​Chapter 25. And Name It Something Simpler

Elizazdra wasn’t sleeping. She was playing.

After that night — the night the darkness of the empty store in Carver Falls swallowed her whole — she had woken up different. Sleep had become her kingdom, a chessboard where every piece moved according to her will. Boston, with its rain-soaked streets, rust-bitten docks, and neon signs trembling over black puddles, was now her canvas. She could be anyone: a cop, a victim, a killer, even the City itself. She could feel asphalt drinking in blood, rain washing tracks away, streetlights flickering in time with her pulse.

In her South Boston apartment, the darkness was torn apart by neon crawling through the window while she sat motionless. Heat seeped into her veins; her right cheek had gone numb, smooth as marble, and her right eye was entirely black — as if it had swallowed the darkness of the canal outside. Her heartbeat stayed steady, but inside her — a rising, molten wave, almost orgasmic in its sense of power.

She was the wine glass in Lanier’s penthouse; she was Lucy, drowning in panic before the kill. Maria, twisting as the knife tore into her back. Pierre, staring down a gun barrel in mute confusion. The house itself, soaking up their blood into its carpets, smothering dying moans.

She flipped between them like TV channels, savoring their fear, their pain, their last thoughts. Replaying the scene again and again, changing the details: the angle of the shot, the color of Pierre’s pajamas, the sound of Lanier’s footsteps. It was her game, her symphony, where every note was somebody’s death. The mark on her palm burned; her skin cracked; blood dripped onto the floor, hot and metallic. She smiled with dry lips, feeling her own heart beat in time with that symphony of death.

So when the phone rang, Eliza already knew who was calling.

The Nokia vibrated across the table. “Unknown number.” But she knew — it was Lanier. Or whatever remained of him.

“Send a car for me,” she ordered.

Inside her — triumph, sharp and hot as a knife in the throat.

Late at night, the black Lincoln slid through Boston, rain whipping against the windshield, puddles catching the neon — “Liquor Store” and “24/7 Diner” blinked like beacons. Inside the car, the smell of leather lingered — flesh that had survived a murder. The driver stayed silent, his face in the rearview mirror wearing a faint smile, as if he knew. She knew: he was part of her game too.

At the Prudential Tower, on the 52nd floor, Lanier met her. His eyes were bloodshot from a sleepless night and sheer terror, his chin trembling, his fingers worrying at the button of his jacket, still stained with blood. The tremor of his endless nightmare still in him.

Eliza savored it in silence. What remained of Lanier was just an empty shell — a shadow of the magnate she’d seen once at Top of the Hub. She stepped closer, her heels striking the parquet like a metronome. The mark burned, blood pounded, her heart thundered — and her smile stayed merciless.

“Did you want to apologize?” she asked sweetly. “For the unpleasant scene you caused me at the restaurant? You behaved very rudely.”

Lanier backed up, his spine hitting the wall; sweat streamed from his temples, and the sour, animal smell of fear filled the air.

“Well, Damian,” Eliza continued, her tone unchanged, “did you enjoy it? I even took pity on you — your wife wasn’t assaulted.”

His voice shattered like crystal.

“You... you did this, you—”

Eliza tilted her head; the azure eye flashed, the black one swallowed the light.

“Not me,” she cut him off. “You. You asked for a chance — and you were given one. But you refused to pay. You’re getting exactly what you deserve.”

Lanier collapsed to his knees. Blood from his palm was soaking into the carpet, thick and dark.

“What is this? Hallucinogens? Poison?” he groaned, his voice pathetic. “You’ll answer for this!”

Two massive figures stepped forward from the darkness of the office. Damian, it seemed, still wasn’t done fighting.

“Oh, so you’re still thrashing around,” Eliza said with a smile.

She wasn’t looking at the guards. She was looking at Lanier.

But the shadows in the corners of the room had begun to move.

Two snakes. Thin, black, almost invisible against the dark carpet. They slid across the floor without a sound, like streaks of ink, rushing toward the guards.

One of the men froze mid-step. A slick black coil wrapped around his boot and climbed up his pant leg. He didn’t even have time to scream. The snake struck — a short, almost lazy jab — sinking its fangs into his thigh right through the fabric.

