Chapter 2
Dahlia
T he smell hits me first.
Leather. Oil. The faintest trace of something metallic—blood? No. Don’t go there.
I come to in darkness. Cramped, my arms twisted painfully behind my back, wrists bound tight with some kind of zip cord. There’s a gag in my mouth—thick, padded, invasive. My jaw aches.
I try to scream, but it’s strangled. Pathetic.
My face presses into something plush and cold. The thrum of a car engine vibrates under my cheek, and the realization slams into me like a bullet train. The shadow looming toward me, the leather-clad hand holding the dark cloth.
I’m in the trunk of a car.
I’ve been kidnapped.
A garbled sound pushes against the gag. Had it escaped, I’m sure it would sound a cross between laughter and shocked tears. Hystericry .
In a way I’m glad I don’t get to hear it because…
No. No, no. No .
This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.
I’ve always been careful. Always five steps ahead. No paper trail. No biometric residue. Every signal bounced through so many proxies it would take a government weeks to catch up. And yet—here I am.
Tied up. Silenced. On my way to what… being disappeared?
Who the fuck did this? Who has the tech—no, the nerve —to turn my own heist on me?
My mind flashes through possibilities like a Rolodex on fire. The Vesper Syndicate? That slimeball senator I bankrupted last month? Maybe it’s?—
Like acid rain, everything I’ve learned of the owner of Obsidian both on and off the Dark Web drizzles through my mind.
And with each recollection, panic claws at my throat, but I force it down.
Think, Dahlia. Think.
But the name my mind keeps circling back to pulses through me like a detonation.
Dante ‘Devil’ O’Driscoll. Triple D.
I hacked him. Livestreamed it. Laughed. I didn’t use his name, but somehow the bastard knew. He was waiting. Here in New York instead of on the other side of the country, and apparently not where my superior surveillance said he should be. Dammit.
God, what will he do to me? Interrogation? Torture? Worse?
A wave of nausea rolls through me, fast and violent. I squeeze my eyes shut.
Don’t cry. Don’t shake. Don’t give them that.
I think of my mother—just for a second. The way her fingers used to dance over her laptop keyboard, fierce and bright and fearless. She was a truth-seeker. Until they silenced her.
The memory slices too close to bone. I shove it away.
What would Dad think if he knew where I was? That his daughter, his little digital prodigy, was bound and gagged in the back of some psycho’s trunk? Will they tell him what happened to me? Do I want them to?
Or would it be better if I simply disappeared off the face of the earth? Because one death is bad enough. Two deaths of the people he loves in one lifetime…
God. Breathe.
I inhale through my nose, slow and steady, counting heartbeats like code lines.
And then?—
The car slows.
Stops.
A door slams. Then another. Muffled voices. Footsteps.
A click. The sound of the trunk latch popping. Light spills in, blinding and surgical.
I blink, squinting through the gag, and then?—
Him .
The man himself. Dante O’Driscoll. In the flesh.
Towering. Black suit. Blacker eyes. Shadow-cut jaw and cheekbones carved by God on a hate bender. There’s a rawness to him that feels barely leashed—like he could destroy something with a flick of his wrist and wouldn’t even flinch.
Even though I’d suspected, a part of me had hoped it wasn’t him. That he would be someone less… formidable. Less potent. Less… just less .
That the single image I’d found on him online would be severely photoshopped, the kind that turned troll into hunk. Sadly, he’s Online Hunk turned Hotter Hunk IRL.
His expression is unreadable. No smile. No mockery. Just controlled fury, burning behind cold black eyes. For an abstract, entirely inappropriate moment I wonder if he named his company after the color of his eyes.
He looks down at me like I’m a piece of art he doesn’t know whether to sell or smash.
And then, he speaks—his voice smooth, low, lethal.
“You really should’ve deleted that app, little thief.”
The app…the app…The Club app?
Oh shit…
Oh fucking fuckity fuck!
Dante
She’s smaller than I expected.
Curled up like a snapped violin string, trying so hard not to tremble. I see it anyway. The twitch of her thigh. The flex of her bound wrists. The jagged inhale through her nose, because her mouth’s stuffed full of premium-grade silicone that muffles all her screams.
She’s scared.
Good.
She fucking should be.
I watch her carefully, silently, as she blinks against the light, trying to square the woman she stole from with the one standing in front of her.
What was she expecting? Some crusty billionaire with a temper, bald combover and a security detail?
Not me.
Not the man who knew exactly what kind of deviant little secret she was hiding behind that screen.
Not the one who reverse-engineered her location using the very app she used to get off anonymously.
Not the man who studied her browsing habits on The Club app and read her filthy, aching little wish list like it was a love letter to her own undoing.
She has no idea who she’s dealing with. How long I’ve been waiting.
For today.
For her.