Chapter 25 Personal Hell
PERSONAL HELL
The moment the man’s body crumpled at my feet, I was already moving, leaving the corpse cooling on the concrete behind me without a second glance.
The world narrowed into a single, razor-sharp point of focus as I sprinted through the alley.
Every sense tunneling toward the direction she had gone.
The photograph burned against my palm, its edges bending beneath the force of my grip.
The image of her stepping out of her apartment imprinted on me like the Devil’s brand.
That one still moment, that candid vulnerability, that proof that someone had been watching her long before tonight, fused into something violent inside me.
I didn’t even have time to question why or how. It just cut through my chest like a blade and filled the hollow space with a terror I refused to acknowledge and a fury that almost blinded me.
I moved as fast as I could, contemplating taking to the rooftops so that I didn’t have the busy city to contend with.
But then I also knew that if I did that, I would have a greater chance of missing her in my blind and frantic panic.
Because she couldn’t have gotten that far, surely?
Unless she had gotten into a cab or used another form of public transport.
Fuck, I just didn’t know!
The city blurred into streaks of light and noise, its edges smearing past as my feet hammered across pavement and stone.
Every part of me, every instinct, every thread of restraint pushed toward reaching her.
The demon surged through me in frantic pulses, claws raking the inside of my ribs as it urged me forward with a desperation that tasted of blood and pure dread.
Its voice was a snarl in my head, wild and unrestrained.
‘Faster.
Run.
Our girl needs us.
She is alone.
She is unprotected.
Fucking Move!’
I vaulted over a fence, cut through a narrow alleyway, shoved aside a pair of men who shouted after me, and tore across a road with inhuman speed.
Nothing mattered except the thought that I had sent her away.
That I had believed I was keeping her safe by letting her walk alone.
That I had told her to go home, only for Xue’s men to have been waiting for her.
The fear flooded me so viciously that it stole my breath, tightening my chest until it felt like my ribs might splinter beneath the pressure.
Her building came into view at long last, tall and pristine in the fading light, an exterior that did nothing to hide its sudden wrongness.
The night concierge looked up as I entered, his eyes widening when they met mine, and he stumbled back instinctively, pressing himself against the desk as if trying to disappear behind it.
I did not stop. I did not speak. I took the stairs at a pace no human could match, the metal railings rattling beneath the force of my ascent.
When I reached her floor, the truth struck before I even made it to her door.
She was not here.
The air was wrong. Too still. Too cold. Too untouched.
I couldn’t hear the faint shuffle of her steps or the quiet thrum of her heartbeat from behind the door.
Sounds I had grown too accustomed to sensing without thought.
I moved forward with mechanical precision and knocked once, more out of denial than logic.
Silence answered.
I pressed my ear against the door, straining to hear even the smallest breath, the softest rustle of movement, but all I found was emptiness. Not a soul was home, and my demon lashed out violently at the void, its panic rippling through me with suffocating force.
‘She is gone.
Taken.
Stolen from us.
This is your fault!’
“No,” I muttered through clenched teeth, gripping the doorknob until the metal groaned under the pressure of my hand.
“No, no, no!”
I forced my senses to their sharpest edge, pulling the entire hallway into focus. The scent of the building’s cleaner. The faint perfume of a neighbor. The residual traces of dinner cooked behind closed doors. And there… hers. Soft. Familiar. A trail leading down the hall.
Then another scent cut through the air.
A man’s.
Unfamiliar.
Uninvited.
One of Xue’s.
The scent was strongest near the stairwell.
My breath seized as I followed it, the trail growing stronger with each step until it abruptly vanished near the lower floors.
A scent soon swallowed by exhaust fumes and tire rubber from the street outside.
I gripped the railing, bending the metal under my palm as a single horrific realization settled like poison in my blood.
She had not made it back inside.
Someone must have reached her first. Someone had taken her while she trusted me, and my demon’s voice lowered to something quiet and murderous.
‘We know where to find him.
He touched what is ours.
He marked her.
Kill Xue.
Make him bleed for every second she is afraid.’
A low sound tore from my throat, too harsh to be human. I released the mangled railing and turned toward the exit, my vision narrowing once more into that single point of focus. Every heartbeat. Every breath. Every instinct roared toward the same direction.
The club.
If Xue had sent a man to watch her building, to take pictures of her, to follow her home, then the bastard was already moving against me.
And if he had laid one hand on her, if he had frightened her, he had signed his own death warrant.
If he had dragged her into his world even for a second, I would burn this entire city until there was nothing left of him but smoke and ash.
