Creed destruction, p.1
Creed: Destruction, page 1
part #2 of Confessions of Creed Series
Copyright © 2026 by Odessa Harlow
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 9798245232195
Contents
✩₊˚.⁺playlist ˚.⁺₊✧
☠︎author note☠︎︎
☠︎dedication☠︎
▶︎ TRANSCRIPT NEW YORK NEWS
1. CONFESSION 12
2. CONFESSION 13
3. CONFESSION 1
4. CONFESSION 14
5. CONFESSION 15
6. CONFESSION 16
7. CONFESSION 17
8. UNKNOWN
9. CONFESSION 18
10. CONFESSION 2
11. CONFESSION 19
☠︎thank you for reading☠︎
Songs That Inspired CREED: DESTRUCTION:
Constellations (Slowed) — Jade LeMac
Euclid — Sleep Token
Weeper — Blacklit Canopy Official
Skin and Bones — David Kushner
Wait — M83
Punisher — Phoebe Bridgers
Can't Pretend — Tom Odell
Beautiful Crime — Tamer
Dear reader,
I want to thank you for not only having read book one, Creed: Submission, but for wanting to continue this journey with me. I know I left you dangling from an infinite height with that cliffhanger…forgive me, it’s about to get worse.
I’m sorry. Know that I sobbed too.
⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖
If you’re reading this, this is your last chance to put this book down. There is nothing in these pages that won’t have you questioning who you were before Confessions of Creed. These books tell the harrowing, horrible, gut-wrenching confessions of a found family bonded by shared trauma. Their story is pitch-black and intended for adults only. Yes, there is romance, but it’s not soft or safe. You should expect emotional destruction, unflinching brutality, and messy, bittersweet endings that cut as deeply as they can heal.
Also, I hope you’ll take a few minutes to leave a written review if you finish any of Confessions of Creed. Word of mouth is the lifeblood of an author’s career. Every review matters, and your voice helps these confessions find their way into the hands of more readers. Thank you in advance.
These confessions were written in bulk, but after some thought, I decided to separate them into digestible chunks. Each confession typically runs on the longer side, revealing a very specific part of Arden Creed’s journey, which is why you’ll only find 11 confessions in this first book. The following will contain: rape and sexual assault; grooming and manipulation; heavy violence and gore; guns and weapons; torture; drug and alcohol use; psychological abuse; trauma bonding and obsession; death; self-destruction and suicidal ideation; forced abortion; and kidnapping. Please proceed with caution and always put your mental health first.
To the women forced toward rage:
cheers to the great escape.
May all the devils on earth burn.
⌖ Evidence #43: Transcript From New York News With Phillip Haroldson and Sadie Tiffins ⌖
Phillip Haroldson: This case has absolutely rocked New York City, and Sadie, I would even say the world, wouldn’t you?
Sadie Tiffins: You are right, Phillip. I’m, myself, still wrapping my head around it all. There’s been so much speculation online as to who these criminals are and why they’ve done what they did.
Phillip Haroldson: For those of you joining us live, we are talking, of course, about the individuals charged with mass terrorism. While the FBI, Homeland Security, and NYPD are now working in conjunction on the case, not much has publicly been revealed. We expect to get more details on the—ah, yes. Thank you. Here they are. A picture of our criminals. As you can see, they all have something in common, don’t they, Sadie?
Sadie Tiffins: They sure do, Phillip. They all seem to share a CREED tattoo. A gang, maybe?
Phillip Haroldson: Could be. But—what was that—excuse me. I’m sorry. We seem to be having some technical difficulties.
[MALE OVERLAPPING VOICES]
Phillip Haroldson: Yes! Get it down! Now. What do you mean you can’t stop it from playing?
[ARDEN CREED SCREAMING]
Sadie Tiffins: Oh my god.
⌖ Arden ⌖
FIVE MINUTES AFTER ENGAGEMENT
To the great escape, wife.
