"You liar."
The word hadn't even finished echoing when—
Click.
Both of us froze.
Dante's eyes snapped toward the dark vent, his hand instinctively reaching for the holster at his hip.
Someone was there. Someone had seen it all.
Dante smiled slowly, as if reassured by something I couldn't see.
Outside, crouched in the crawlspace with a heartbeat as steady as a stone, Sterling adjusted his earpiece.
He tapped his comms twice. A signal.
Sterling whispered, "sir, Dante has her....And I think he knows he's been watched."
Before I could process the shadow in the vent, the world went black again.
A heavy, sudden blow—then nothing.
I woke with a gasp, the air in my lungs feeling like ice.
My first instinct was to move, but a sharp clink stopped me dead. I looked down, and my breath hitched.
My wrists and ankles were bound by heavy, polished steel chains, anchored to the four corners of a massive, velvet-draped bed.
I looked around the room, and my blood turned to ash.
