Chapter 13
Dahlia
T he silence in the car is the kind that hisses.
Dante drives, one hand on the wheel, the other resting carelessly on my thigh like nothing’s changed. Like he didn’t just use my body as a pressure valve and walk away before the emotional steam had cleared.
He hasn’t said a word since the gallery. I haven’t either.
But I’m not quiet out of obedience. I’m quiet because I’m calculating.
Because something shifted. And now, so will I.
Back in the penthouse, I head straight for the spare room while Dante disappears into his study. Calls to make. His voice is back to neutral, impassive. Professional.
I wait until I hear the low murmur of his voice through the door—then I move.
His room still smells like cedar and power. I walk past the bourbon decanter, the monogrammed leather folders. His sleek black laptop glows with soft light on the desk.
Unlocked.
Almost like he wants me to look.
I take the fucking bait.
Folder after folder appears on screen—financials, blackmail dossiers, offshore accounts under names I know and some I don’t.
And then I see it.
A file I’ve seen before. The one labeled “Vesper Syndicate: Access Protocol.” But just like the other one labeled Wraith stopped me in my tracks last time, the one beneath this one freezes my blood.
My breath stutters. Another coincidence? No. Not here. Not now.
I stare at the folder like it might swallow me whole. I’ve walked into this trap before. But… fuck it. I pummel the firewalls for a quick minute for the Vesper Syndicate file. Enough to see what I’m working with.
Then I double-click.
Predictably, the screen flashes RED.
Unauthorized Access Detected. Lockout Sequence Initiated.
He knew I’d try. He let me find it. My pulse hammers. Baited me, first with Wraith and now with my own name.
Specter.
The one I buried years ago, along with my mother. Along with everything soft in me. Until I resurrected it in her name. In her honor.
I click the file with my name.
Encrypted.
Of course. As if that would stop me.
I’m already halfway through the backdoor when I hear the door open. My heart jumps but my fingers don’t stop and I don’t look up. Not right away. Because I know whose blazing, lethal eyes are on me.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Dante’s voice is low, sharp as a blade.
I don’t flinch.
“I asked you a question.”
I keep typing. Calm. Careful. Failing. “I think the better question,” I murmur, “is what you’re doing with a folder named after my codename inside one named Vesper Syndicate.”
Silence. No movement. But I feel him there—tension radiating off his body like heat from a live wire.
When I finally lift my head, his face is a warzone—fury etched into every brutal line, his jaw clenched so tight it looks like it might shatter.
“You think you’re invincible, little thief?” he snarls, voice low and dangerous. “You hack into my system and think I won’t chain your pretty little ass to a wall?”
I look at him. And I mean look. And for the first time, I don’t see a powerful predator, a monster who eats other monsters for breakfast. I see a control freak standing in the middle of an uncontrollable lightning storm, wondering where the next strike will come from.
“I think if you wanted to send me to jail, you’d have done it already. I think even if I hadn’t agreed to this thirty-day circus, you still wouldn’t have thrown me to the wolves. You’re the only wolf you want touching me.”
That throws him. Just a second. A flicker of something uncertain behind the anger.
“You don’t get to fucking disobey, make demands,” he snaps. “Or change terms.”
“I’m not demanding.” My tone is soft. Even. Dangerous. “I’m asking. Tell me what this is. Ironveil. Vesper. Tell me what my name is doing here. Tell me why it’s buried under five levels of encryption and why the files feel like a graveyard awaiting a reaper’s scythe.”
He says nothing.
I nod once. “That’s what I thought.” I move to close the laptop.
“You’ll know,” he says suddenly. “When the time is right.”
I freeze. My fingers still rest against the trackpad. “And I’m just supposed to trust you?” I ask quietly.
Dante exhales, long and slow, like he’s holding something back. “Yes.”
I want to believe him. God, I want to. But the tightness in his voice—the tremor in his restraint—tells me I’ve seen something I wasn’t meant to.
He steps forward.
I stand, laptop still in hand.
We’re close now, toe-to-toe. Eye to eye.
“You keep secrets, Dante. I keep plans.”
His mouth curves—not a smile. A threat. “Don’t test me, Specter.”
“Too late.”
The stare between us lasts five seconds too long. I feel it in every inch of me. My skin is hot, my stomach tight. The scent of him—leather, smoke, power—invades my lungs. I hate how much I crave it.
So I step back. Not in surrender. In strategy.
“Goodnight, Mr. O’Driscoll.”
He doesn’t answer.
Just watches me walk out of his study like a woman who didn’t just open Pandora’s Box.
