PROLOGUE
JOSH
There are hands that heal, and hands that kill.
Mine have done both.
I've held a scalpel steady while a patient's heart restarted on the table, the family weeping in the waiting room, believing me to be their miracle. And I've held a gun to a man's temple while he begged for me to stop, believing me to be his nightmare.
Both times, my hands did not tremble.
That is the thing about becoming a monster: you do not realize you are doing it. There is no turning point, no fall from grace. You simply make decisions, one after another, each one justified, each one necessary, until one day you look into the mirror and realize the man looking back is not someone you would want your mother to meet.
I grew up in Crescent Bay, a working-class town located on the edge of the northern coast. I was the oldest of three, the one everyone leaned on. My dad worked himself into an early grave at the fishing docks, and I watched my mom turn to stone trying to keep us all together and after a few years, she died of a heart attack. That's when I decided that I wanted to become a doctor someday . My sisters Tamara and Bianca , looked up to me like I was invincible. They didn't know the things that i did to keep food on the table, how to make sure they didn't end up like the other girls in Crescent Bay, trapped and tired . Living for the streets.
But I wasn't alone. I never was.
Mason and Stan were from the same row of small houses on the other end of the street, overlooking the bay. We were seven years old when we first met, fighting over the same spot to kick a ball against the pavement. But something clicked. Three boys as different as we were , we became unbreakable. We went through bullies in school, first loves and first heartbreaks, the slow understanding that the world wasn't designed for boys from Crescent Bay. But we held on to each other and tried to improve ourselves.
When the jobs got darker, the money got bigger, the risks got real we never blinked. Not once. We always got each other.I mean there were days when we fought but we always made up. That is how strong the bond was.We promised each other something, back then.We promised ourselves to finish school and protect each other no matter what .And we would never, never, let anyone get in between us
That was over 17 years ago.
Now I'm 30 years old and a surgeon at the most exclusive private hospital in Portside City, at North Point. Mason is a profound lawyer who makes problems disappear with a phone call and a briefcase. Stan runs a financial firm in the Harrisville that moves money through so many accounts that tracking us is like chasing smoke . We own most of the waterfront now, from Crescent Bay all the way to the Portside docks , thats is through legitimate business and the city's underworld.
My sisters are grown. Bianca is a social worker back in Crescent Bay, stubborn and fierce, still trying to save the same broken families that raised us. Tamara is finishing her degree as a Fashion Disgner at Northville University.They don't know the full truth of what I am, what we are. They know I'm successful. They know I'm generous. They know I'd burn the world for them. I paid for all their school expenses and I am still doing for Tamara . I pay her fees and accommodation as well as her upkeep. Bianca is engaged now and has a baby.
And then there's Kate.
Kate, who walked into my life and made me remember what it felt like to be human. Of course i love my sisters but with kate its a different kind of love .Kate, looks at me like I'm not a monster, like I'm still the man I might have been if things had been different. Kate, who has no idea what I am, what I've done, what I'm capable of.
I should have let her go. Should have protected her from myself.
But I was selfish. I wanted her warmth, her light, her smile that makes me forget the darkness waiting outside my door.She is my weakness. She's the only thing that's ever made me want to be better, to be worthy, to be the man she deserves.
I'm not just a doctor. I'm not just a boyfriend. I'm not just a man who loves a woman.
I'm a monster. Monsters don't forgive. Monsters don't forget. Monsters don't stop.
Monsters find you. Monsters break you. Monsters make you wish you'd never been born.
This is a story about what happens when love meets the darkness that's been waiting for it all along.
My name is Joshua Bennett. They call me Josh. I'm a surgeon.
---
KATE
I was a believer in fairy tales.
Not the storybook kind... the real kind. The kind where love conquers all, good people finish first, and the universe somehow balances out the bad stuff so that the good stuff makes some kind of sense.
I stopped believing when I married Jade.
Years of learning that love can be a bondage. Years of slowly disappearing until I no longer recognized my own face when I passed the rain-streaked windows of our house in the Hillcrest neighborhood. Leaving him was the hardest thing I've ever had to do.
And then Josh came into my life.
Josh looked at me like I was precious, like I mattered, like I was exactly who he’d been searching for. Josh, who never pushed, never demanded, never made me feel small.
And I thought, for the first time in years, that maybe I could belong somewhere. Maybe I could be part of something real.
People like me don’t get happy endings. We get borrowed time and broken promises. We get to taste happiness just long enough to remember what we’re missing when it’s gone.
I'm not the same woman who stayed with Jade for three years, too scared to leave. I'm not the victim they think I am. I'm a woman that never, ever gives up.
My name is Kate Brennan. I run a small restaurant in Harrisville, a survivor, a woman who's learning to hope again.
And this is not the end of my story.
This is where it begins.
