Page 27 of Haunted (Blackwood Brothers #1)

XAVIER

I move through the service corridors that crisscross like veins, each passage designed to let me intercept my prey wherever she chooses to run. The surveillance feeds on my phone show Mira’s frantic sprint through the pathways.

The spike trap worked perfectly. She dove through as the walls sealed, landing where I wanted her. Now, she faces the triple corridor junction, three identical paths stretching into darkness.

She doesn’t know that all three lead to the same destination.

My footsteps echo against the concrete as I take the most direct route to the pool chamber. The service tunnels lack the theatrical red lighting of the main maze, harsh fluorescents that cast everything in stark white. Purely functional, purely mine.

A sound stops me mid-stride. Knox’s distinctive laugh .

I pause at the maintenance door marked “Gallery Seven” and peer through the observation window.

My youngest brother has Bianca pressed against an easel, her wrists bound with silk scarves to the wooden frame.

Paint smears across her skin in deliberate strokes—blues and purples that match the bruises Knox has been carefully creating with his teeth.

“Art should hurt, shouldn’t it?” Knox murmurs against her neck. “Beauty through suffering. Isn’t that what you pretentious types always say?”

Bianca arches against her restraints, paint and arousal marking her skin. He’s turned her own passion into another form of bondage, using her sensibilities against her. Classic Knox—finding the psychological pressure point and applying enough force to make someone break.

The white mask conceals his expression, but I know him well enough. He’s enjoying every tremor, every whimper, every moment of his prey’s surrender.

I move past the window. Knox has his prey well in hand, and I have mine to catch again.

The service corridor continues for another hundred feet before ending at a heavy door marked “Pool Access - Staff Only.” I swipe my keycard and step into the mechanical room behind the pool chamber.

The sound of filtration systems masks my approach as I check the tablet controlling the room’s various systems.

Water temperature is optimal. Lighting sequences are programmed. Restraint mechanisms are armed and ready .

Through the one-way glass, I watch the three corridor entrances. Mira will emerge from one of them within minutes, driven by desperation and the false hope that she might find another way out.

Instead, she’ll find exactly what I’ve prepared for her.

The pool stretches before me, dark water reflecting colored lights in hypnotic patterns. Beautiful and deadly, like everything else in my world.

I switch feeds on my tablet, pulling up the surveillance from Sector Five. There she is—Cora Pike, the mayor’s precious daughter, stumbling through her own carefully orchestrated gauntlet.

Three hunters circle her like wolves. Dominic Vega leads the pack. Liam Hayes flanks her right. Ryder Caldwell takes point, using his charm to herd her exactly where they want her to go.

“This way, sweetheart,” Ryder’s voice carries through the feed’s audio. “Trust me, you don’t want to go down that corridor.”

Cora’s breathing comes in sharp gasps as she weighs her options. She can’t see the trap waiting in the left passage—the pressure plates that will seal the walls and funnel her straight into their waiting arms. Ryder’s gentle guidance feels like kindness in the maze’s manufactured terror.

She takes his suggested path.

Perfect.

The beauty of it sends a sense of satisfaction coursing through my veins. Two best friends, both convinced they’re making their own choices, both being expertly maneuvered toward their inevitable capture. Mira runs, thinking she can save Cora. Cora flees, thinking she can escape to help Mira.

Neither understands that their separation was always part of the design.

I watch Dominic’s subtle hand signals directing his partners, their coordination flawless. When Mira approached me asking for an invite for Cora, Dominic overheard. He’d been wanting a way to get back at the mayor, and violating his daughter appealed to him.

And it turns out a lot of people have vendettas against her father. Either that, or Ryder and Liam decided to join in for fun. The irony is sweet. Mayor Pike’s crusade against Ravenwood’s criminals delivered his own child straight into criminal hands.

On the adjacent feed, Mira crashes through the maze. Both women race toward their fates, each believing she’s the one in control, each certain she can outsmart predators who’ve set their eyes on them.

Cora stumbles, and Liam’s there to steady her with false gallantry. The gesture appears protective and caring.

I switch back to my own feeds as footsteps echo from the middle corridor.

