Page 88 of Take Me Darkly

I never once considered the possibility that I was surrendering my freedom for a danger that might not even exist.

I need air.

The thought hit me with sudden, terrifying force. I needed cold, open air to remind myself that a world existed beyond this place.

I let go of the glass serpent, turned on my heel, and walked out of the studio.

My feet moved before my judgment could catch hold of them. Panic and desperate need drove my steps. I used to love going for long walks. They helped me clear my head, and that was exactly what I needed at that moment.

I knew the building better than I’d let on. I knew which corridors had cameras keeping watch, and which staff doors let out toward the alley. I bypassed the main lobby, slipping down a narrow service corridor past the wine storage that led toward the private courtyard.

No one stopped me.

The high, weathered stone walls rose on either side, framing the long, cobblestone path that led to the massive wrought-iron gates at the perimeter.

I walked toward them, my heart hammering, arriving at the towering iron bars. I reached out, pressing my hands against the cold metal. The gates were locked tight, the residential street beyond quiet. In the distance, I could hear the Manhattan traffic—cabs honking, and people moving about their day living free lives—while I was a prisoner standing at the edge of the fence, looking through the bars.

Pushing through the one-way pedestrian gate, I paused when my gaze landed on the high stone pillar. Embedded within the masonry was a reinforced glass display casement.

I stopped breathing.

I knew this casement. I knew this drive, these gates, this exact stretch of ground beneath my feet. I’d stood here before. It seemed like a lifetime ago, the night I’d gone out walking in the dark, a woman alone in the city with no notion of what she was doing or where she was going. A man had come out of that same darkness.

That man had been Anton.

That night, he’d asked me what I saw in the statue. I’d been so moved and could hardly understand how an intricately carved piece of marble and blown glass could show me something about myself I wasn’t ready to see.

I saw it again now.

The woman stood inside the glass exactly as I remembered her, her head tipped back, one hand at her breast and the other buried between her thighs. Frozen in time was a pleasure she had claimed for only herself. And at her feet, rising to meet her, were my flames. Blue and orange, the blown glass was shaped into living fire.

The ground tilted under me.

I put my hand to the cold stone of the pillar the way I had that night, and this time it wasn’t wonder that moved through me but something colder and far harder to hold. Because I understood now what I hadn’t understood then. These were his gates. This was his club, his statue, and my flames set at the mouth of his private world. When I’d wandered up this same drive by chance, he had not been out for a casual stroll.

He had been standing at his own front door.

I recalled that night in vivid detail. Anton had listened as I explained the woman’s absolute surrender, and then he’d pressed me against the stone pillar and kissed me until I couldn’t breathe. I had believed it was fate. A serendipitous, magical encounter in a city of eight million people.

“There’s no such thing as luck, princess. Only fortunate circumstances.”

I looked up at the stone eave directly above the casement. Mounted in the shadows was a high-definition security camera, its dark lens pointed directly at the spot where I stood. Another camera sat above the main archway, and a third covered the perimeter wall.

My stomach churned with a wave of cold nausea.

The night I’d wandered up this drive, I had never once been alone. It wasn’t luck. He hadn’t found me by accident. He’d watched me arrive and had come for me. I should have known better. Everything in Anton’s world was controlled, monitored, and executed with ruthless precision. Our seemingly chance encounter was no different.

A coldness seeped into my bones despite the warm air. I could no longer tell where the truth of him ended and the lie began.

Was any of it real?

This should have felt like a betrayal, and a part of me insisted that it was. But considering everything I’d lost, and everything I still stood to lose, I wasn’t sure if it even mattered.

Questions multiplied, but the answers remained maddeningly elusive.

But one thing was certain.

I was no longer sure if I was living a life of my own making or merely playing my part in a masterfully scripted illusion.