Page 80 of Take Me Darkly

I held her gaze, demanding that she see the killer inside me. “I wanted to do it, Serena. God help me, I wanted to watch him die with a hunger that consumed me.”

“Did you?” she breathed, her voice barely audible.

“No. I put the packet back into the wall. Even at fourteen, a quiet voice whispered that if I used his poison to murder him, I would become the exact monster he was trying to create. So, I left the packet behind, walked out the rear door into the freezing winter night, and never looked back.”

A long, shuddering exhale escaped her lips.

I needed to move. The air in the apartment felt suddenly suffocating, the room too small to hold the weight of my past. I pushed off the sofa and began to pace the length of the polished floor.

“You saved yourself,” Serena said, turning her body to track me.

“No, princess,” I countered, turning to face her. “That wasn’t saving myself. That was pure, feral survival. There’s a massive difference.”

“Where did you go?”

“I need a drink before I finish this.”

I crossed to the dark marble bar cart, picking up the crystal decanter. I poured two fingers of small-batch bourbon, then added a third. My hands were shaking—a subtle, infuriating tremor that made the glass clink against the crystal spout.

I stared at my hands and hated them.

Weak. That was the word Jerry would scream at me whenever my fingers fumbled with the rubber tubing.

My jaw locked, a dark surge of power roaring back through my blood. I had built a multi-billion-dollar empire out of ash and algorithms, yet a single memory of that dead man could still make my hands tremble like a terrified boy’s.

I pressed my palms flat against the cold marble until the tremor vanished, then carried the glass back to the sofa. Serena didn’t hesitate. She shifted, tucking her body flush against my side, her shoulder resting beneath mine, offering her heat without asking for permission.

I took a slow, burning swallow of the bourbon.

“After I escaped, I roamed the streets of Manhattan for a week or so,” I said, the alcohol burning a trail down my throat. “Sleeping in subways, digging through commercial dumpsters for food, until Zeke found me in an alley behind a strip club.”

“Zeke. As in, the overprotective, doesn’t-let-me-move-without-him-knowing Zeke?”

“The very same.” I smiled, feeling a genuine warmth ease the tension in my chest. “He possessed the exact same lethal awareness he carries today. He didn’t chase me off or treat me like trash. He bought me two greasy cheeseburgers, sat on an overturned crate, and patiently coaxed my story out of me. I don’t know why I trusted him—I hated everyone—but I laid it all out. When I finished, expecting pity or disgust, Zeke just finished his coffee, looked me dead in the eye, and said, ‘You’re done running, kid.’”

“Did he take you in?”

“He took me to his employer—Vincent Cross,” I explained, rotating the heavy glass between my fingers. “Vincent was a legendary underground poker player, hosting games in the basement of the strip club. High-stakes, dark money, dangerous men. I stayed because the environment felt familiar, even if it was a world apart from Jerry’s house of horror. Vincent only let me stay in the shadows of his games at first—running errands, fetching scotch, emptying ashtrays. He kept me around because Zeke vouched for my silence. I spent six months studying those tables. One night, after a massive hand, I whispered to Vincent that the whale at the center table was bluffing. He asked how I could possibly know. I told him I’d mapped the man’s physical ticks and betting ratios over three hours. That’s when Vincent realized I didn’t see the cards—I saw mathematical patterns.”

“The numbers,” Serena murmured. “You once told me that you were good at numbers.”

“Exactly. Vincent tested me on odds, probabilities, and card counting. My brain processed the data faster than a computer. Within a year, I was guiding his play from the back of the room. When his winnings grew too large, he taught me how to move dark cash through offshore shell companies. I spent six years laundering money, eventually earning a fortune of my own. During that time, I learned what it was like to wake up and not be afraid. It was the first peace I’d ever known.”

“How long did it last?”

“Until I turned twenty-three,” I said, taking another deep swallow. “I was managing Vincent’s books while aggressively investing my own capital into early cryptocurrency algorithms before most people even knew what crypto was. I’d turned a few thousand dollars into millions, keeping every cent hidden. I was a street rat who had built an impenetrable wall around his life. I never visited the old neighborhood, never looked back. I thought Jerry Arnold was a ghost... until a Tuesday night in Midtown.”

“What happened?”

“I was leaving a game that had gone late, heading out through the rear alley. I heard a struggle,” I said, my voice hardening. “A man was yelling, and a woman was crying. I should have kept walking—that was the rule in our world. But I knew the precise, wet sound of a fist breaking human bone.”

Serena’s grip on my knee tightened as the memory surged forward, raw and violent.

The alley is drenched in rain, the yellow streetlights reflecting off greasy pavement. I don’t consciously choose to intervene; my body moves on raw, predatory instinct. I grab the man by the collar of his leather jacket, hauling him backward off the woman, and slam his spine into the exposed brick wall.

My fist connects with his jaw before he can even draw breath. The crack of bone reverberating up my arm fuels a dark, feral rage that has been caged for nine years.

I don’t stop. I can’t stop.