Page 18

Dante

Trigger Warning:

If infidelity is a trigger for you, please skip this section and pick the story up again in Chapter Nineteen.

The clock’s mocking tick-tock hammered against my skull.

I let out a ragged sigh.

Stella’s voice, a thin, reedy sound against the roaring in my ears, sliced through the silence. “It’ll be okay, Dante,” she said, her words a pathetic balm she didn’t believe herself. Her eyes, usually sparkled with mischief, were now dull with a fear that mirrored my own, a fear that clawed at my throat. “He’ll come back.”

“What if he doesn’t?” My question ripped from my chest, raw and desperate.

“Digger and the others are searching. He couldn’t have gone far.” Her voice trembled, a fragile thing against the storm brewing inside me.

“This isn’t some sleepy town, Stella. This city chews people up and spits them out. People vanish here. Never to be heard from again.”

“Danny’s just angry. He’ll cool down, come home.” Her words were hollow, a desperate attempt to build a wall against the encroaching darkness.

I didn’t believe her.

My gut screamed at me. This wasn’t just anger; it was a primal fear, a suffocating sense of wrongness that pressed down like a physical weight on my chest.

It wasn’t just about Danny anymore.

Something vast and malevolent had its claws in me, a darkness that threatened to swallow me whole, coupled with the icy certainty that whatever awaited me would shatter me to my very core.

The chair legs scraped against the polished floor—a sound that echoed the frantic clawing in my chest. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t just sit around and do nothing.

I had to do something.

My legs, leaden with a terror that transcended reason, propelled me toward the door, when the shrill intrusion of my phone shattered the silence of the room.

Sinclair’s name, a brand seared onto my retina, stopped me cold.

The icy grip of fear, a physical thing, constricted my throat. His threat from the other night, whispered in the dead of night, replayed in my mind like a poisoned mantra. Each syllable was a venomous dart.

Answering his call felt like swallowing shards of glass.

His chuckle, smooth and sickeningly sweet, slithered through the receiver. “Hello, dear Dante. How’s the evening treating you?” His words wrapped around me like a coiled viper, ready to strike.

My voice, ragged and raw, clawed its way out. “What the fuck did you do, Sin?”

His reply was slow. “Oh, nothing of consequence. Merely re-introduced your young Sypher to an old acquaintance.”

A primal scream ripped through me, shattering the fragile calm of the room. “GODDAMNIT, SINCLAIR!” My roar echoed the fury that pulsed in my veins, a molten river threatening to consume me. “If you’ve so much as fucked with his mind, I swear to God, I will kill you!”

Sinclair’s laughter, devoid of mirth, a chilling symphony of malice, filled the void. “Then come, Dante. Come see for yourself how well your dear Sypher is faring.”

The click of the disconnect was a final, brutal blow and left me reeling in the suffocating darkness of his treachery.

The penthouse door slammed behind me as Stella’s screams faded into an echo swallowed by the city’s roar. My lungs burned, the icy January wind a razor against my skin as I sprinted, the polished granite of the building slick beneath my pounding feet.

A yellow cab—a greasy, salvation-smelling beacon—materialized from the swirling chaos. “The Playground!” I barked.

This wasn’t a game.

This was a war, and Sin was going to lose.

My entire life had been a desperate scramble for belonging, for a love that mirrored my own. A fragile, foolish hope that flickered and died under Sin’s chilling gaze. His twisted soul, warped by the Trick Pony’s depravity, branded its darkness onto him as he tried to forge me into his hellish image. But Danny... his unwavering love, a molten core against Sin’s icy grip, had forged me anew. Danny showed me the incandescent beauty of a soul untainted, a love that bloomed even in the deepest shadows. And that love, that unwavering strength, was the fire in my veins. Sinclair would never extinguish it. He would not steal Danny from me. He would not twist the love of my life into a reflection of his own grotesque self.

I would tear him apart with my bare hands first.

The cab lurched to a halt.

The Playground’s pulse hammered in the suffocating night air, a frantic heartbeat bleeding from its concrete shell. Even from here, I tasted the expensive champagne and sweat of the revelers, heard their raucous laughter—a symphony of debauchery.

But this wasn’t just any club.

This was the Playground. Crispin Sinclair’s gilded cage and my own personal hell. The line stretched around the block, a writhing mass of ambition and desperation, each hopeful face a potential pawn in Sinclair’s twisted game.

Stepping onto the pavement, the city’s stench clung to me. My tailored suit felt suddenly inadequate. A flimsy shield against the storm brewing inside. Crispin’s face, sharp and unforgiving, burned behind my eyelids.

Perception is everything, Dante . His words, a mantra of manipulation, echoed in my skull. He was a paradox, that man. A ruthless taskmaster who’d molded me with an icy hand. Yet he occasionally offered a fleeting glimpse of something... paternal? A carefully constructed illusion, I now knew. Beneath the veneer of my stern mentor lay a raging psychopathic narcissist, a kingpin whose ego was fueled by the suffering of others. Eighteen years I endured his twisted tutelage before escaping to the sanctuary of academia—a fragile escape from a man who made hell seem like a vacation.

