have been pity, if he were capable of it.

“I told you not to mess with them, Levi,” he grumbled, his voice like grinding stones. “But... the kid did kill my men. He made it personal.”

He leaned back, the leather of his chair creaking. “Edgar Sawyer, the father—he’s a cop. High up, too. He married Evelyn Sawyer, the Mayor’s daughter. That f*****g family is loaded, well-connected, and protected from every side. It’s why Henry acts like he’s got a crown on his head. He thinks the law is a shield his daddy built just for him.”

I didn't move. I didn't care about titles or badges. In the woods, a Mayor’s grandson bleeds just as red as a gutter rat.

“And then there’s the girl,” the Boss added, flicking ash into a crystal tray. “Eleanor Sawyer. The golden child. She’s the only one in that house who hasn’t stepped in the mud yet.”

I stared into the amber depths of my beer, my mind already mapping out the target. A cop father. A Mayor mother. And a sister. Henry loved his sister, didn't he? He’d used Axel to get to me—it only seemed fair to return the favor.

I took a long, slow drag of my cigarette, the smoke burning in my throat. I didn't care about the Mayor or the police force. I only cared about the leverage.

“And this sister?” I asked, my voice as cold as the sea spray on the cliffs. “Where is she?”

The Boss watched me, his eyes narrowing as he sensed the shift in the air. “In their house. She rarely leaves. She’s the heart of that family, Levi. Tell me, son... what is your plan?”

I exhaled a thin stream of grey smoke and met his gaze. My reflection in his glasses looked like a stranger—someone hollow and sharp.

“Revenge,” I said, the word tasting like ash. “Henry took my world from me. It only seems fair that I take something just as important from him.”

I stood up, the chair scraping against the floor like a scream. I didn't need to say her name. We both knew that Eleanor Sawyer was no longer just a girl. She was a target.

I spent the night in the dark, mapping out the ruins of my life and the architecture of my revenge. If I was going to break Henry, I had to do it with surgical precision. I had to hurt him the same way he’d hurt me—by tearing out the thing he loved most.

The Sawyers were a fortress, but every fortress has a crack. My research told me that Eleanor only left the sanctuary of the house on Sunday mornings for church. With Henry wounded and confined to his room, and their father buried in work at the station, the girl would be vulnerable.

The next morning, I positioned myself in the shadow of a sprawling oak on the edge of their property. From my vantage point, the house looked like a dollhouse—pretty, white, and full of lies. I sat there for hours, my eyes never leaving the windows, my pulse a slow, rhythmic thrum.

I hadn’t seen her yet. I found myself wondering if she shared his face. Would she look like that shitty brother of hers? Would she have the same arrogant curve to her mouth, or would she be something else entirely?

I adjusted the scope on my rifle, watching a curtain flutter in an upstairs window. I wasn't in a hurry. I had all the time in the world to watch them bleed.

Then, she appeared.

A girl with hair the color of a dying sunset stepped out onto the second-floor balcony. She stood there, framed by the white railing, staring out at nothing with eyes that looked a thousand miles away. She wore a dress that looked too delicate for a place like Blackwood Bay—soft, clean, and expensive.

Fuck. I’d be a liar if I said she wasn't breathtaking.

She looked pampered, untouched by the grime of the world I lived in. She was a vision of everything I’d never seen before—a creature of light living in a house built on shadows. There was no trace of Henry’s jagged arrogance in her face; she looked like a porcelain doll someone had forgotten on a shelf.

Eleanor. That was her. No doubt about it.

I adjusted my grip on the binoculars, my heart doing a strange, violent stutter. She was the heart of this family, alright. And in a few days, I was going to rip that heart right out of Henry’s chest.

She turned with a slow, graceful sweep of her dress and vanished back into the house, leaving the balcony empty and cold. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding, my pulse finally settling.

A slow, cruel smirk pulled at my mouth. It was almost too perfect. Henry had taken a rough, scarred life from me—a brother who knew the dirt and the blood. In return, I was going to take this—this girl who looked like she’d never seen a bruise in her life.

It was going to be fun, watching the light go out of Henry’s eyes when he realized his golden girl was gone. I wanted to see him broken. I wanted to see him crawl. By the time I was finished, the name Sawyer would mean nothing in Blackwood Bay but ash and regret.

I lowered the binoculars and leaned back into the shadows of the oak tree. The countdown to Sunday had officially begun.

I climbed down from the oak, my movements silent and fluid. My mind was already a blueprint of the surrounding acres. I spent the next hour like a ghost, tracing the perimeter and tracking the distance from the estate to the church. Every curve in the road, every patch of overgrown brush, and every blind spot in the streetlights was cataloged.

I needed this to be perfect. A botched job meant a life sentence; a perfect one meant a lifetime of agony for Henry.

I stopped at a sharp bend in the road where the ancient pines leaned in close, swallowing the pavement in shadow. This was it. The church was less than a mile away, but here, the forest was thick enough to muffle a scream and the ditch was deep enough to hide a car.

This was where I would take her. I looked back at the house one last time, a dark silhouette against the rising moon. Enjoy your last nights of peace, Henry. Sunday is coming.