The man choked, his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed in convulsions. Foam bubbled out of his mouth.

The second guard spun, reaching for his weapon, but the snake was already on him. It coiled around his arm; he yelped in pain and disgust, trying to fling it off. The snake sank its fangs into his neck, and the scream broke off into a wet, drowning gurgle. He fell beside his partner.

It was over.

Eliza didn’t even glance at the bodies. The snakes dissolved back into the shadows as silently as they’d appeared.

“I will no longer tolerate your little antics, Damian,” she said, enunciating each word like a schoolteacher scolding an unruly child. “That was the last time.”

She stepped toward him — and with each step, her body began to change.

The right side of her face melted like wax, revealing dark, scaled flesh beneath. Her right eye, black and bottomless, glowed from the inside like a smoldering coal. From under her hair, on the right side, a long black horn forced its way out with a dry, cracking sound. Her delicate hands elongated, and her nails sharpened into glossy onyx claws.

She loomed over him — half the woman he’d seen in the restaurant, half the monster from his worst nightmare.

And she smiled at him with both halves of her face.

“You killed them yourself, Damian,” she remarked. “I warned you, and you didn’t listen. Now Mike’s kids will never see daddy come home, and Ben won’t get to screw two chicks at once — which, as you know, he loved to do.”

Lanier stared at her new, monstrous face — half human, half demonic. His whole world, built on logic, control, and contempt for weakness, crumbled into dust.

And now the weak one was him.

All his self-justifications and rational explanations — “psychotropics,” “implanted memories,” “blackmail” — fell away.

He had been lying to himself. All this time.

His words back then, in that dark, cold basement in London, had not been empty sounds thrown into the void. They had been heard by the one who listens. And he had always known that. Somewhere deep inside, beneath layers of wealth, power, and cultivated cynicism, he had remembered. Years had passed, and he’d convinced himself it was a dream — a bad memory he could bury under the weight of his success.

But his debt had come for him in the flesh. With horns, with claws, with eyes containing nothing but darkness.

He managed to get to his feet only with effort. His immaculate suit was crumpled, his knees smeared with blood. He looked at the creature calling itself Eliza Dahmer, and his rage and fear drained away. His shoulders sagged, and he bowed his head.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered — and that word became the end of his former world and the beginning of the absolute horror of servitude.

“Transfer a hundred million. Today,” Eliza said, as if reciting an order at a restaurant. “An entire floor in this tower. A private elevator. Personal security. And a new startup.”

Damian tried desperately to rebuild his mask of control, the polished confidence of a financier. His fingers trembled, but he lifted his chin, trying to imitate his former authority.

“And... what startup?” he asked hoarsely.

He walked to the table and poured himself a whiskey, the bottle clinking against the glass. His face stared back at him in the amber liquid — distorted, aged by a single night.

“Right now, all the profit is in Tech. Consulting, data analysis, artificial intelligence... a very promising direction. I know the market, I—”

At that moment, the desk phone rang. The screen lit up, displaying a name:

“Lucy.”

Lanier froze. For several seconds, he stared at the screen as if reading a verdict passed against him. Then he slowly lifted his gaze to Eliza. Only the swollen vein on his temple betrayed how much effort it took to maintain that thin façade of calm.

He pressed the button, silencing the call; the ringing dissolved into a silent flicker on the display. The room filled with the sound of rain behind the windows.

“No,” Eliza said — the word dull and heavy, like a gunshot. “Biotechnology.”

“But it isn’t profitable,” Lanier objected. A last, pitiful protest from his old self — a dying spark of the instinct to argue and convince. “The market is oversaturated, research takes decades, regulators—”

“Bio-tech-nol-o-gy,” Eliza repeated, her voice sharp, distinct, mercilessly firm.

He nodded — a slow, weighted gesture that cost him everything. The mask of success had completely fallen away. Nothing was left but a wretched man whose wealth, connections, and cold calculation had turned to dust overnight.

Eliza leaned forward slightly.

“You’d better pull yourself together, Damian. We have a great deal of work to do.”

Her smile was mocking, as though nothing had happened.

“Name our company something simpler, without the pomp and theatrics. Let’s say... Biotechnology Incorporated. Or even shorter — BioTech.