The penthouse is quiet.
Too quiet.
Dante hasn’t come to bed tonight. I’m not sure if it’s restraint or punishment. Or both.
I put the plug in as per my training. And fuck if I don’t get myself wet doing it, remembering how thoroughly he fucked me last night, this morning, even in the gallery when he was one level above an automaton.
But I’m not going to let lust derail me.
He said I’d know when the time was right.
The more I think about it, the more I don’t know that I believe him.
I curl up on the black leather sofa with a bowl of cereal and his backup tablet. I crack the first layer of the firewall in less than three minutes. Half my focus is on the screen—the other half is on the hallway, listening for footsteps.
He’s not coming.
Not yet.
Which means I still have time.
To get deeper. To find out what Ironveil really means. Why the name Specter lives in his files.
And what it has to do with the girl in the photo I found buried in subfolders.
Is she the ‘she’ he referred to?
Or is she… it worse?
I crunch a spoonful of cornflakes and open a new window.
My pulse is steady. My breathing calm. I squirm and the presence of the plug pulses, sending new, salacious ideas on how to tackle this through my depraved brain. If I’m to be mired in lust and surrender, maybe I can use that to my advantage?
My fingers slow and the idea takes hold. Builds.
Shimmers with purpose and possibility.
Dante
She thinks I don’t know.
That I didn’t notice the faint shift in her voice when I walked in earlier. The twitch of her fingers over the trackpad, the barely suppressed rush of adrenaline in her pupils.
She was inside the fucking system again in the middle of the night. ?Rooting around Vesper and Specter.
She’s careful, I’ll give her that. Cool as polished glass on the surface. But underneath? The vigilante brat throwing a tantrum. She’s lit wire and storm surge—reckless when she thinks the risk is worth the reward.
And tonight, she decided I was worth it.
I pour myself a glass of Oban, neat, and sit at the edge of the long mahogany desk. Her fingerprints are still on the lid of the laptop. Her scent—vanilla, ozone, something uniquely hers—lingers in the leather chair.
She’s getting too close. Too fucking close. And not just to the files.
To me .
I’ve spent years building walls that not even God could breach. But Dahlia?
She keeps finding the cracks.
And every time she kneels for me… the instinct that screams she was right for me flares with pride. Every time she whimpers my name with her lips red and swollen, eyes glassy from submission… I forget why I built the walls in the first place.
I should’ve shut this down the first night. Should’ve reminded myself what she is: a thief, a hacker, a professional manipulator. She’s playing the long game, and I know it.
I fucking respect it.
But it doesn’t matter.
Because I’m playing one too.
Tonight, I’ll fuck her into a state of ruin so deep she won’t be able to remember her goddamn name, let alone her passwords.
And while she’s limp and panting and destroyed beneath me?
I’ll buy myself time.
Time to move the files. To reroute the triggers. To bury Ironveil and everything it threatens deeper than she can dig. Until the time is right.
Time to figure out how to protect her—from the Syndicate, from what’s coming, from herself while using her. Bending her to my will.
Because despite everything, I don’t want her broken.
I want her mine .
And she can’t be mine if she’s dead.
I toss back the rest of the scotch and set the glass down too hard. It cracks against the marble.
And fuck, I feel it resonate deep inside me.
She’s finding the cracks.
And I’m feeding her the wedges.
Dahlia
My hands are bound behind my back, wrists tight with soft leather cuffs that creak when I move. Dante’s hand is firm around my throat—his favorite way to keep me still.
His cock pushes inside a pussy throbbing and sore with relentless fucking.
My safe word is a gauntlet writhing between us as his cock slams into me from behind, every brutal thrust a declaration, a punishment, a filthy kind of love letter written in grunts and wet slaps and the sharp sting of denied pleasure.
“Say it,” he growls, voice low and brutal against the shell of my ear. Sweat drips from him, down my temple to the corner of my mouth.
I catch it with my tongue. Moan at my prize.
“Tell me who owns this pussy.”
I sob, hips bucking back into him like I’m possessed. “You do—fuck—Sir, you do—please, don’t stop?—”
He tightens his grip just slightly. Enough to steal the edge of breath from my lungs. Enough to feel the many pulse points on my body.
The heavy chain attached to the harsh clamps spikes pain into each nipple with every movement.
The two beads deep in my ass that rub sublimely against the membrane separating my holes, making me see stars.
The thighs spread perpendicular to the waist-high bench he placed me on so he could fuck me like I’m his human fleshlight.
“No,” he says. “I think I’ll stop. You haven’t earned it.”