Chapter 15 #2
He sits on a raised leather throne near the back of the private lounge, surrounded by the usual leeches drawn to soiled power.
He’s tall, lean in a way that’s all wire and menace, like a diseased hyena dressed in Tom Ford.
His black hair is slicked back with precision, but the cruel twist of his mouth pretends he’s above vanity.
One hand swirls a glass of something blood-red, the other strokes the thigh of the submissive kneeling beside him like she’s a housecat.
Cold. Sadistic.
His name has popped up in some depraved pockets of the Dark Web. Rumor has it he’s a useful appendage of Vesper—the one who handles the “messy” ends of empire. The one who makes enemies disappear. Not flashy like some of the others. Not power-hungry.
Just lethal.
He lifts his gaze. Sees us and his lip curl deepens. I’m not sure if it’s a smile or a warning. Clearly, he’s been waiting. And his black gaze says this is going to be fun.
“Keep those claws tucked away, pet,” Dante murmurs.
“I will,” I whisper. “For now.”
But inside, every nerve is screaming.
Because whatever this game is, it’s started.
And we just stepped onto his board.
Under the guise of taking his next sip, Dante moves closer, his body almost curving around mine. He’s shielding my body with his and something cracks and melts inside me.
My fingers dance up his chest and tighten in his jacket. My own little gesture of acknowledgment and appreciation. Even though I’m primed for this fight.
“What are we?—”
The lights flicker.
The music cuts.
And the collar around my throat hums—just once, a strange vibration I’ve never felt before.
Dante reacts instantly, grabbing my wrist. “Move,” he snaps, rising. Clearly, he knows the layout of this place way better than I do because we’re in a hallway in seconds, and he’s pulling me back toward the emergency exit.
“What is it?” I gasp.
“Someone just activated your tag. Your collar.”
“W-what? How is that even possible?” I gasp, but I know. Every damn thing under the sun is hackable. I’ve done more than my fair share of it. Dante doesn’t respond. And I don’t get to ask again, because suddenly the crowd shifts. Chaos stirs. We arrive at the exit—and Varric is there.
Not alone.
Three men block our path. And they’re armed.
Dante
I push Dahlia behind me, already calculating. Weapons aren’t allowed inside The Gilded Cage—it’s one of the only rules everyone honors—but apparently the rules don’t apply to everyone.
I could take my chances with the assholes, but I’m outnumbered. And the last thing I’m going to do is risk Dahlia.
Options cycle through my mind. Each discarded. And then I feel it—the chill that crawls up the back of my neck. Wrong. Something’s off. A presence I didn’t clock before.
I pivot fast, keeping Dahlia closer to me just as the voice cuts through the red-lit air.
“Dante.”
My blood ices.
She steps forward from the shadows—heels clicking, gun steady, eyes colder than I’ve ever seen them.
Evelyn.
My second-in-command. My fixer. The one who’s handled my dirtiest work. The woman who once joked Dahlia would be my ruin before I even knew her name.
Now she’s pointing a gun at my head.
“Evelyn.” My voice is stone.
She doesn’t blink. “You should’ve let me take care of her the night of the heist. I knew your going to get her yourself was a bad idea.
” Her eyes flick to Dahlia, scrutinizing her from head to toe.
“She’s got danger-drunk and dick-whipped written all over her, and you’re stupid enough to call it what… devotion? Loyalty?”
Behind me, Dahlia stiffens. I feel the breath catch in her throat.
This is her first time hearing Evelyn’s name. She doesn’t know the history, but she knows betrayal when it slices close enough to bleed.
“You’re with Vesper?” I demand.
“Right from the jump. They pay more than you ever will.” Evelyn shrugs, but her eyes flash cold.
“Loyalty doesn’t pay back years of being second-best. Cleaning up your messes.
Watching you obsess over one dead girl while you risk your empire over another who gets wet at the thought of ruining you.
” Her smile curdles and like it’s a bonus, she continues.
“They promised me a front-row seat when it all came crashing down.”
Her eyes flick to Varric, her true boss.
He jerks his chin.
Everything happens at once.
A man lunges from the left. I elbow his throat and hear the satisfying crunch of cartilage. Another swings—a flash of steel hidden in his hand—and I drive my knee into his gut before slamming his face into the wall.
From the corner of my eye I see Evelyn take aim.
Fuck. Where’s Dahlia?
She fires. The sound is deafening in the small hallway.
Dahlia screams.
Pain sears down my shoulder, hot and wet. Not lethal. Not yet.
I grab my precious submissive. No time to count the bodies or take stock of wounds. We run. Heading outside in the empty alley will make us too easy a target.
Through the club. Through the parted crowd. Through a haze of sweat and perfume and blood.
We don’t stop until we’re outside, in the car, two streets away before I pull over. Her breath is choppy, her hands shaking, my coat soaked in crimson.
I press her against the wall, check her quickly for injuries. “Are you hit?”
“No,” she breathes, eyes wide, stunned. “You?—”
“Just a graze.” I lie. “We’ll get it cleaned.” I feel around the collar, slide out the hair-thin microchip with hands unsteady as fuck.
She sees it—the fear I never show, the guilt twisting in my gut.
Evelyn. Vesper. The game is no longer in the dark, hiding among proxies and firewalls.
It’s gone live and we’re running out of bandwidth and time.
