Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
SILAS
She was still beneath me, skin damp, body wrecked from what Theo and I had done to her.
I ran my fingers down the length of her spine, tracing the curve where I’d had my hands hours before, pressing her down, holding here there as we’d broken her completely.
She trembled slightly, a phantom reaction, her body still lost somewhere using the space between ruin and surrender.
She belonged to us now.
No.
To me.
I knew it. Felt it. Deep inside, where logic should have ruled and instead, there was only hunger.
And that was the problem.
I wanted her again.
I hadn’t even left the fucking bed, and my cock still ached for her.
Theo was gone, having had his fill, but I was still here.
Still inside her world, still watching the slow rise and fall out her back as she lay against the sheets, her breath steady but shallow.
She was spent, her body beyond used, but I knew—I fucking knew—if I touched her again, she’d take it.
She’d let me. That mind control still lingered inside her, and while she thought she was fighting it, I knew better.
I curled a hand into the mess of her hair, tugging lightly, forcing her eyes open. She blinked at me, glassy and exhausted.
But I saw it.
That flicker of want.
“You’re not fooling me, Angel.” My voice was raw from using it too much, from growling in her ear, commanding her to break beneath me, watching her obey.
She shivered, pressing her thighs together as though she could hide the need still burning inside her. I smirked, foraging my fingers down to grip her chin, forcing her to look at me, to see the truth she was too afraid to admit.
She was still hungry for more.
“Stay in my bed,” I murmured, brushing my thumb over her lower lip. “Be good. Be mine.”
Her lips parted, her breath hitching, and for a moment, I thought she’d give in again. But then she swallowed, eyes flickering with something darker, something deeper, and that little spark of defiance burned its way back into place.
I fucking loved that about her.
And I’d love even more to break it. Again.
Bzzzt .
My phone vibrated, and I sighed, dragging my hand from her chin as I reached for the device on my nightstand.
Unknown number.
I sat up, tension tightening the back of my neck. My gut never ignored a call like this.
Angelica curled into the sheets behind me, her body nothing but warm temptation, but the second I answered, all of that burned away.
“Silas,” a voice rasped. Kieran. The head of our security team. But his voice wasn’t level—it was raw, panicked.
I tensed. “What?”
He exhaled hard through the receiver. Too hard. “You need to get here. Now.”
I swing my legs off the bed. “Where?”
Silence, then—“Warehouse 14.”
A sharp prickle ran down my spine. That was one of our primary sites, a location no one—not even the fucking cartel knew about.
“What happened?” I snapped, already moving, rising from the bed and grabbed my pants before yanking them on.
Another pause. Then Kieran muttered, voice grim, “We found Sloane.”
My fingers froze at my zipper. I didn’t need to ask if he was alive. I already knew.
Angelica sat up behind me, her voice hoarse. “What’s wrong?”
I shot her a glare, but she didn’t flinch. Not anymore.
I grabbed my shirt, yanking it on before I gritted out, “Stay here.”
I didn’t wait for her answer, already striding to the door…and was gone.
The cold night bit into my skin as I stepped out of the house, leaving behind the scent of sex, sweat, and my sister. The weight of what I’d just done—what we’d done—settled in my bones like a vice grip.
She was under my skin now.
There was no turning back.
But business never fucking waited.
My car waited in the driveway, the engine still warm from where I’d left it idling earlier, after Carter called me to get her. I slid inside, hands gripping the wheel, but my mind wasn’t in the driver’s seat—it was still inside that room, inside her.
With a low curse, I slammed my foot on the gas and reversed out of the driveway.
The city blurred past in streaks of dimly lit streets and neon reflections on wet pavement. The rain from earlier had dried, but the air still smelled damp—metallic, like iron. Like blood.
The warehouse wasn’t far. It stood on the edge of the industrial district, tucked between abandoned factories and rusting cargo containers. A relic of the past—just like everything else in their world.
The weight of the Ares name had built a lot of this city. And now, it was it bleeding dry.
I pulled into the lot, the headlights slicing through the dark. Kieran’s car was already there, parked at an angle, one door slightly ajar.
That wasn’t right.
I killed the engine, my gut twisting with something close to dread. Kieran didn’t leave his door open. Ever.
My boots hit the pavement with a dull thud as I stepped out. The air was thick with silence—wrong silence.
The kind that came before death.