There was very little light in my childhood. What existed had to be made by hand, coaxed into being where none was meant to survive. It lived in stolen laughter and quiet alliances, and that phrase was part of it. Four words that greeted me at eighteen, in my first and only bedroom, carved into the headboard by some other kid from some other story of heartache. I traced over them nightly with all the hope I ever dared. I remember the grain of the wood beneath my fingers, the way the letters dipped where the knife had pressed harder, and the ritual of tracing them until sleep took me. They were a promise. A lifeline. But I also knew they were never fully mine. Those words, that hope, had been left by whoever owned that bedroom before I did. I believed them to be a hero, a person of great strength. Someone who no longer occupied that room because they had found that great escape.
I hadn't imagined this. Him. Alexander Creed.
Hearing them spoken aloud, lifted so easily from a Buyer’s mouth, was a violation. Alexander said them with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, too. His expression was tight despite his clear attempt at trying to be charming. I’d spent enough time with men trying to be as unreadable as stone to know that the creature calling me wife was far more ugly than he was presenting. I sat across from that beautiful, stern, terrifying man, and felt myself sealing shut piece by piece. For a handful of days after Leah died, I had let myself soften. I had forgotten how dangerous that was. With Rafe, I had laughed. With the others, I had felt almost unguarded. Freedom had brushed against me, brief and intoxicating.
And then it was gone, and I remembered what it took to survive.
A Creed’s wife, but not the one my body still reached for when I let my guard slip. I tried to pull myself inward, to remember what mattered, to fix my thoughts on survival and escape and the fire I owed my past, but Rafe’s face kept intruding. Putting on the ring—it would kill a sacred part of me. I knew it would. I could burn every devil I’d ever known and it still wouldn’t have made it bearable.
The fire behind Alexander had burned down to a low, sullen glow, smoke and brandy thickening the air as Monty, the woman who masqueraded as me, disappeared down the hall without a sound. The room felt staged now, emptied of witnesses, as if the world had narrowed itself to just the two of us. The ring rested in my palm, heavier than it had any right to be, its diamond catching the firelight in brief, sharp flashes that felt almost accusatory. I glared at it, then at him.
In that light Alexander looked like a villain pulled straight from the stories meant to warn hopeless romantics. I could picture him easily in the devil mask from the van. He was playing at nonchalance with the marriage offer and the drinks. I knew it the second he opened his mouth, and it was clear that he was slowly letting the charade fade away. I had always known evil by the way it announced itself, but Alexander unsettled me in a different way. There was no immediate revulsion. There was…pull, and it started with the tattoo inked in bold on his forearm: CREED. As he let all that charm he’d shown me fade away, I recognized that he carried himself like a gravestone weathered by decades of grief and reverence. One look in his stern gaze and it was as if he was promising that if I knelt and dug deep enough, I would find a history so dense and complicated that I’d be forced to honor it whether I wanted to or not.
But who he was didn’t matter when he had already told me what he was. This was a man who had purchased me, who had torn me from what little family I had left, who now stood between me and my freedom. Whatever poetry his surname and ink carried, whatever ghosts lingered behind the words he’d spoken, they were irrelevant. I refused to romanticize a cage. Alexander Creed was surely a monster, no different from the others who had shaped my past, and the ring in my hand was not a promise. It was a brand as sure as my DOLL tattoo.
I wish…I wish I’d known…Never mind.
“No,” I managed, my voice a strained, hoarse crack through the silence. That word had meant little at that point. Honestly, it’s surprising how long I used it for what little worth it held in my life, but I did. I tried to have choice, even just an illusion of it.
Alexander didn’t respond right away. He remained where he was, broad and unhurried beneath the clean lines of his suit. All of the charm, the nonchalance—it slid away until he was a hollow of the man who originally laid out his terms. As I expected. I was certain I was finally facing the real him. Firelight traced the angles of his jaw and collarbone, caught in the faint shadow of stubble and the gold chain resting at his throat. When his gaze finally lifted to mine, it was calm, almost thoughtful. “Very well.”
