Chapter 21
21
ANNA
I woke to silence.
Not the peaceful kind—the hush that follows a night of passion and safety. This was the wrong kind of silence. The kind that hummed beneath the skin like a warning.
Atlas was gone.
The space beside me was empty, cool, the sheets undisturbed beyond where my body had tangled in them. My palm slid across the mattress, searching, as if some part of me still hoped he was simply pressed against the far edge, quiet in the dark.
But no.
He wasn’t here.
I sat up slowly, the ache in my thighs a reminder of what we’d done, of what we’d said without saying it. My body felt sated, bruised in the best way. But under the surface, anxiety crackled to life.
Where was he?
I pulled on his shirt from the floor—it still smelled like him—and then dug through the small gym bag I’d left by the closet. It wasn’t packed for an overnight stay at Dominion Hall. It wasn’t even packed for the hotel. I’d kept it in my car out of habit—just a few spare clothes, a travel-size toothbrush, a compact hairbrush, and a roll of sheet music I hadn’t looked at in days.
I hadn’t expected to follow my parents to a hotel under media fire. I hadn’t expected to end up here.
The gym bag was all I had.
I pulled out a worn pair of black yoga pants and stepped into them, tugging them up over bare legs that still felt bruised from his hands, his grip. I hesitated for a moment, staring down at the nearly empty bag, and realized I didn’t know when I’d be back at my condo to pick up more. Not with reporters swarming. Not with Atlas’s world bleeding into mine like this.
I wanted to believe this was temporary. That I could go back, collect my things, reclaim the normalcy I’d once relied on. But deep down, I knew that wasn’t true.
There was danger here.
Not just the headlines. Not just the camera flashes or the venomous comments. Something else. A deeper threat that lingered around the edges of every quiet conversation between the Dane brothers. The kind of threat that didn’t speak in words—but in silences, glances, unsaid names.
I didn’t understand it. Not yet.
But I felt it, like a current underfoot.
I grabbed my phone and padded barefoot to the hallway, then downstairs. The house was cool and cavernous around me.
Dominion Hall at night was another creature entirely. The firelight was gone. The soft sounds of distant kitchen staff vanished. Only shadow and silence remained.
I passed the tall glass enclosure tucked into a corner of the main living area. Inside, Obsidian stirred.
The snake was coiled in that impossibly still way, like living stone—black scales catching the faint ambient light, tongue flicking once as if he sensed me.
Atlas had said Byron Dane brought him back from Kamchatka.
Russia.
The same wild, volcanic edge of the world Papa had visited years ago, researching neural survival patterns. The coincidence made my skin prickle. Two men—one my father, one the ghost of a legacy I was now entangled with—connected by a place that felt far away and feral.
I lingered there a second longer, watching the slow ripple of muscle beneath scale. Cold. Patient.
Obsidian didn’t blink. Snakes never did.
Then I moved on.
I walked quietly, unsure why I was trying not to wake anyone until I heard something—a low hum of conversation and the faint buzz of electricity. I followed it, down the same corridor I’d walked earlier with Atlas, past more tall windows that looked out over the dark harbor.
The ops room.
I stepped closer and stopped in the doorway.
Inside, four of them.
Ryker sat in the corner, sprawled with deceptive ease, his gaze flicking between monitors and his phone. Marcus stood with his arms crossed, a wall of muscle and judgment in front of one of the larger screens. Noah—restless, pacing—moved back and forth like he couldn’t stand still long enough to let a thought settle.
And then there was the fourth.
Silas.
I recognized him from a framed photo in the hallway outside Atlas’s suite—the kind of face that didn’t soften easily. We hadn’t met yet. He sat at a long metal table, angled slightly away from the others, hands folded, eyes locked on a glowing tablet in front of him.
Still. Quiet. Watching everything.
None of them noticed me at first.
I took a step inside, and it was Ryker who clocked me first. His sharp eyes met mine, then softened—just slightly.
“Anna.”
Noah turned next. “You’re awake.”
I nodded. “Atlas isn’t in bed.”
Marcus didn’t look away from the screen. “We know.”
Something about the way he said it made the hairs on my arms lift.
