Page 93 of Take Me Darkly

Nothing.

Anton’s amethyst pendant—the tracker he had begged me never to take off—was sitting on the bathroom counter upstairs. I’d unclasped it to shower, too consumed by my own emotional pain to put it back on.

I began to reach around to my back pocket for my cell phone only to remember that I had deliberately left it behind, not wanting the distraction. I didn’t want a text from Anton or Zeke or anyone else who might tell me to turn around. Just this once, I had wanted to be alone.

Now I had no lifeline.

No digital beacon.

No one was coming to save me, because not a single soul on earth knew I was standing outside these gates.

Briana was still talking, her lips moving in a blur of empty noise, but I stopped processing the words. I caught her gaze flick—just a fraction of a millimeter—past my right shoulder.

She was looking at something directly behind me.

I realized what was happening a second too late.

Just as I planted my foot to sprint, an explosion of white-hot agony detonated against the base of my skull, massive and blinding. The ground rushed up, the world spinning out of control.

The last thing I saw before the blackness took me was the woman in the glass, trapped in her eternal fire.

Then everything went dark.

Chapter Thirty

Anton

* * *

I don’t remember crossing the courtyard. One second I was staring at her blank sketchbook lying under the harsh glare of an industrial light, and the next I was tearing back through the rear security doors of the club. My lungs were on fire. My heart slammed against my ribs so violently I could feel the pulse vibrating in my teeth.

Gone. She was gone.

The sheer, sickening weight of it crashed over me. I’d known something was wrong—that was the agonizing thought that would systematically eat me alive. I’d stood in the apartment earlier this morning and watched her rebuild every single wall I’d spent the night tearing down. I’d watched her answer me in clipped, half-sentences, her eyes glued to the floor. I had read every warning sign, and I had done absolutely nothing. I’d let her walk out because I decided she’d earned space after everything I’d unloaded on her.

But I hadn’t looked at the one detail that truly mattered.

Her throat had been bare.

The custom-cut amethyst pendant—the beacon I’d fastened around her neck and made her swear she’d never take off—had been missing. I’d been too wrapped up in the aftermath of my own dark confession to notice she’d walked out of my sight entirely stripped of my protection.

I hit the command center at a dead run, slamming the heavy door back against the wall so hard the frame shuddered.

“Cameras!” I snarled, the sound raw, primal, and stripped of all humanity. “All of them. Now!”

Zeke didn’t ask a single question. His fingers were already a frantic blur across his board, the massive display grid on the wall fracturing into two dozen live feeds. Corridors, thresholds, stairwells, and alleyways strobed past faster than a human eye could process. Hale seized the second console without a word. Greyson planted his massive frame at the far station, his jaw set into a rigid line as he dragged raw data feeds across his screen.

“Interior’s clean,” Zeke bit out, his tone clipped and laced with rising panic. “She’s not on any interior feed. Not the private lift, not the main corridors, not the studio approach. Nothing.”

“Then she’s outside those areas! Find her, Zeke!”

“There are no cameras in the play spaces and none inside the residence, Anton! If she moved through a blind spot⁠—”

“Find her!” I roared, stepping closer, every nerve ending in my body screaming with a lethal, desperate promise.

The minutes stretched into pure, unadulterated torture, the sheer helplessness clawing at my throat. I stood behind them, my hands clenching and unclenching at my sides. I’d built an impenetrable fortress precisely so this exact nightmare could never manifest. Now I was being forced to watch my own screens tell me I’d failed the only woman who mattered.

“Here.” Greyson’s authoritative voice sliced through the room. “Perimeter camera four. The front drive.”