"The keycard used to bypass the residential wing protocols..." Dante swallows hard. "It belonged to Maria."
My blood turns to liquid nitrogen.
Maria. The housekeeper. The woman who practically raised me after my mother died. The woman who just an hour ago wastrembling in front of Sybil, claiming she was terrified of my wrath.
She opened the door. She let the blade into my home.
"Secure her," I order, my voice a dead, demonic whisper that makes Sybil flinch on the bed. "Put her in the basement. Do not let anyone touch her. I will handle her myself."
I cut the connection before Dante can reply.
I drop the phone onto the nightstand. The silence in the bunker is absolute.
Sybil is staring at me, her blue eyes wide with a mixture of terror and desperate curiosity. She can read the catastrophic shift in my posture. She knows the war just breached the final wall.
"Who was it?" she whispers.
I look down at her. The woman my own people are trying to butcher. The woman I am going to burn the world to protect.
"It doesn't matter," I lie smoothly, the deception necessary to keep her from completely shattering. I will not tell her that the only other woman in this compound just tried to have her murdered. "The threat is contained."
I step out of my ruined leather shoes. I pull the dark tie from my neck, tossing it onto a chair, followed by my suit jacket. I unbutton my dress shirt, pulling it off my shoulders, exposing the heavy, dark ink of the Syndicate tattoos and the rigid, tightly coiled muscles of my chest and arms.
Sybil stops breathing entirely. She watches me undress with a wide, mesmerized stare, completely unable to look away from the sheer physical power of the monster in her room.
I unbuckle my belt, letting it hit the concrete floor with a heavyclack, and strip down to my dark boxer briefs.
I walk to the control panel on the wall near the bed. I press my palm against the biometric scanner.
A heavy, mechanicalslamechoes through the bunker. It is the sound of the main steel doors locking down completely. The magnetic seals engage. The external override is disabled.
No one is coming in. And we are not going out.
I turn back to the bed. I slide beneath the heavy charcoal duvet, the mattress dipping significantly under my weight.
Sybil instantly scuttles backward, pressing her spine against the massive steel headboard, her eyes frantic.
"What are you doing?" she gasps.
"The perimeter is compromised," I state methodically, shifting my large body into the center of the bed, completely cutting off her route of escape. "The compound is no longer a safe zone."
"But... but we are in the bunker," she stammers, pulling her knees tighter to her chest. "The door is locked."
"Exactly," I murmur, my pale gray eyes locking onto hers, burning with an intense, unyielding obsession. I reach out, my large hand wrapping securely around her ankle over the fabric of her leggings. I don't pull her, but the grip is an absolute, physical anchor.
"The monster is no longer at the door, Sybil," I whisper, the dark promise hanging heavy in the sterile air. "He is in the bed. And you are never sleeping alone again."
CHAPTER 9 THE MONSTER'S REFLECTION POV: SYBIL
I wake up to the absolute, suffocating silence of the underground.
There is no rain lashing against glass, no distant thunder, no subtle creak of a massive house settling on its foundation. The bunker is a sensory deprivation chamber, a concrete and steel vault entirely severed from the living, breathing world above.
I open my eyes, my lashes heavy and thick with sleep. The room is submerged in a dim, artificial twilight. I am lying in the center of the massive, dark steel bed, buried under the heavy charcoal duvet.
I reach out my hand, my fingers blindly seeking the opposite side of the mattress.
It is completely empty. The dark sheets are cold to the touch, but the deep, intoxicating scent of cedarwood, dark musk, and danger still clings desperately to the fabric.
