Page 23 of Reign

One word, almost pleading. So I walk.

Backward at first, because I can’t look away from Angelo’s gun. From Adriana’s hands on his face. From Santo’s ruined expression. From Luca and Nico standing in a silence that feels like grief with teeth.

From the table where my birthday dessert melts untouched beside a truth no one can put back into the book.

Riot turns me gently but firmly, guiding me toward the elevator. His body stays between mine and theirs the entire time.

The elevator dings behind us.

Santo’s voice cuts through the room. “I want the book.”

Even now. Even after everything. My throat burns. I want to scream at him again. I want to tell him he can have the estate, the library, the locked doors, the memories, the years.

But he cannot have this too.

Riot’s arm tightens around me, and I know if I open my mouth, I won’t stop.

So I let him pull me into the elevator.

The last thing I see before the doors close is Adriana still holding Angelo’s face like she can keep him from becoming something he’ll regret.

The doors slide shut. The room disappears.

And the second we’re alone, my armor cracks straight down the middle.

Chapter 5

Luciano

Obsidian belongs to me now.

It still feels strange to think that.

I wanted it.

I wanted every black-glass wall, every private room, every inch of velvet and low amber light. I wanted the silence in the halls, the discretion at the door, the kind of privacy powerful people pay obscene amounts of money to believe in.

Obsidian was never just a sex club. Any idiot with money can open one of those.

It was built by men who understood control the same way I do: negotiated, offered, chosen, bound by rules and a safeword that matters more than pride.

Six friends owned it before me. They trusted me enough to sell when they moved on to something new in Nevada—or knew I would eventually wear them down.

Both are probably true.

Every room. Every secret. Every locked door is now mine to reshape.

And tonight, for the first time, I walk through it as the only man who gets to decide what happens next.

Zephyr Blackwell lounges in the wide leather chair like sin learned manners. His smile is charming, warm, already dark with hunger.

Throne Kingston stands near the St. Andrew’s cross with his shirt open and his eyes cold enough to cut. He doesn’t soften a room. He sharpens it.

I sit on the edge of the heavy table, sleeves rolled to my forearms, silent.

Watching.

Learning the pulse of the place I now own.