18. An Impossible Choice
An Impossible Choice
Damian
The moment I step into the Dream Room, I know something is wrong.
The air is thick with warmth, humming with the quiet, pulsing energy that always wraps around me in this world. The golden glow stretches across the marble floors, glinting off the polished bookshelves, flickering against the velvet drapes swaying in an unseen breeze. Everything looks the same.
But something is missing.
No—someone.
I exhale, rolling my shoulders, as if I can shake off the unease clawing at my spine.
My mind is still tangled in the chaos of the real world—the Berettis’ encroachment, the Corsinis’ betrayal, and Alessandra.
My sister. Taken by Dante. Stolen from me like a pawn in a war I hadn’t agreed to but would damn sure finish.
That’s why I’m here. I need answers. I need to use this place—to pull something from it that can give me an edge. But before I can do that, there’s something more immediate. More pressing.
I need to find Nichole.
Turning, my sharp gaze sweeps over the room.
I expected her to be here. Maybe curled in one of the armchairs, lost in a book.
Maybe pacing, waiting for me, eyes lit with impatience.
Maybe sitting by the window, staring into the endless expanse of this world with that guarded expression that makes me want to know everything.
But she’s not. A flicker of unease tightens in my chest.
"Nichole."
My voice cuts through the stillness, commanding. No answer. My pulse ticks higher.
I try again, louder. “Nichole.”
Nothing. The golden glow of the Dream Room pulses once, slow and deep, like a heartbeat—only this time, it doesn’t feel welcoming. It feels… wrong.
My jaw locks. The breath inside my lungs burns hotter, heavier.
I move across the room, swift and precise, searching for any sign of her. My movements are steady, calculated—until they aren’t. Until that certainty begins to fray, unraveling beneath the truth staring me in the face.
She’s not here and the silence isn’t just silence.
It’s absence.
The sound of my own breathing is sharp, ragged, cutting through the suffocating silence as I tear through the mansion.
“Nichole!”
The name crashes from my throat, echoing through the endless corridors, swallowed by the vast emptiness of the Dream Mansion. The golden chandeliers flicker as I pass beneath them, shadows stretching unnaturally across the floors, twisting in directions they shouldn’t.
No response.
I don’t slow. I don’t stop. Every step is faster than the last, my pulse a deafening drumbeat against my ribs. The mansion should have shown me something by now—should have led me to her. But there’s nothing. No trace of her, no movement, no subtle shift in the walls bending to my will.
The thought digs under my skin like a blade. My movements are no longer calculated, no longer controlled. Panic gnaws at the edges of my mind, foreign, unwelcome, dangerous. I don’t panic. I don’t allow it. But this—this is different.
My strides lengthen, tearing through the corridors as I search room after room. The sitting area—empty. The library—silent. The garden hallway—undisturbed. No overturned furniture, no shattered glass, no blood, no signs of a fight.
Nothing.
And somehow, that’s worse.
Because if there’s nothing, it means she didn’t fight. She didn’t run. She simply vanished.
A growl rips through my chest as my palm slams against the nearest wall, rattling the paintings, shaking the chandeliers—but the mansion doesn’t react. It doesn’t shift, doesn’t warp, doesn’t answer me.
My fingers curl into fists, breath hissing between clenched teeth.
Where the fuck is she?
A cold breath leaves my lips, my eyes snapping toward the grand staircase.
And at the very top—
The Nightmare Door is slightly ajar.
Darkness bleeds from its edges, thick and unmoving, swallowing the light before it even reaches the frame. The air around it shifts like reality itself is wrong, warping under the weight of something it wasn’t meant to hold.
I freeze.
Because if it’s open—if something inside took her—
Then nothing in this world or the next is going to stop me from getting her back.
I stand in the middle of the upper floor, my entire body locked in rigid control, my breath slow and measured. The mansion is silent, the kind of silence that isn't empty, but full—watching, waiting, pressing against my skin like an unseen force demanding an answer.
To my right, the Dream Room pulses with golden light, warm and steady, its glow bleeding beneath the door like an open invitation. A promise. A path forward. If I walk through, I will find Alessandra. I will wake up and tear the real world apart until she is safe again.
To my left, the Nightmare Door looms.
Black. Unmoving. Swallowing the light before it even touches the surface.
Unlike the rest of the mansion, where gold and marble stretch in elegant defiance of time, this door is a void—no carvings, no ornamentation, no sign it was ever meant to open.
And yet, the shadows at its edges breathe, pulsing with something unseen but unmistakable.
The air tightens, charged and suffocating, growing heavier with every second I stand here.
The chandeliers flicker, the golden glow trembling just short of the Nightmare Room’s threshold, as if afraid to reach inside.
My jaw locks. My pulse remains steady, my breathing controlled, but my hands tighten into fists.
Something is watching me.
I feel it before I see it—an invisible presence pressing against my mind like fingers trailing over glass. The shadows shift beneath my fingertips, moving, living, as if this door is something sentient, something that knows.
And then I see it.
Just beyond the threshold, carved into the marble floor—deep, uneven, desperate.
Scratches.
My stomach turns to stone. The polished marble should have been impossible to mark, yet the evidence is there, clawed into the surface where someone had fought—where she had fought.
Nichole had been dragged inside.
A growl rumbles in my chest, low and lethal, a sound that barely belongs to me. The mansion pulses in response, feeding off the fury rising beneath my skin. Seconds. That’s all I have. If I hesitate, if I waste even a breath, I will lose her.
My muscles coil, my pulse hammering against my skull. I can hear the ticking in my mind, time slipping between my fingers like sand.
Nichole. Alessandra.
The woman I love. The sister I swore to protect.
One trapped in a place that doesn’t obey the rules of this world. The other held captive by men who want to see me bleed.
There is no right answer.
Only the certainty that no matter what choice I make, I will have to live with the weight of the one I didn’t.
I stand in between the two doors, my breath steady but strained, the weight of the moment pressing into my chest like a vice. To my right, the golden glow of the Dream Room flickers, stretching toward me like an open hand, offering clarity to the answers I seek to rescue Alessandra.
But to my left, The Nightmare Room. Where Nichole is trapped alone in the nightmares I’ve spent my entire life avoiding. A place I swore never to enter. If I leave her too long, I don’t know what will be left of her when I come back.
My pulse hammers against my skull. I need to move. Every second that passes is another Nichole is trapped in the dark. And Alessandra in the hands of my enemies.
It’s an impossible choice: My love or My blood.
I close my eyes. Exhale. Then I make my choice.
As soon as I step in that direction, the door opens, waiting for me to enter. This is the moment of truth.
“I will save you,” I say as I cross the threshold of the unknown.
And that’s when the nightmare begins…
Continue to Book 2: Nightmare