Inside, the air throbbed. A churning mass of bodies writhed under the strobe lights, their movements a frantic dance to a rhythm that mirrored my own churning anxiety. The stench of expensive perfume battled with the tang of blood and created a subtle, unsettling undercurrent. The VIP section, a cage of velvet ropes and chillingly polite smiles, shimmered with the city’s elite. But the glitter was a mask.

I knew the secret.

The Playground’s true heart pulsed far below the dance floor, in a subterranean chamber of pain and depravity. Sinclair’s personal abattoir. Each step towards him was an act of defiance, a pilgrimage to the heart of my own personal darkness. The air crackled with an electric tension—the kind that preceded a lightning strike. Shadows clung to the edge of my vision, whispering promises of retribution.

At the bar, I met his gaze. Crispin stood silhouetted against the window, his eyes burning into mine—a predator assessing its prey. His smile was a carefully crafted lie, concealing the monstrous depths of his soul. The puppet master, pulling the strings of a thousand lives, his amusement built on the shattered remains of others’ dreams.

He had taught me perception, but tonight, I intended to use it against him.

My breath hitched, a ragged rasp in the suffocating air thick with the scent of stale ale and something else... something metallic, clinging to the back of my throat like the taste of old blood. Every scar, every aching joint, screamed a testament to the lessons Crispin had so brutally etched into my soul.

This wasn’t a reunion; it was a reckoning. A battlefield carved into the very stone of this vile institution, where I would wrestle back the fragments of the life he’d stolen from me. His grin, a predatory flash of white teeth against the shadowed hollows of his face, sent a jolt of icy dread down my spine.

The game was on. Let him think me a broken thing, a docile lamb returning to the slaughter. Let him savor the illusion of control. The fool. He didn’t know the steel that simmered beneath my skin, hardened by years of his cruelty. Somewhere in this fetid labyrinth of deceit, my husband was trapped, ensnared in his wicked game, and I wouldn’t leave without him.

Sinclair craved iniquitous games?

I would grant him a game.

A brutal, unforgiving game played in the shadows, a fight to the death where only one of us would walk away. And it wouldn’t be him.

The stairs groaned under my weight, each creak a hammer blow against the rage building inside me. I didn’t knock. I burst through the door, the wood splintering under the force of my fury.

The scene slammed into me, a gut-wrenching blow of betrayal.

My husband, Danny, sprawled on the couch, a glistening, obscene parody of the man I loved. His skin, slick with sweat and something else, something vile, shone under the harsh office light. Carrie—that fucking whore—lay beneath him, a writhing mass of limbs, her laughter a cruel, mocking soundtrack to my devastation.

The air hung thick with the stench of sex, sharp and acrid, assaulting my nostrils, a physical manifestation of the violation. I tasted bile. His cock, thick and brutal, plunged into her again and again. The rhythmic thwack a sickening percussion against the silence of my own horrified scream. Her wet, glistening cunt, the sight of it—it burned my eyes. Then, with a sickening shift, he flipped her, the curve of her back arching, offering him the dark, gaping maw of her asshole. The sound of him entering her, raw and brutal, sent a shudder through me, a physical echo of the shattering of my world. Her cries were less pleas than incitements, a frantic invitation to his degradation. The raw, animalistic pleasure in his growl, the way his fingers dug into her hips, the frantic, brutal rhythm of it all... it was my nightmare made real.

“That’s it, Danny! Fuck my ass!” Her voice, a guttural command, a possessive roar that stripped bare the cruel reality of her depravity.

Unable to move, I watched as Danny slammed into her again and again, a frenzied, relentless assault. His head thrown back in a primal scream of release, a guttural cry that ripped through the air.

This wasn’t just infidelity; it was a desecration.

The exquisite, agonizing death of everything I held dear.

Sinclair’s insidious whispers, his subtle manipulations, had won.

I’d been blind, a fool, thinking I could somehow be stronger than the poisonous vine of his deceit.

But this... this was the final, agonizing rupture.

I turned to leave, the scent of betrayal seeping into my soul. The final shuddering climax ripped through the room, a guttural groan that tore through me as acutely as if it were my own. The sound of her giggle—a high-pitched, triumphant squeal—was the final blow.

I spun back, my heart a leaden weight in my chest as that cunt Carrie smiled, her poisonous, knowing smile, her dainty, mocking fingers beckoning.

“Hello, Dante.”

Danny, startled, his body slick with sweat and cum, spun around, his eyes wide with a horrifying cocktail of fear, guilt and something else... something akin to dawning recognition. His gaze flickered wildly between me and Carrie, that smug, triumphant harlot.

“Dante,” he whispered, his voice thin and reedy, his hand flying to his head. The tremor in his voice was more than fear; it was the tremor of a soul finally seeing the full, devastating extent of its depravity. “Oh God... what have I done?”

His question hung in the air, a testament to the wreckage he’d wrought, the irreversible damage done. The smell of sex, of betrayal, clung to him, a permanent stain on his soul.