I crossed my arms, suddenly very aware that I was barefoot, braless, and surrounded by four men built like military-grade secrets. “Do any of you actually sleep? Like normal people?”
That earned a faint smirk from Noah, but it was Ryker who answered first.
“I’d love to be in bed next to Isabel right now,” he said, dragging a hand down his face. “Believe me. But there’s work to do.”
Marcus nodded, still focused on whatever live feed or report scrolled across the center screen. “Claire’s asleep in our suite. I told her I’d be back an hour ago. She pretended to believe me.”
Silas didn’t say anything, just lifted a brow like the question was irrelevant.
I softened slightly. “You all live here?”
“We travel,” Ryker said. “But right now? Yeah. When things get hot, we operate from Dominion. This is home base.”
“And Isabel and Claire?”
“With us,” Marcus said simply.
I nodded, absorbing that. “I look forward to meeting them.”
Ryker’s mouth twitched into something almost like a smile. “They’ll like you.”
I smiled back.
Then, Ryker added, “Atlas isn’t answering.”
I blinked. “You tried to call?”
Noah gave a slow nod, then gestured to a nearby stool. “Come sit. You want to try him?”
“I—” I hesitated, then gave a wry laugh. “Actually … we never exchanged numbers.”
Noah blinked. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” I said, letting out a breath. “He left my condo in such a rush after we saw the Post and Courier article, and then everything happened at once … I guess it didn’t seem important.”
Ryker muttered something under his breath. I caught the word typical.
Noah reached out, palm up. “Let me see your phone.”
I handed it over, and he moved with brisk efficiency, thumbs flying over the screen. “There. Fixed. He’s in your contacts now. I even gave him a flattering nickname.”
I arched a brow. “Should I be concerned?”
“Depends on your feelings about ‘My Commander.’”
Despite the tension, I laughed.
I hit the call button. It rang once. Then cut straight to voicemail.
A chill traced down my spine.
I looked up, and all four of them were watching me too carefully. Too quiet.
Something passed between them—unspoken but loud.
They were hiding something.
Before I could ask what, footsteps sounded behind me. Familiar. Steady.
“Anya?” Papa’s voice, rough with sleep.
I turned. He and Mama stood in the doorway, robes pulled around them, eyes sharp despite the hour.
“What’s going on?” Mama asked, gaze sweeping the room, assessing in that terrifyingly efficient way she always did.
Noah stepped forward, professional in an instant. “Just a late-night check-in. Atlas is out, but we’re tracking him. Nothing to worry about.”
Mama’s eyes narrowed. “Forgive me if I don’t take that at face value.”
“She’s not wrong,” Papa said flatly. He looked at me. “You’re pale.”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
I wasn’t.
Atlas was gone. No word. No message. No explanation.
And whatever these men weren’t saying? It was starting to feel less like silence and more like a storm rolling in.
As if reading my mind, Noah turned to the screen. “There’s a storm rolling in.”
“What?” I asked.
He tapped the keyboard, pulling up a radar map that bloomed in vivid color across the largest monitor. Swirling clouds twisted in pale blue and angry red off the Florida coast.
“Tropical depression just upgraded to a named storm about an hour ago,” Noah explained, his eyes locked on the radar image rotating slowly across the screen. “It’s picking up speed fast. Forecast models have it making landfall in South Carolina sometime in the next thirty-six to forty-eight hours.”
My stomach tightened. “That fast?”
Ryker nodded, jaw tense. “Usually, we get more warning. Days, sometimes a week. But every now and then, you get one like this—sitting quiet in the Gulf or near the Bahamas, then suddenly hooking north, tightening fast. And the strangest part? It’s barely the start of hurricane season. June just opened the gate. That’s not normal.”
“Charleston has had worse,” Marcus added, eyes still on the screen.
“Like?”
“Hugo,” he said quietly. “Dad used to talk about it.”
Silas gave a slow nod. “1989. Category 4. Charleston thought it was in the clear. The thing made a ninety-degree turn and hit the coast dead-on. Flattened houses. Flooded everything. Took out whole blocks downtown. People were caught sleeping.”
