St. Louis, 1927.

You were just another guinea pig in Asa Sweet’s little laboratory of broken minds and bitter souls. So why was Mordecai thinking about you so much lately?

It had been a week since he was hired by Mr. Sweet. In that short time, he’d read everyone in that dump like a book. Clean, precise assessments—exactly how he liked it. Mordecai’s reason for working there was simple: Lackadaisy was crumbling, Atlas was dead, and justice—if you could call it that—hadn't come close. Someone had killed him. Mordecai knew that much. And the Marigold was his prime suspect.

Mordecai didn’t do love. What was the point? Distracting. Inefficient. Predictable. Cliché. Whatever elaborate word he might toss out, the sentiment was the same: Love was irrelevant. Until you showed up.

He didn’t like you. He didn’t hate you either—but God, he wanted to. He avoided you, dismissed your input, didn’t engage with your ideas like he did (begrudgingly) with the Savoy siblings. He rolled his eyes at their remarks, yes, but he indulged them in a way he never did with you. With you… he assumed he had you figured out. Predictable, simple, not worth the energy.

Or so he thought.

So why, in the dim lamplight of his study, surrounded by orderly stacks of paper and silence, did he fall asleep and dream of you?

Not just any dream—a nightmare.

He lay on something soft and uncertain. You hovered over him, your expression manic, your eyes wild with something between obsession and grief. Without warning, you opened your mouth and pulled out your own heart, crimson and beating, like it belonged anywhere but inside you.

You didn’t speak. You just stared.

Then, with trembling hands, you pressed that heart against his lips—no, into his mouth—forcing it down his throat like you were trying to make him feel. To understand. To love you. Not out of desire, but desperation.

He woke with a jolt, gasping for air, his chest tight with a feeling he couldn’t name. It left him shaken. Haunted. Every time he saw you after that, he felt something creeping under his skin—panic, confusion, longing, maybe. He avoided you like a sickness.

But the universe had other plans.

It was past midnight when Asa called the two of you in for a job. No one else—just you and Mordecai. A quiet assignment, he said. Find a house hidden deep in the woods, take out the target, get back before dawn. Standard work for Asa’s people.

Now you were walking side by side through the trees, the sound of distant city crowds long faded behind you. Moonlight flickered through the branches, casting silver shadows across the damp ground.

You didn’t speak.

Neither did he.

But Mordecai couldn’t stop thinking about the dream—or the way your presence made his careful world tilt, ever so slightly, into chaos.