He picked up his phone from the table between us and brought it to his ear without breaking eye contact. I caught the low murmur of a voice on the other end and felt tension coil up my spine, panic pressing in sharp and sudden. “Are the trackers out?” he asked. There was a pause. Then his mouth curved with a grimace. “Kill the one you removed the tracker for. Leave the other two where Halden can find them.”
The world lurched. “What?” I pushed to my feet, the chair scraping back too loud in the stillness.
Alexander ended the call and typed a brief message before looking up at me again, his expression unchanged. “You have thirty seconds to reconsider.”
I knew this shape of violence. I had lived inside it for too long not to recognize the contours. Men like Viktor and Halden wrapped their cruelty in reason and inevitability, called it strategy so they wouldn’t have to name it for what it was. Alexander stood cut from the same cloth now, composed and distant while others did the killing at his command. The ring bit into my palm as my grip tightened, its edge sharp enough to ground me. My mind filled with the image of the van, of masked men and restraints. Of Rafe. Of Thorne and Kane, unconscious and helpless.
“You’re lying,” I whispered, even as the familiarity of the moment made me sick.
“No.” His voice remained infuriatingly steady. “You withdrew your consent. I’m responding accordingly.” He glanced at the screen of his phone. “Ten seconds.” He lifted his glass and took a slow sip, unbothered. “Tell me to send the message,” he said calmly, “and they live.”
“Send it,” I said, the words cutting their way out of me. There was no choice left to pretend at. Even in the presence of a man baring the mark of a Creed, I was still being pushed to the same edge I had lived on my entire life. Death had always hovered there, patient and familiar. Marriage was a small toll to pay to keep the people I loved breathing, and without anything to hold against Alexander, I didn’t have a lot of bargaining power. Besides, I had survived far worse than a diamond ring. I shoved it onto my finger, the metal cold and wrong, and lifted my hand toward him with clenched teeth. “I said: send it.”
His thumb moved across the screen. “Sit down, Mrs. Creed.”
I didn’t. I stayed where I was, spine straight, pulse steady. Nothing in this arrangement required obedience or grace. It didn’t demand softness or submission, and I refused to offer any. There was very little Alexander Creed could threaten that I hadn’t already endured, very little he could take that hadn’t been stripped from me long ago. I met his gaze without flinching. I wasn’t afraid of him, and I wouldn’t be.
He studied me for a moment before standing, setting his glass down with careful precision. “You don’t trust me,” he said. “I wouldn’t either.” There was no charm in it, no attempt to dress the words up. If anything, he sounded grim, almost worn down by the admission, and the shift unsettled me. The longer we stood in the same room, the more his facade seemed to erode, revealing something harder and more exhausted beneath it.
But I didn’t lower my guard. Men like him learned how to mirror darkness as easily as they learned how to weaponize charm. Either could be a lure. If Alexander was truly a Creed, if he had grown up on Viktor’s estate only to rise into the rank of a Buyer, then manipulation wasn’t just a skill; it was muscle memory. I couldn’t imagine how he’d convinced someone as insatiably greedy as Viktor to take him off the market and elevate him instead.
“You likely have questions,” he said, “and I’ll answer them, but if you’re anything like me, you won’t accept words without proof.” His gaze flicked to the expensive watch at his wrist. “Your room is down the hall. You have twenty minutes to change and make yourself presentable.”
I lifted my chin. “I’ll wear your ridiculous ring,” I said evenly. “But I’ll also wear what I have on.”
Alexander’s gaze moved over me with an unhurried thoroughness that set my nerves on edge. His expression didn’t change, but his eyes did, darkening. No one had ever looked at me like that before. It wasn’t hunger exactly. It was as if he knew he could consume me whenever he chose and didn’t feel the need to rush. But he didn’t know me. He didn’t know my love, or the way it hardened into something immovable when it was threatened. That devotion would never belong to a man who forced my hand.