The moment my feet hit the street, I was running again, tearing across Shanghai like a storm ready to devour everything in its path.
I was going after Xue.
And nothing would stop me.
The club was still closed when I reached it, its neon signs dead, the doors locked, the street empty.
I moved across the road like a blade through water, each step fueled by a fear so vicious it tasted like metal in my mouth.
The moment I reached the door, I slammed my fist against it hard enough to rattle the hinges and send a dull boom echoing through the hallway behind it.
A voice barked from inside, irritated and unbothered, speaking in Mandarin that I translated in my head.
“We are closed, come back later!”
My demon snarled before I could stop it, the sound vibrating low in my chest, and I leaned in close enough that my words curled through the crack beneath the door.
“Not for me, it’s not!”
Before the idiot behind the door could respond, I gripped the steel frame and tore the door straight off its hinges.
It ripped free with a shriek of twisted metal and crashed onto the floor behind it, scattering guards who leapt back in shock.
One reached for his gun. Another shouted something, too panicked to form words.
I didn’t care. I moved through them like they were nothing but shadows, grabbing the closest man by the collar and hurling him across the hallway.
He hit the wall with a crack that made everyone else freeze.
Someone fired.
Too fucking slow.
I sidestepped the bullet, caught the arm that held the gun, and snapped the wrist backward with a clean, brutal twist. His scream filled the hallway, echoing off the walls in a way that made the demon inside me purr with cruel pleasure.
Another man tried to block my path. I slammed my palm into his sternum, sending him sprawling, gasping for breath he could not find.
A third attempted to tackle me. I grabbed him by the throat and threw him into the stack of crates lining the entryway, wood splintering on impact.
Their terror spilled through the air like gasoline.
Yet, it only fueled me further.
I stalked through the dim corridors, ignoring the chaos I left behind, my steps precise and deadly. My gaze fixed firmly on the office door at the end of the hall. The closer I got, the more the demon pressed against my skin, whispering in dark delight.
‘He is inside.
He thinks he is safe.
Let us prove him wrong.’
The moment I reached the office; I didn’t bother turning the handle.
I drove my boot into the door and sent it slamming open, the force cracking the frame as it rebounded against the wall.
Every gun in the room lifted toward me at once, a dozen men lined around the office perimeter, hands shaking, eyes wide, fear thickening the air to the point of suffocation.
And there, behind his polished desk, sat Xue Long.
His face shifted from irritation to shock in a single instant.
Then to strange satisfaction.
Before I could cross the room, before I could wrap my hand around his throat and peel him off the floor, he lifted a single hand.
“If you kill me… then she’s dead,” he said far too calmly.
The words hit me like a blow to the chest, and my steps halted mid-movement. My demon also froze, its fury curling tight and silent like a serpent ready to strike.
I looked at Xue with a lethality that should have turned him to stone.
“You’re lying.”
His smile widened. Slow. Confident and most of all… Cruel.
“Am I?”
I followed the shift of his gaze down to the surface of his desk. A photograph lay there. Not of her this time. But of something else.
The Seal.
My Seal.
The one Dominic had entrusted to me. The one no one was supposed to know was in my possession.
My jaw clenched as he tapped the image with a manicured fingernail.
“I know you have it,” he murmured. “Which means you also know this. If you want the girl back, unharmed, breathing and untouched, then you will bring it to me. Only when I have it in hand may you have her back.”
My vision narrowed to a single point of white-hot rage. I stepped closer, ignoring the guns trained on me, ignoring the men trembling behind their weapons, ignoring everything except the bastard in front of me.
“You made a mistake tonight, Xue,” I said, my voice low and filled with a promise that made his guards edge backward.
“Because I warn you that if she is harmed in any way, if she bleeds or cries or whispers one word of fear because of you, I will take your fucking head and keep it as a trophy. And the rest of your body I will nail to your fucking walls as a reminder to anyone foolish enough to cross me and dare to take what is mine!”
He stared at me.
Stunned.
Then he laughed softly, wiping the corner of his mouth with a careful fingertip.
“That, is the most I have ever heard you say,” he said.
I leaned closer, my eyes burning blue, letting him see what lived beneath my skin.
“Then remember it, because my voice will be the last you ever hear if you do not give me what I want,” I growled with deadly intent.
I turned to leave, the air shaking around me, the guards parting like scattered leaves before a storm. Before I stepped through the broken frame, I looked back once more.
“The girl is mine,” I said, each word a lethal vow. “Remember that if you value your life. Or stand here and watch your empire burn, before…”
“I fucking end you!”