She never left her phone behind.
I stood frozen, blood roaring in my ears. Her scent still clung to the room—warm, soft, faintly sweet. But she was gone.
I pulled out my own phone, thumb flying across the screen.
No messages.
No missed calls.
No notes.
No fucking explanation.
The walls closed in like a vice. I could feel the breath punching out of my lungs as the realization took root.
She left me.
She didn’t tell me.
She said she wouldn’t do this.
My fists clenched at my sides.
“She promised,” I whispered.
I turned back to the bed. The sheets I’d tangled her in. The place where she’d come apart for me again and again. Where I thought she’d finally given herself over.
It was supposed to be ours.
Safe.
Sacred.
And now it mocked me.
“Who the fuck did she go to?” My voice dropped to a growl, rough and venomous.
My jaw locked. Rage bubbled in my throat, thick and heavy. I didn’t know if I wanted to hunt her down or burn the whole world trying.
Because this wasn’t just betrayal.
This was theft.
And whoever took her?
They were going to learn the hard way?—
You didn’t touch what was mine.
Chapter 27
Seph
The rooftop bar loomed ahead, skeletal and quiet beneath the bruised dusk sky. Wind curled around the crumbling brick, tugging at my clothes like a warning I didn’t want to hear. I swallowed hard and stepped through the rusted entry, boots scraping over broken tile, the scent of rain and old smoke lingering in the air like ghosts.
Every part of this felt wrong.
The empty silence. The setting sun bleeding across the rooftop. The fact that I’d come here without my phone, without backup, without Hades knowing.