“I would prefer not to touch you,” he said finally.
For a second, I wasn’t sure I heard him right. I swallowed, disoriented by the contradiction. He had bought me, pinned me in a van, bound my future with a ring, and now he was issuing commands about my body and my presentation. Buyers didn’t abstain. They didn’t draw lines. I hated that my life had trained me to expect rape as inevitability, hated that it felt like the only certainty in that stifling parlor with the fire snapping behind him and his gaze holding me in place, but that was my reality. It was…disturbing to hear him say otherwise. “And I would prefer to remain in clothes I’m comfortable in,” I said.
He exhaled slowly, the sound filling the space between us before he stepped past me, close enough that the heat of him brushed my arm. I went rigid. His voice was low when it reached my ear, rough with restraint. “You’ll shower because your body hasn’t rested in days, and I need you to relax,” he said. “Then you’ll dress because appearances matter to those we’re about to have dinner with, and I know you think defiance will make me want to release you from this contract, but I’m afraid there’s very little that would make me do that.” He paused. “Look at me, Arden.”
My jaw tightened, but I tilted my face up and met his gaze.
“You have twenty minutes,” he repeated. “If you aren’t ready, I’ll assume you’ve chosen defiance over your family, answers, true vengeance, and certain wealth. Only a fool would pass on that, and I don’t think you’re a fool…are you?”
The words lodged inside me like shrapnel. Family. Answers. Vengeance. Wealth. Every one of them pressed against a hunger I had never been allowed to indulge. I hated that he knew how to aim so precisely, and I hated even more that a part of me wanted those things badly enough to feel the hook. He wasn’t threatening violence; he was threatening erasure. The kind where doors close gently and permanently, where everything I had ever clawed toward remained just out of reach because I’d chosen pride over survival.
He turned away as if that settled it, and against my pride, I followed.
The hallway swallowed sound the farther we went, thick carpet muting my steps while his remained measured and unhurried ahead of me. The space itself seemed designed to guide me forward, the walls narrowing almost imperceptibly and the ceiling low. When he stopped, it was before a wide, unmarked door that blended seamlessly into the paneling. He opened it and stepped aside, allowing me through without touching me.
I noticed that immediately. He was manipulative, but he also seemed to uncharacteristically be a man of his word. He didn’t want to touch me. At least not yet. In fact, it seemed as if Alexander was acutely aware of space. He moved like someone who understood exactly how much room he took up and how easily he could take more. I stepped past him, skin tight, pulse steady only because I forced it to be, and wondered which unsettled me more, that he could touch me whenever he wanted or that he was proving he didn’t need to in order to get what he wanted.
The room he brought me to was large and dim, the same low warmth as the parlor clinging to it, but it didn’t feel safe or lived in. The bed sat in the middle, large and perfectly made. I’d slept in worse places, on harder floors, with far less promise of comfort, and yet this unsettled me more than any of them. Alexander closed the door behind us. My hair raised along my arms as he strode to the wardrobe and tugged it open, revealing glittering gowns and silks. My fingers shook as he opened a separate cabinet that housed several heels. Then he disappeared without a word into the bathroom. The rush of water roared to life, and he reappeared with a glance at his watch. “Fifteen minutes now. Meet me in the parlor.”
I sucked in a breath. “I…might need more time.”
He stopped in the threshold of the bedroom, meeting my gaze in the intense way he only seemed to be able to manage. “Why?”
I cleared my throat. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to shower or dress myself. It was more so that I hadn’t really done either in a long time. Aside from the bath at the penthouse, most of my life had been reduced to being hosed down at Halden’s compound or scrubbed raw by Leah at Viktor’s, cleanliness treated like maintenance instead of care. One glance at the running shower and the neat rows of soaps made heat creep up my neck, shame burning as I shifted where I stood, suddenly unsure what to do with my hands. Something about my silence must have given me away, because when I looked up, Alexander’s hard expression had softened.
