Page 87 of Take Me Darkly

Then dawn broke, and the light exposed the terrifying reality beneath our sanctuary.

Anton killed a man.

I turned the truth over in my mind, examining it like a piece of fractured pottery, as if staring long enough would reveal every secret. I thought about the body entombed in concrete underneath the floor of the Dungeon—the very floor I’d been walking over for weeks. The empathy I’d felt last night for the boy was still there. It had simply grown a second face in the daylight, and that face brought all kinds of confusion. I didn’t know how to square both.

I shut off the water. Stepping out, I wiped the condensation from the mirror. The amethyst pendant lay on the edge of the marble vanity where I’d left it, its diamonds winking under the recessed lighting. I dried myself, slipping into Anton’s heavy terry-cloth robe because it smelled of him, leaving the panic device sitting on the marble. I needed a single hour where I wasn’t reminded of targets, bullets, and criminals. I would clasp it on when I dressed.

I stepped quietly into the dim bedroom, the thick drapes drawn tight against the morning light.

Anton stood near the foot of the bed, already fully dressed in a crisp white dress shirt and dark slacks. His broad shoulders were framed against a thin ribbon of gray dawn slipping through the curtains. His intoxicating scent—sandalwood, leather, and raw heat—reached me before he even moved, and my traitorous body responded instantly, a low, liquid warmth pooling in my belly.

He turned at the soft rustle of my robe. His dark, onyx eyes locked onto mine, searching my face with intense, razor-sharp focus. “You woke early, princess.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” I lied quietly.

It was a seamless deception. I had slept—curled flush against his chest, anchored by his heavy arm, sleeping more peacefully than I had since the fire in Lucca. And that was the source of my agony. I’d slept like a baby in the arms of a man who had committed murder, untroubled by the rotting bones beneath the floor.

His gaze moved over me, taking in the robe and my wet hair. I felt the questions gathering in him before he spoke, but I didn’t want to talk about last night—about his confession. I needed more time to process it.

I turned away before he could read the turmoil in my eyes, crossing to the dresser to grab my clothes.

“Serena.” His voice was a low, rough rasp.

“I’m going to work in the glass studio today.” I said, keeping my back turned as I pulled a drawer open. “I have a piece I want to finish, and I like to keep my hands busy. It was nice feeling like me again.”

That much, at least, was true.

I felt the immense, heavy gravity of his presence behind me, the unspoken words thick enough to choke on. For a brief, desperate second, my mind darted to our safeword.

Denaro.

He had promised that if he pushed too hard, a single word would make him step back instantly. But he wasn’t pushing—he was simply standing there, bleeding silently, waiting for my judgment. And I didn’t possess the answers he needed.

I pulled on dark jeans, a simple black top, and my flat boots, dressing quickly to shield myself from his gaze.

“I’ll walk you down,” he offered, his baritone laced with leashed tension.

“You don’t have to.” I turned to face him then, my chest aching at the sudden distance between us, hating how desperately a part of me still wanted to throw myself into his arms. “I know the way well enough.”

Something dark and pained flickered across his sharp features before he locked his mask back into place.

Placing a quick kiss to his lips, I headed out the door to the private lift. The iron cage descended in quiet, rhythmic hums. The club was all but silent at that hour, wrapped in the strange civility it always wore during the day. A female staff member crossed the far corridor holding a tablet, and a guard near the security hub offered a brief, respectful nod that I returned without stopping.

I slipped into the glassblowing studio, the heavy double doors thudding shut, locking me inside the high-tech sanctuary Anton had built for me.

The dry, mineral heat of the standby furnace met me, but the room offered zero comfort today. My chest felt constricted, a suffocating weight pressing down on my lungs. I walked over to the annealer, opening the small viewing port to look inside.

Rimasta rested on the insulated floor, the amber glass serpent glowing softly as it cooled. I reached out, opening the main door, and let my bare fingers trace the cool, smooth spiral of the glass cobra. Touching my art usually anchored my mind, but today, the glass edges only magnified the bleeding ache in my chest.

Even this incredible studio was a gilded cage.

For a while, I’d let myself believe I could be okay here. Anton had given me the studio and had brought Cat and Madeleine to me at a moment when I desperately needed a familiar face. He’d tried so hard to build a whole architecture of normal around a life that was anything but. It had worked for a while. It truly had.

But this morning, none of it reached me. The walls had been closing in for weeks, one patient inch at a time, and they had finally reached the pinch point. The studio was still just another room with a locked door, and I knew we couldn’t go on like this.

It had been weeks since the shooting in Lucca. Weeks of isolation, paranoia, and Zeke’s armed guards trading shifts. Yet, no cartels had stormed the gates. No snipers had taken aim.

What if the threat is gone?