Page 1 of Take Me Darkly

Chapter One

Anton

* * *

The devil lived in a church, and I was him.

I’d built my empire on the bones of the sacred, transformed a house of God into a playground for the damned, and convinced myself it was justice. But as I stood in the shadows of what had once been a sanctuary, with the woman who had become my world hidden from those who wanted to kill her, I wondered if this quiet torment was my retribution.

I’d finally found something pure in this wicked world, only to taint it with my touch.

Before me stretched an arched stained-glass window, its rich crimson and sapphire hues distorting Manhattan at dusk. Just a few stories below, New York’s nightlife was beginning to flex its claws. The commuters had long since caught their trains, making way for the endless pulse of a city that never truly slept.

But up here, in the former attic space of an old French Evangelical Church, I felt only the suffocating crush of my own helplessness.

My converted sanctuary sat above Club O, the elite members-only club I’d established a decade ago. It was a relic of my past life, kept even after acquiring the uptown penthouse. Inside, soaring cathedral ceilings met exposed brick and dark, lustrous paneling. Restored oak beams cut across clear and stained Gothic arches. The design preserved a holy skeleton yet fully embraced the ruthless luxury I had clawed out of the gutter.

More importantly, it was a vault—an impenetrable fortress hidden in plain sight from the rest of the world.

The apartment was accessible only through a private elevator from exclusive club below. Club O was locked down tight, with every public area monitored by cameras and guards who would die before letting harm come to the woman napping in the room just down the hall from where I stood.

My princess.

I’d brought Serena here not just to heal her shattered body, but to disappear—to become a ghost that her enemies couldn’t find while I hunted the bastards who’d tried to kill her.

For all its luxury, this private apartment felt hollow now. It was supposed to be a retreat from the world below—from the club’s activities, from the weight of my empire, from the darkness I’d emerged from to build all of this. Now it served as something else entirely: a prison where I maintained careful distance from the woman whose mother I’d failed to protect.

Seven days.

It had been seven days since I’d swept Serena away from the burning wreckage of her life in Italy. Seven days since I’d watched her mother’s house become a funeral pyre. Seven days since I’d felt her scream against my chest while her world went up in flames. Seven days since a sniper’s bullet tore through her soft shoulder, her warm blood soaking through my shirt as her body went limp in my arms. Seven days since I’d failed to protect the woman who’d somehow become everything to me.

I pressed my palm against the cool colored glass, my reflection staring back at me—hollow black eyes, sharp cheekbones made sharper by exhaustion, revealing the kind of darkness that no number of expensive suits could hide.

Below, Club O was stirring to life. The catacombs that had once held the dead now housed my most exclusive private rooms. The basement that had been Jerry’s den of horrors was now The Dungeon—a place of consensual pleasure rather than exploitation. The main floor, where French Evangelicals had once preached abstinence and virtue, now welcomed the world’s most powerful elite to indulge the dark desires they dared not whisper elsewhere.

But up here in my solitude, I plotted and schemed and tried to keep the only pure thing in my life safe from the devils that wanted her dead.

My phone buzzed against the desk, a sound sharp enough to cut through the oppressive quiet. Zeke’s name appeared on the screen. He was my oldest friend, my bodyguard, and most trusted ally—and he was the only person who knew all my secrets and still chose to stand by my side.

I swiped the screen and brought the phone to my ear, skipping pleasantries. “Tell me you have something.”

“Hello to you, too, boss.” Zeke’s tone was carefully neutral, but I could hear the exhaustion in it. He’d been running on cold caffeine and adrenaline since we’d left Italy and arrived in New York, pulling every string and calling in every favor. “I’ve got updates, but they’re not all good news.”

I sank into the leather chair behind my desk, surrounded by the trappings of power and success that suddenly felt meaningless.

“Give me everything.”

“The Italian authorities are stonewalling. Every inquiry we’ve made has been met with bureaucratic delays or outright refusal to share information. It’s not incompetence. Someone very powerful doesn’t want this investigated.”

“Fuck.” The word scraped out as a guttural growl, and my jaw clamped tight enough to grind enamel. I’d expected resistance, but the complete shutdown suggested something far worse than I’d anticipated. “What about our other channels, like Hale Fulton?”

“Fulton’s contacts in Europe hit the same brick walls. But we did get something interesting from the forensics team I hired privately.” Zeke paused, and I heard papers rustling. “The accelerant used on Sylvia’s house wasn’t random. Waiting on test results to confirm, but we suspect it was military-grade thermite. It melts steel and erases DNA in seconds. Whoever ordered the hit has deep pockets and serious resources.”

My fist slammed against the desk, the impact echoing through the apartment. “And the shooter?”

“Professional. High-powered Dragunov rifle, perfect positioning, clean getaway. If you hadn’t gotten Serena out of there when you did...” He let the sentence hang, but we both knew how it would have ended.

He didn’t need to finish the thought. I’ll never forget the way Serena had looked that night, standing in the street, her face illuminated by the flames consuming everything she’d ever loved. The memory tore through me—the terrifying crack of the rifle echo across the hills, the sudden violent jerk of her body, the searing heat of her blood against my skin.