Dahlia
“She shot you,” I say, voice raw.
“It’s not bad.” But his face says otherwise.
“Fuck, Dante?—”
“We knew going in that they were dangerous,” he growls, then softens. “This is what they do, Dahlia. Betray. Manipulate. Kill.”
The adrenaline crashes and all that’s left is the fear.
And the realization that this is real now.
No more games of dominance and surrender in silk-draped rooms.
We’ve stepped into a power war.
And one or both of us might perish long before our thirty days are over.
I’ve never heard silence like this before.
Not even in the dark corners of cyberspace where I used to hide out for hours, headphones on, the world forgotten.
This silence is thick —the kind that sticks to your lungs and doesn’t let go.
I sit on the edge of the bed in the safehouse’s tiny bedroom. It’s not like the penthouse—no marble, no skyline view, no decadence. Just gray walls, heavy locks, and security feeds blinking quietly from the monitor across the room.
I stare at the collar still around my throat. I didn’t take it off. I thought I would. But I couldn’t. Not even after the hacking scare.
Because part of me needed the weight. The reminder that even now—after a near-ambush, after blood and betrayal—I’m still tethered to him.
Even if I shouldn’t be.
The bathroom door creaks open, steam curling out. Dante steps into the room, shirtless, his arm in the bandage I helped him with, torso lined with bruises and tension.
I stand without thinking.
“Let me,” I whisper.
He doesn’t speak. Just sits on the bed, legs wide, jaw tight. He draws me between his legs and lets me towel his hair. Apply ointment to his shoulder.
I’m gentle. He’s still made of stone—but I think he’s softer around me now.
“Did she mean it?” I ask finally. “Evelyn. That she wanted to watch you bleed?”
His voice is rough. “Everyone close to me eventually does.”
I blink. “That’s a hell of a thing to believe.”
“It’s not belief. It’s math.”
Something occurs to me. “The thirty days. It wasn’t just about sex and surrender, was it?”
He stares at me, then shakes his head. “It was also about keeping my little thief safe.”
“That why?—”
“I nearly lost my fucking mind when you left the penthouse,” he says roughly. “I thought you’d run. That they’d gotten to you first.”
My mouth opens. Closes.
All this time, I thought he was the one keeping things from me.
But he was trying to protect me from things I didn’t even know were chasing me.
I crouch between his knees. My hands on his thighs. “If this is about math, then let me be your anomaly.”
That cracks him. He exhales hard. Then he cups my face. “You terrify me. You know that?”
“I know.”
His forehead drops to mine. And we just breathe.
Then—“Why did the collar buzz?” I ask. “What the hell was that?”
His hand drops. He straightens.
“It’s connected to Ironveil,” he says. “A failsafe. Hidden in the leather. Not even Evelyn knew about it.” He stops. But I know there’s more. A good fucking reason.
“I’m listening.”
He hesitates.
I surge closer, let him see the ‘no retreat’ blazing in my eyes.
Dante
“She wore one, too,” I say. “My sister. A bracelet. It tracked her. So I could keep an eye on her. Keep her safe.”
Dahlia stills.
“But they hacked it. Catalogued her patterns. Used my own protocol against me. Against us.”
Lia’s mouth tightens. “You’re saying—my collar does the same. And they did the same tonight.”
“I reprogrammed the chip. I swear. It was supposed to be failsafe. Ironveil is unhackable. Or so I thought. Hell, even you couldn’t get in. Fuck!”
Silence. Except her breath is shaky and sharp with fear.
I look down. She swallows, and the movement shifts the collar that could very easily have ended her tonight, but her eyes don’t waver from mine.
My fingers find the leather. Caress her throat. Wonder why she hasn’t taken it off. Grateful that she hasn’t.
“For a while, after she was gone, I hated her for not stopping when I asked her to. She wouldn’t stop,” I say. A reward for her continuing trust? Or an unburdening of my guilt? Who the fuck knows anymore. “Guilt drove me to pick up her crusade. To keep going.”
Dahlia’s eyes burn. “Then we keep going. We don’t run. We finish this.”
Dahlia
I don’t even realize I’m climbing into his lap until I’m there—knees on either side of his hips, arms around his neck.
“No more half-truths,” I whisper. “No more pushing me away.”
His throat works. “This ends with them gone.”
“And then what?” I ask softly, opposite of the hard, desperate push inside. “What happens to us?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he kisses me—slow, reverent, hungry.
A kiss that says he doesn’t know, but he wants to.
And that’s enough.
For now.
Two hours later…
The monitor flickers.
I sit cross-legged, laptop open. Dante’s pacing.
“We hit them in seventy-two hours,” he says. “The Gilded Cage. That’s where their servers are. Buried in the basement. That’s why Varric is always there. He was a stooge three years ago. Looks like he’s graduated to watchdog. If we can get in there, we destroy them.”
I nod. “We’ll need two access points. Dual-layer breach. I can ghost my way in digitally, but we’ll need a physical breach too.”
“You and me,” he says. “Just us.” His voice is harsh, the spikes of betrayal sharp and deadly.
I glance up, into his face, at the arm his assistant shot at. “Because we can’t trust anyone else.”
“Exactly.”
We stare at each other. And for the first time, there’s no wall between us.
No roles. No masks. No seduction.
Just two people on the edge of war—choosing to fight together .