Page 177 of The Contract

I stare as they all leave.

Da.

I tilt my face up, toward the ceiling, toward the nothingness above.

To the universe. The void. The maybe.

“If you’re up there…”

My voice cracks.

“Please…”

But it isn’t Da who answers. Or God.

“Why pray to him,” a low voice rumbles, Refined. Russian.

Terrifying in its restraint.

“When you can pray to me?”

Every part of me stills.

It’s not just the sound of him.

It’s the shift in the air. The sudden chill that tightens around my lungs. The way the room is too hot and too cold, all at once.

He steps forward, his silhouette slow and composed, a phantom built of power and shadow that closes in like a moonless night.

A mask hides his face, but never his voice. Dante?

My eyes find his arm, his sleeve rolled up. No tattoo. But it only takes one more step into the light for me to fully take him in.

“Zver?”

His name barely makes it past my lips.

He moves closer, a slow inch that fills the room.

“I told you what would happen if our paths ever crossed again.”

I nod. “Yes.”

His finger glides along the bar—slow and deliberate.

The way he touched me that night.

The way he still touches me without laying a hand anywhere on my skin.

And God, I feel it.

In every breath. Every nerve.

He knows it, too. I can see it in his smirk. His pitch black eyes.

Were his eyes always this dark?

“Say it,” he murmurs. “Tell me what I’d do.”

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