The fluorescent lights in the Crimson Cage's underbelly buzzed like angry hornets. Aria stared at the locker contents—dozens of photos documenting her every move. Coffee runs in grainy CCTV stills. Midnight hacking sessions captured through apartment windows. A particularly chilling shot of her sleeping, the camera positioned *inside* her bedroom.
"Planning to frame me or fuck me, Morrison?" she muttered, sifting through the file.
PROJECT DOLLHOUSE pages contained disturbing details—DNA replication trials, behavioral conditioning logs, a subheading: Lena Blackwood Replication: 93% Match Achieved. Her fingers trembled. A sticky note in Kael's jagged scrawl read: They're getting closer.
Boots echoed in the corridor. Aria pocketed the most damning documents just as the locker room door creaked open.
"Ghost wants you upstairs." The bookkeeper from earlier leaned against the doorframe, leering. "Says you're his… what was it? Personal medic."
She slammed the locker shut. "Tell him to bleed out."
"Aw, sweetheart." He stepped closer, yellowed teeth bared. "Don't be like—"
Aria drove her knee into his groin. As he crumpled, she pressed a shock glove to his sweaty neck. "Next time," she hissed, "ask nicely."
The man's screams followed her into the service elevator. She stabbed the button for the rooftop, needing air that didn't reek of blood and male arrogance. The doors opened to a storm-lashed helipad—and a stranger waiting in the rain.
"Ms. Blackwood." The man's voice was velvet wrapped around a blade. "How kind of you to deliver yourself."
He stood beneath a black umbrella, tailored suit worth more than the factory she'd destroyed. Midnight hair swept back to reveal a face carved from arrogance and old money. A spider tattoo peeked above his collar—eight legs curling toward his pulse point.
Aria's hand flew to her knife. "You're not Kael."
"Thank Christ for that." His smirk revealed a diamond-studded canine. "Dante Ravencrest. I'd say 'pleasure,' but we're both too sharp for lies."
Shadow Syndicate leader. The name whispered through criminal networks like a curse. She'd sold information on his rivals last winter.
"Here to collect a bounty?" She inched toward the edge. Twelve stories to the alley below.
Dante tutted. "I don't want you dead, little phoenix. I want you… indebted." He nodded toward the fire escape. "Shall we?"
Four SUVs with tinted windows idled below. Aria calculated odds—six armed men visible, likely more hidden.
"You've got five seconds," she said, "to explain why I shouldn't scream for Kael."
Dante's laugh warmed the rain. "Because the Ghost can't save you from what's coming." He opened his palm, revealing her mother's jade hairpin—lost the night her father died. "Still think this is a coincidence?"
Ice flooded her veins. She lunged. Dante caught her wrist, spinning her back against his chest. His lips brushed her ear.
"The men who replaced your father?" His breath smelled of expensive whiskey and imminent danger. "They work for me now."
A gun cocked. Kael stood in the alley mouth, bare chest glistening with rain and half-healed wounds. A knife jutted from his left shoulder—had he even noticed?
"Let. Her. Go." Each word dripped murder.
Dante sighed. "Always the hero, Ghost? Even when it destroys you?" His thumb stroked Aria's racing pulse. "She doesn't belong in your gutter."
Kael moved.
Chaos erupted.
Dante's men opened fire. Kael dove behind a dumpster, returning shots with a pistol pulled from his waistband. Aria twisted free, slashing at Dante's throat. He blocked with his umbrella—the fabric split to reveal a sword hidden inside.
"*Fascinating*," he purred, parrying her strikes. "Who taught you Balinese knife fighting? The scars on your left palm suggest—"
She feinted left, aiming for his femoral artery. Dante caught her blade between crossed swords. Metal shrieked.
"—a right-handed instructor," he finished, disarming her with a flick of his wrist. "Pity."
Kael's roar shook the alley. He plowed through two bodyguards, bones crunching under his fists. Blood streamed from a gash above his eye, mixing with the rain.
"Aria! Run!"
Dante sighed. "Must he always be so dramatic?" He pressed a button on his watch. "Sicarius Protocol."
The remaining SUVs disgorged twelve more men—these clad in tactical gear stamped with a Sterling Corp logo. Aria froze. Adrian Sterling's private army. What unholy alliance had she stumbled into?
Kael threw himself into the fray, becoming a whirlwind of broken bones and shattered weapons. But the numbers overwhelmed even him. Aria watched a mercenary slam a baton into his injured shoulder—the one with her knife still embedded.
Something primal snarled in her chest.
"Enough!" She grabbed Dante's silk tie, yanking him close. "Call them off!"
He raised an eyebrow. "Or?"
"Or I'll expose your Panama accounts to the IRS." She recited the account numbers she'd found in his encrypted files last spring.
For the first time, Dante's mask slipped. Fury darkened his eyes. "You dare—"
A gunshot rang out.
Kael staggered, crimson blooming across his abdomen. His mismatched eyes found Aria's. "Go…" he mouthed, collapsing.
Dante caught her arm. "Choose now, little phoenix." His voice softened unnervingly. "Let the Ghost die a martyr… or walk with me and uncover real power."
Rain blurred the scene—Kael's still form, the approaching sirens, the hairpin digging into her palm. Her father's warning warred with the strange ache in her chest.
"What's your price?" she whispered.
Dante's smile could've lit the underworld. "Three days. Three secrets. Three chances to walk away." He traced the spider tattoo on his neck. "But be warned—my web always catches what it wants."
As black sedans screeched to a halt, Aria made the only choice that wouldn't destroy her.
Aria enters Dante's penthouse to find walls covered in her childhood photos… and a live feed of Kael being loaded into an unmarked ambulance, his hand clutching her shock glove.