I stalked forward, scanning the lot, my fingers twitching for my gun. Then I saw him. A shadow striding forward. My pulse thundered before he stepped out into the light and I exhaled a hard sigh of relief. Kieran headed toward me as my cell vibrated against my hip.
I pulled it free and stared at the screen. No caller ID. I lifted my gaze to Kieran. It wasn’t him. I answered without a word, bringing the phone to my ear.
There was breathing on the other end. Slow. Deliberate. Measured.
Then a voice thick with Spanish and hoarse like rusted metal came. “Are you still feeling like a king, Silas Ares?”
I didn’t blink. “Who the fuck is this?”
A chuckle, low and rasping. “You’ll know soon enough. We left you something inside. A little gift.”
A pause.
My pulse ticked like a bomb as the man exhaled. “And one for your girl. We’ll see her soon.”
Click .
The call went dead.
I was already moving before the sound cut off, striding past Kieran toward the shadows spilling across the single side door.
“What is it?” Kieran asked.
“Trouble.” I answered and punched in the code on the locked pad outside the door and yanked it open.
The moment we stepped inside I knew something was wrong. The air was thick with the scent of oil and metal, but beneath it, something sharper lingered—coppery, pungent. Blood.
The warehouse loomed around us, its high metal rafters stretching into darkness.
Expensive crates lined the floor, some marked with symbols of international luxury houses—Chanel, Patek Philippe, Rolls-Royce—art, antiques, high-end smuggled goods we used as a front to clean cartel money.
On paper, this place was nothing more than an exclusive auction house, a place where the ultra-wealthy acquired the world’s rarest treasures.
In reality, it was a high-stakes pipeline for illegal goods and cash flow, a honey trap for those who needed to move money off the books.
Only now, something had ripped through the heart of it.
A shattered crate of Lalique crystal vases lay strewn across the concrete. A display table, once holding a sixteenth-century Venetian clock was overturned. The clock itself lay in pieces, its delicate gold-plated hands pointing nowhere.
“Kieran,” I murmured, reaching around for the gun at my back. Someone was here…recently.
The second Kieran stepped ahead his body went rigid. “Fuck.”
I rounded the side of a large shipping crate and stopped dead.
There, hanging from the steel beam above us, was Sloane.
Stripped to the waist, his arms were hooked behind him, wrists bound so tightly they cut into his skin. Blood—so much fucking blood—ran down his arms and chest, pooling onto the polished concrete below him.
They gutted him.
His abdomen was ripped open, a jagged canyon of flesh and ruin, his organs exposed—something raw and gaping in the harsh warehouse light.
His head hung to the side, eyes glassy, mouth slack as if the last thing he tried to say had been stolen from him.
There was a piece of paper stapled to his chest, the words smeared in his own blood.
I stepped close, ripping it free to read the crimson stained words.
A liar always bleeds. A traitor always dies.
Hand her over, or you’ll all join him.
But underneath, lined red ink—one final sentence.
Angelica, we’re coming.
My vision tunnelled. The room blurred into nothing but raw, pulsing fury. A scream ripped through the warehouse.
Not mine .
Kieran’s gun was already swinging wide as shadows moved all around me and I caught the glint of steel far too late.
I barely had time to move, dodging the first swing—the knife missing my throat by inches, slicing through my jacket instead. Pain flared along my ribs, sharp and hot.
I caught the bastard’s wrist before the knife could arc again, twisting my body and drove his own blade into the fucker’s gut.
The man grunted, his breath turning wet.
I twisted the blade deeper, forcing it so far inside the glistening steel disappeared. Kieran grunted loud and brutal behind me, but I was transfixed by my attacker as his eyes went wide…wide enough to see the fear trapped inside.
Come for my fucking FAMILY!
Rage roared through my veins, humming louder than any thunderous pulse ever could. I twisted the knife deeper, then wrenched it free, spun and slammed the blade into the enforcer neck, pinning Kieran to the ground.
The asshole jerked upright, blood spurted from the gash the blade left behind before he gave a sickening gasp, choking on his own blood, then crumpled to the floor.
But it wasn’t over.
A third attacker emerged from the dark with a machete raised high in his hand. I saw it far too late, the hatchet arced down, carving through the air before it bit deep into my shoulder, slicing through flesh and muscle. The pain was instant—blinding, electrifying.
He staggered, but his grip tightened around his own weapon. I lunged, ignoring the fire in my shoulder. The asshole grinned—until I smashed the hilt of the blade into my hand into his face.
Bone cracked.