The air in the ballroom of Le Gouffre grew so cold it felt like it might shatter. Lysander Croft, paralyzed and cornered, looked at his own guards—the men I had just bought with a single billion-dollar wire transfer.
A twisted, manic laugh erupted from his throat. It was a hollow sound, devoid of sanity.
"You always were too smart for your own good, Elara," Lysander hissed, his skeletal fingers trembling over the armrest of his wheelchair. "You think buying my guards wins you the game? This isn't a boardroom. This is a graveyard."
Darius's hand tightened on the hilt of his concealed blade, his body coiled like a panther ready to strike. "Enough talking, Lysander. You're coming with us."
"Am I?" Lysander's eyes flashed with a terrifying light. He pressed a hidden button on his armrest. "If I can't rule Europe from my chair, I'll rule it from hell!"
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The sound was faint, coming from beneath the gilded floorboards. My medical instincts screamed. Explosives.
"Darius! Get down!" I shrieked.
BOOM!
The foundation of the ballroom buckled. Massive crystal chandeliers plummeted from the ceiling, shattering like diamond rain. Fire tore through the velvet curtains, and the elite guests—the monsters of the world—scrambled like rats in a flooded cellar.
In the chaos, Lysander's wheelchair deployed a specialized magnetic lift, whisking him upward toward a hidden extraction hatch in the ceiling.
"You won't leave Paris alive!" his voice echoed through the smoke.
Darius didn't look at the fleeing Architect. He didn't look at the fire. He lunged through the falling debris, his massive body shielding mine just as a support beam collapsed where I had been standing a second ago.
He slammed me against a stone pillar, pinning me there as the world around us burned. His tuxedo was torn, and a streak of blood ran down his temple, but his dark eyes were fixed on me with a terrifying, obsessive clarity.
"Are you hurt?" he roared over the sound of the inferno.
"I'm fine!" I gasped, coughing through the smoke. "But he's getting away!"
"Let him run," Darius growled, his voice a lethal promise. "He just turned this into a hunt. And I am the best hunter in this world."
He scooped me up in his arms, ignoring the flames licking at his sleeves. We were sixty feet underground, and the main elevators were already melted scrap metal.
"Dante! Status!" Darius barked into his earpiece.
"Boss! The entire block above you is rigged! You have two minutes before the structural collapse! I'm sending the extraction drone to the service shaft!"
Darius started running. He moved with a speed that defied his size, dodging falling masonry and bursts of scalding steam. We reached the service shaft just as the first drone lowered a high-speed cable.
Darius strapped me into the harness, his hands trembling—not from fear, but from the raw, violent adrenaline of nearly losing me.
"Go," he commanded, hooking himself to the secondary line.
As we were winched upward, the ballroom below us vanished in a final, massive explosion. The shockwave rattled my teeth, but Darius's arm was around my waist, an unbreakable iron band.
We burst through a hidden manhole cover in the middle of a rain-slicked Parisian street. The cold air hit my face, a stark contrast to the hell we had just escaped.
Darius landed beside me, his breathing ragged. He ignored the sirens in the distance and pulled me into a crushing embrace, his mouth finding mine in a kiss that tasted of ash, blood, and a desperate, primal relief.
He pulled back, his thumb swiping the soot from my cheek.
"He tried to burn you," Darius whispered, his voice dropping to a register of pure, unadulterated evil. "Tonight, Elara, the Shadow Council learns what happens when you touch the Queen of the Underworld."
He turned to Dante, who had arrived with a fleet of black SUVs.
"Track the Architect's signal. I don't care if he's in a bunker under the Swiss Alps," Darius ordered. "Bring me my tactical gear. And Elara—"
He looked back at me, a dark smirk playing on his lips.
"Bring your best scalpels. We're going to finish the surgery you started three years ago."