“Hugo,” I repeated, the name sparking a flicker of memory. “I didn’t grow up with hurricanes, but the last time I was in Charleston—before I came down for the residency—Eugene told me about it. Said it was the one storm this city never forgot.”
The room shifted.
Not visibly. But I felt it.
A beat of stillness too long. A flicker of silence too sharp.
Ryker cleared his throat and looked away. Marcus’s jaw flexed. Even Noah stopped pacing.
I blinked, suddenly aware of what I’d said. What they knew. And what they hadn’t told me yet.
“It should’ve changed the way the whole damn country thinks about hurricanes,” Ryker muttered finally, voice quieter now. “Storms don’t follow rules. You can’t trust models past twenty-four hours. We can’t be too careful.”
Mama stepped closer, folding her arms across her robe. “In Boston, we dealt with nor’easters. Blizzards. Power outages. Once, the Charles froze over so solid the MIT undergrads dragged a sofa onto it and tried to build a living room.”
Papa gave a wry grunt. “They succeeded. Until it cracked.”
Mama ignored him. “But this? Hurricanes? It’s different. This is heat and wind and water all at once. It comes from the ocean. From below.”
“In Russia,” Papa said, his voice thoughtful, “we feared ice. Winter that never ended. Snow so heavy it collapsed roofs. But at least we saw it coming. You could plan. This—” he gestured to the screen, “—this moves like a predator. Quiet until it strikes.”
The room was quiet for a beat.
Then Silas said, “We’ll monitor it closely. Dominion’s built to withstand it, but if we need to evacuate, we’ll do it early.”
Ryker gave me a quick glance. “And we’ll make sure your condo’s buttoned up before the outer bands hit. Can’t guarantee the press won’t try to get cute in the wind, but we’ll keep them back.”
He hesitated, then added, “We’ll grab your things while we’re there. Clothes. Essentials. Whatever you need.”
I opened my mouth to argue—to say I could go myself, that I’d be quick—but Marcus cut in before I could.
“Atlas already gave the order,” he said quietly. “Said you wouldn’t be going back there until it was safe. Told us to get your harp from the conservatory, too.”
My heart caught.
“He wants it here?” I asked.
Noah nodded. “He told Ryker to have a room cleared out on the second floor. Something with good acoustics. Said you needed a space to play.”
That stopped me cold.
It was the kind of protection that didn’t scream. It remembered.
And suddenly, I didn’t care if the whole city watched me fall. Because I knew who would catch me.
My throat tightened, emotion catching somewhere between shock and something dangerously close to awe. Amid all of it—the headlines, the silence, the storm building both outside and between us—he’d thought about my harp.
He remembered my hands.
He knew what music meant to me even when I hadn’t said it out loud.
That was Atlas.
He didn’t speak in elaborate promises. He acted. Quietly. Intentionally. With a kind of ruthless devotion that left no room for doubt.
I’d fallen for him fast—too fast, maybe. But moments like this? They told me I hadn’t fallen alone.
I brushed a thumb over my phone, still glowing faintly in my hand. “He thinks of everything.”
Ryker didn’t answer right away. Just looked at me—something flickering behind his eyes. Not pity. Not concern. Something closer to warning.
His voice was quieter when he finally spoke.
“Dominion Hall’s built like a fortress. It’s not the house I’m worried about.”
I frowned, pulse kicking harder. “Then what?”
Ryker stood and stretched, cracking his neck. “We should get your parents back to bed.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Mama said, her voice sharper than any of them expected. She stepped into the room fully, her chin lifted. “If you have news, speak it.”
Papa’s tone matched hers. “We’re not fragile. Don’t treat us like children.”
Silas spoke slowly, his voice quiet, but firm. “It’s not about fragility. It’s about timing.”
“Then this is the time,” I said. My pulse kicked faster. “Tell me.”
Another silence.
And then Marcus turned.
“Eugene Tiddle is dead.”
The words didn’t land at first. I heard them, but I didn’t feel them—not right away.
“What?” I asked softly, blinking. “He’s …?”
“Dead,” Ryker confirmed. “Atlas went out to confront him. That’s where he was tonight. House on James Island, rented under a shell company. We had eyes on the location—until we didn’t.”
“He’s been dark since 2:27 a.m.,” Noah added. “No text. No ping. No movement.”
