Dane's POV :
"Does the Black Ledger know about any of this? Smuggling girls? What the fuck is wrong with you?" I snarl.
The words scrape out of my throat raw, louder than I intend.
The room smells like old wood polish and iron. Something metallic lingers beneath it — blood, maybe, or the faint ghost of it soaked into the floorboards over time.
The pinks and yellows can't possibly hide the stench of it.
Of his sins.
The windows are tall but narrow, sunlight cutting through them in pale, surgical stripes that divide the room into bands of brightness and shadow.
Dust drifts lazily in those beams, calm in a way that feels obscene.
The Commander glances around, slow and measured, like he's calculating angles rather than exits.
The house is too high in the hills for anyone to hear anything.
The drive up had twisted along a cliffside road carved from pale stone, the valley yawning below like an open mouth.
No neighbors.
No traffic.
Just expensive isolation.
