The elevator doors slide shut behind me. I’ve arranged that no other suite on this level will be used tonight, and other than me, only a handful of trusted staff can get up here.
I left her with instructions to order room service and eat. I’ve arranged for my head housekeeper to buy enough clothes to last her until I know it’s safe for her to leave the hotel.
I drag my fingers over my lips where I can still taste her. I can still feel the scratch her nails down my back, the way her body clenched around me like she was made for me and didn’t know it until tonight.
And it does something to me. Something I wasn’t prepared for.
My darkness has always been a tool. Sharp. Controlled. Calculated. But now it coils beneath my skin like a living thing, restless and hungry. It doesn’t slink quietly into the corners like I used to be able to make it do. Instead, it expands. It presses against my ribs, prowling, alert, electric.
Because she saw me and let me inside her. Needed me inside her. Because the darkness in me proved something to her. Awoke something inside her.
And now the part of me designed to destroy is desperate in a way it hasn’t been in years.
I descend floor by floor, deeper into the guts of my hotel and casino. Each passing second feeds the fire sparking through myveins. My men stand straighter when I pass them in the hall. They can feel it too. The shift, the storm, the gravity of what I’ve become.
I’m not angry.
No. Anger is hot. Loud. Reckless.
This is colder. Sharper. Focused like the edge of a blade honed for one purpose.
Kane.
The doors open onto the lowest of the basement levels. The air here is cooler. Denser. Soundless except for the low hum of ventilation. My boots echo on the polished concrete as I walk the corridor lined with locked steel doors, each one thick enough to muffle a scream.
Door seven is open.
Damian waits outside, disinterest written over his face as he thumbs the screen of his phone. He’s my best man, practically family, since we were raised pretty much alongside each other. When he glances up briefly, something flickers in his gaze. Recognition.
Of what I am now. Of what happens when the wrong man touches the right woman.
"Boss," he says quietly. "He’s waiting."
Waiting. As if this is simply business.
Itwasbusiness. Before Jasmine. Before I felt the tremor in her breath when she came apart beneath me. Before her kiss rearranged something fundamental inside me and marked her as mine in a way even I can’t rationalise.
Now this is personal.
My darkness stretches, licks its teeth.
I step inside the room, and the door closes behind me with a heavy click that echoes like a final judgment. The space is stark, concrete walls painted gray, a single bulb hanging overhead casting sharp shadows across the floor. Kane sits strapped to a metal chair in the center, his face already a mess of bruises and dried blood from the rough handling my men gave him during the pickup.
His eyes lift to mine, wild and desperate, but there's no recognition yet. He doesn’t know why he’s here, only that he crossed the wrong path tonight.
"Adrik Korolyov," he rasps, his voice cracking like brittle glass. Sweat beads on his forehead, mixing with the blood trickling from a small graze. "Whatever this is, we can talk it out. I work for the Iron Serpents. They’ll come looking."
I circle him slowly, my footsteps deliberate, each one pulling the air tighter around us. The darkness inside me hums now, a low vibration that steadies my pulse and sharpens my focus. I stop in front of him, hands loose at my sides, and tilt my head slightly.
"We both know that means nothing to me. But you, Kane, you crossed my path in the worst possible way."
His brows furrow, confusion twisting his swollen features. He shifts against the restraints, the chair creaking under his weight.
"What are you talking about? I don’t know you. I haven’t done anything to you."
I lean in closer, close enough to smell the fear seeping from his pores, sour and thick.
My voice drops low, calm, almost conversational. "Jasmine Boothe. You remember her? The woman you beat. The one you hunted like an animal through this city. The one you put a price on."
