Chapter 17
Seventeen
DAPHNE
The interior of Thal’s armored SUV was a silent, leather-scented tomb as we pulled away from the curb. Outside, the sirens of half the LVPD were screaming toward the hotel we’d just turned into a slaughterhouse.
I sat as far from Thal as the leather allowed, my midnight silk dress shredded and damp with the metallic rain of the sprinklers. My hands weren't shaking from the trauma of the ballroom, but vibrating with the electric, terrifying hum of the kill.
Zeno had raised me to be a weapon, but Thal had been the one to finally pull the trigger. I didn’t feel like a victim. I felt like a predator who had finally tasted blood and realized she liked the flavor.
“Daphne, let me see your side,” Thal said, his voice rough and thick with desperation he couldn't hide. He reached for me, his hands trembling. “You’re bleeding.”
I swiped his hand away. “Don’t.”
“I was trying to keep you alive,” he growled, the alpha in him snapping back as he white-knuckled the door handle.
“You were trying to keep me ignorant,” I spat, staring out the window as the neon lights of the Strip blurred into streaks of garish color.
“You knew the date. You knew Rhea was coming for the transfer tonight, and you let me walk into that room thinking we had time.
You didn't trust the Ghost, Thal. You just wanted to protect the girl.”
He didn't answer. He couldn't. The silence between us was louder than the gunfire.
We reached the safe house, a concrete-and-steel fortress hidden beneath an unassuming warehouse on the edge of the city. The heavy blast doors hissed shut, sealing us in. Thal headed for the monitors, but before he could pull up the perimeter feeds, every screen in the room flickered to life.
It was her. Rhea Konstantinou. She was sitting in a high-backed leather chair, a glass of champagne in her hand, broadcasting directly into Thal’s private network.
“A toast—to Las Vegas’s king,” she mused, her voice dripping with venom through the high-def speakers. She wasn't looking at Zeno now. She was looking at the camera and us “Or should I say … the king who can’t hold his throne?”
Thal’s jaw tightened so hard I thought it might shatter.
“I remember when the great Zeno Theodorus didn’t let people steal from him,” Rhea continued, a smirk playing on her lips. “But look at him now. His prize has run off with a boy who thinks he can play God. Your allies don’t trust you, Thal. And your Ghost?”
She leaned into the camera, her eyes pinning me even through the screen.
“She’s beginning to see that a master who loves you is still a master, doesn’t she? You’ve exchanged a gold cage for a concrete one, Daphne. But the lock doesn't care who has the key. The transfer is still pending, children. And I’ve never liked late payments.”
The screen went black, leaving us in a heavy, suffocating silence.
Rhea’s words felt like a physical weight, pressing the air from my lungs.
I could almost see Zeno’s face, no longer the stoic mask of the King of Olympus but that of a man who had just watched his greatest asset walk out the door.
Rhea had attacked the gala, stripping away the myth of Zeno’s invincibility.
By calling me a prize that had run off, she had turned me into a target for everyone in this city looking to climb the ladder. Zeno would be feral. A king without an army is dangerous, but a humiliated king is a monster with nothing left to lose.
Thal didn't wait for me to agree. He grabbed a first-aid kit from a metal locker, his movements jerky and frantic. He looked like a man coming apart at the seams.
"Sit," he commanded, gesturing toward a cold steel table.
"I'm not sitting, Thal. I'm waiting for an explanation."
He ignored me, stepping into my space and ripping the shredded silk of my sleeve to reach the graze on my shoulder.
His hands were stained with someone else's blood, maybe Zeno's, maybe a waiter's, but his touch was unexpectedly steady.
The scent of antiseptic and his expensive cologne filled my senses, making my head spin.
“Is that what this is?” I asked, my voice echoing through the cold, tactical room. “A new cage?”
Thal turned, his eyes dark with a mix of guilt and possessive rage. “I lied to you because if you had known she was coming tonight, you would have done exactly what you did, putting yourself in the line of fire.”
“I am the fire, Thal! You can't stand in front of me and claim you're the only one capable of burning!
" I moved closer, the antiseptic scent on his hands mixing with the sharp, bitter smell of gunpowder that clung to my hair. “You promised no secrets, but you treated me like just another line item. You’re exactly like Zeno, managing the asset instead of trusting your partner.”
He grabbed my arms, his fingers digging into my skin with bruising, territorial force. He slammed me into the cold steel of the medical table.
“You are the only thing in this city that isn't a lie!” he roared, his forehead crashing against mine. “Yes, I managed you. Yes, I lied. Because I would rather have you alive and hating me in this hole than beautiful and dead on that ballroom floor.”
I wanted to hit him. I wanted to claw the guilt right out of his eyes. But as he gripped my arms, the rage in my gut turned into a molten, starved hunger. He was a liar. He was a warden. But he was the only man who looked at my darkness and wanted to worship it.
I didn't pull away. I grabbed the front of his tactical vest, my knuckles white as I hauled his mouth down to mine. I bit his lower lip until I tasted the copper tang of his blood, a silent demand for the truth he’d tried to hide.
He let out a low, primal growl as his hands slid from my arms to my waist, hauling me up onto the cold steel table.
The contrast was a violent shock, the freezing metal against my bare thighs and the furnace heat of his body as he shoved the shredded silk of my dress aside. He didn't wait for a zipper. I heard the snap of his trousers, the sound of finality in the quiet safe house.
“You want to be the fire, Daphne?” he hissed against my throat, his teeth grazing my sensitive skin before his tongue found the pulse point. “Then burn for me. Forget Zeno. Forget the debt. Right now, the only thing that matters is that you’re mine.”
He entered me with a brutal, single-minded thrust that bottomed out against my soul.
I screamed into the concrete room, my fingers clawing at the Kevlar of his vest as he filled the hollow ache I’d carried for ten years.
He was thick, hot, and utterly relentless, driving into me with a rhythmic ferocity that erased the gala, the shooters, and the lies.
Rhea was right. I was in a new cage. I was pinned to a steel table by a man who would kill the world to keep me. As I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him even deeper, I realized I never wanted to be free again.