Page 54 of Dark Alliance
For a flickering second, the three of us were a chaotic tangle of limbs and suppressed rage. “She’s the target, Thalassios!” Zeno hissed as he reloaded his piece, eyes darting to the shooters emerging from the kitchens. “They aren't shooting to isolate her, not kill. Rhea wants her breathing so she can collect her transfer.”
“Over my dead body,” I growled. I looked at Daphne, her dress torn, her expression lethal as she leveled her compact semi-automatic with the terrifying precision of the Ghost.
“You lied to me!” she screamed, her voice cutting through the staccato of gunfire as a bullet chipped the marble inches from her head. She didn't flinch. Her furious gaze snapped to me. “You knew the transfer was tonight! You kept me in the dark!”
She was right. I’d treated her as a liability rather than an asset, trying to be the only one holding the match, and now we were both paying the price in blood.
“I was trying to keep you alive!” I roared back, hauling her down as another spray of bullets shattered the table beside us.
We could deal with the fallout later. Right now, I needed to get her out of this slaughterhouse. Our security teams were doing their jobs, but Rhea had infiltrated my staff. This wasn’t a hit. It was a message. Loud and clear.
I ducked back behind the table and reloaded my weapon, my focus sharpened by adrenaline and anger. If we weren’t safe, Rhea wasn’t either.
The ballroom was a graveyard of broken glass and crimson-stained silk. Above us, the sprinklers hissed to life, raining cold, metallic-tasting water over the carnage, but the heat of the fire blooming in the kitchens was only getting closer.
“We’re moving! Now!” I yelled, grabbing Daphne’s hand. Her skin was slick with water and soot, yet her grip was iron. “James is at the service exit with the armored SUV!”
“The hell he is!” Zeno countered, lunging through the haze.
He grabbed her other arm, his fingers digging into the midnight silk with bruising, possessive force. For a second, we were a grotesque triangle of ownership—me holding her hand, Zeno holding her arm, and Daphne standing at the center of the wreckage.
“She comes with me,” Zeno roared, his face a mask of blood and pure genocidal rage. “She’s my ward. I’m taking her to the Olympus vault and locking the door until the city is ash. She belongs to the debt, Thalassios!”
The air was heavy with smoke and the acrid scent of cordite. Daphne stood between us, caught in a conflict that had become deadly. She gazed at Zeno, the man who had imprisoned her in gold for ten years. Then she looked at me, the man who loved her enough to destroy the world but was too proud to reveal the truth.
“Choose, Daphne,” Zeno hissed, his eyes darting to the kitchen doors as they kicked open. Another wave of Rhea’s men surged through, a pack of wolves in a bloodlust.
I didn’t plead. I didn’t give her a speech. I just held her hand, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I’d spent the past week trying to dictate her fate. Now, with the world literally burning around us, I surrendered. I let her choose which darkness she wanted to belong to.
She didn’t hesitate.
“I’m done being the prize, Zeno,” she said, her voice cutting through the chaos.
She squeezed my hand, her fingers locking tight around mine, choosing her king.
“Run.”
We pushed through the thick smoke, leaving Zeno’s furious roars behind us. As we reached the service stairs and the cold night air of Vegas hit us, I realized one thing for certain: we weren’t just fleeing from Rhea’s shooters. We were heading toward a reckoning neither of us was ready for.
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.