The breath left my body.
I stumbled back a half step, as if the words had taken my knees out from under me. “Dead,” I whispered. “Atlas …”
“Was last seen entering the property through the rear,” Marcus said. “There was movement. Then nothing. No exit footage. No trace.”
Papa’s mouth was set in a grim, familiar line. “And what was he planning to do there? Talk Eugene to death?”
Silas didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
Mama’s eyes turned sharp as glass. “You think he did it.”
No brother confirmed. But none of them denied it.
My stomach twisted. I heard Papa mutter something low in Russian—something I didn’t quite catch, but that I felt in my bones.
“I don’t believe that,” I said, though my voice sounded far too small. “He’s not—he wouldn’t just kill him.”
“He’s capable,” Marcus said, not unkindly. “That’s different from intent.”
“He went to get answers,” Noah added. “We believe that.”
“But something’s off,” Ryker cut in, his voice lower now. “The police were on the scene fast. Too fast for a body no one should have found until morning.”
I stared at him. “You think someone tipped them off?”
Ryker nodded. “Has to be. Someone wanted Eugene’s death on record before Atlas could report back. Before he could control the narrative.”
Noah stepped behind the monitors again, scrubbing a hand down his face. “We caught partial surveillance from the perimeter of the house. Blurry at best—glare off a windshield, figure moving past a window. Could’ve been anything. Could’ve been anyone.”
I blinked. “Wait. What house?”
Ryker looked at me. “The one Atlas went to. Property’s held under a blind trust, but we traced it back to a woman named Iris Atwell.”
The name landed like a stone in my chest.
“She’s old Charleston money,” Marcus said. “Older lady. Widow of Walter Atwell. Patron of the Philharmonic. And apparently, Eugene’s lover.”
I reeled. “What?”
“She’s been supporting him behind the scenes for months,” Silas said quietly. “Financially. Socially. Might’ve even had a hand in pushing your suspension.”
My stomach turned. I thought of the article. The photo. The way it hit the press with surgical precision.
Of course, she was involved. Who else had the reach, the influence, the perfectly manicured connections?
But then the timeline clicked. Slowly. Horribly.
“He was sleeping with her?” I asked, my voice thinner than I wanted it to be.
No one answered.
They didn’t need to.
I felt the heat rise beneath my skin—equal parts humiliation and fury. “So let me get this straight. Eugene was screwing Leah from the Philharmonic behind my back, and now you’re telling me he was also entangled with Iris Atwell? An old lady?”
Ryker’s jaw ticked, but he didn’t speak.
“All while engaged to me,” I whispered, the words sharp and strange in my mouth.
The room went still.
The betrayal hit me harder than I expected—not because I hadn’t known Eugene was manipulative, but because I hadn’t realized just how much I’d let myself not know.
He hadn’t just lied.
He’d built an entire power play on the bodies of the women around him—sweet Leah, socialite Iris, and me, the public-facing piece he could parade around in designer dresses and debutante circles.
And still, somehow, he was the one calling me unstable. I blinked hard, pushing the burn back from my eyes.
“And you think she’s involved in his death?”
“We don’t know yet,” Ryker said. “But we know someone was watching that house. Someone got there before we could extract him. And now Atlas is a ghost.”
I pressed a hand to my chest, feeling the dull thud of my heart as the implications wrapped around me like cold wire.
Everything was unraveling—Eugene’s carefully constructed power plays, the board’s silent pressure, the whispers around the Philharmonic.
“We won’t know what went down inside that house,” Silas said, “until Atlas tells us himself.”
If he can.
The thought hit like a wave.
I pressed a hand to my mouth, heart thudding, throat dry. “So we don’t know if he’s?—?”
“We don’t know,” Ryker said simply. “Not yet.”
The room felt smaller. Thicker.
I could feel Mama’s eyes on me. I could feel Papa’s silence settling beside me like armor.
And still—no word from Atlas.
No message. No call. Not even a goddamn voicemail.
Outside, the tropical storm crept closer, dark and spinning, moving toward us like something inevitable.
And for the first time, I realized that Atlas might not come back.
And if he did …
He might not come back whole.