Mira’s arrival is imminent.

I pocket the tablet and step into position, every muscle coiled with anticipation.

The footsteps stop outside the entrance, and I watch through the one-way glass as Mira’s silhouette appears in the doorway. Her chest rises and falls with rapid breaths, sweat glistening on her skin under the maze’s lighting.

She steps into the chamber, her bare feet silent on the wet tiles surrounding the pool. The colored lights beneath the water cast shifting patterns across her face as she takes in the scene—the dark water stretching forty feet to the opposite shore, the only visible exit glowing beyond the far end.

Her brow furrows, those sharp eyes I’ve come to know so well scanning for alternatives. She turns left, then right, searching the walls for another way through. Finding none, she backs toward the entrance.

Smart girl. Too smart for her own good.

I watch her retreat, letting her almost reach the threshold before my finger finds the control button. The door slams shut with a resounding clang that echoes through the chamber. The magnetic locks engage with a definitive click.

Mira spins away from the pool, her hands pressed against the sealed door behind her. She pushes against it uselessly, her palms flat against the cold metal.

“No, no, no,” she whispers, the words carrying clearly in the acoustics I designed specifically for this moment.

She turns to face the water again, understanding dawning. The pool stretches before her like a liquid barrier, its surface deceptively calm. She can’t see the depths, can’t know what waits beneath.

Her shoulders square with that stubborn determination I’ve learned to anticipate. She approaches the edge cautiously, crouching to test the water temperature with her fingertips.

I watch her through the one-way glass as she tests the water with her fingertips, those intelligent eyes calculating distance and depth. Forty feet across.

What she doesn’t know is that I’ve been watching her for weeks, learning her habits. The gym membership she never used. The swimming pool in her apartment complex remains untouched. Mira Sullivan may be clever, but she’s not athletic.

She stands at the edge, the red silk clinging to her curves like a second skin. The colored lights beneath the surface dance across her face in hypnotic patterns, blues and greens swirling in the darkness below. Beautiful and inviting, exactly as intended.

Her breathing quickens as she realizes this is her only option. Behind her, the steel door remains sealed. The walls offer no handholds and no alternate routes.

She takes a tentative step into the shallow end, gasping as the warm water laps at her ankles.

The oils I’ve infused into the system create an almost silky texture against her skin, designed to heighten every sensation.

Her body responds immediately, pupils dilating slightly from the chemical mixture.

Another step. The water reaches her calves now. She moves forward with increasing confidence, unaware that each movement sends signals to the sensors beneath the surface.

Halfway across the shallow section, she pauses. Something catches her attention—a shimmer in the water. She crouches, peering down into the depths.

The first restraint rises silently from the pool floor, a metal chain threading through the water like a serpent. It moves slowly, purposefully, staying below her line of sight.

Mira straightens and continues, reaching the point where the bottom drops away into the deep section. She hesitates at the edge, gathering courage for what she believes will be a simple swim to safety.

The chain coils beneath her feet, waiting.

She dives forward with determination, her body cutting through the surface in a graceful arc. The red silk billows around her as she begins to stroke toward the far side, forty feet of dark water between her and her believed freedom.

The sensors detect her movement pattern immediately. Swimming. Strong strokes. Target acquired.

More chains begin their ascent from the depths, converging on her position.

I press the activation sequence on my tablet, and the chains respond as if they were extensions of my will.

The first restraints emerge from the depths with silent precision, titanium links gliding through the water like metallic serpents. Mira’s powerful strokes carry her to the pool’s center, exactly where I need her.

The ankle restraints strike first.

Metal coils around her legs, the titanium will be warm from the heated water, but unyielding.

Her gasp echoes through the chamber as the chains pull taut and yank her vertically, submerging her momentarily until she breaks through the surface, gasping and trying to swim away, but held in helpless suspension by the chains around her ankles.

“What—” Her words cut off as the wrist restraints follow their programmed sequence.

More chains come out from the sides of the pool, capturing her arms. The system pulls her limbs outward, spreading her like a starfish vertically. Her head remains above the waterline—I’m not interested in drowning her, only in demonstrating the futility of running.