Page 64 of The Contract

My stomach flips like a penny as my eyes land on his left arm. The serpent tattoo normally coiled possessively around his bicep has vanished. In its place, a freshly inked hellhound, red eyes blazing viciously back at me.

Realization hits like a thunder bolt.

“You’re not Dante.”

He bats my nose lightly, chuckling. “And you’re not supposed to be here.”

“I was just looking for Dante.” I lift my chin, hoping confidence hides the tremble in my voice. “I’m here to audition. To dance.”

The man tilts his head, studying me with eyes too amused for comfort. “Is that so?” He leans in. “And you are?”

“Riley.”

His smile widens slowly, a spark of recognition flashing briefly before it’s snuffed out. “Dillon.” He clasps my hand in both of his. “The man who handles auditions.”

Oh, shit.

“Why don’t we go somewhere better suited for your…performance.”

My stomach knots as he leads me out.

At the door, something catches my eye. A small, polished steel trash can, impossibly pristine on the outside, but scorched black within.

Empty, except for one charred scrap of paper at the bottom. Even as I’m whisked past, a single word screams up at me through the soot.

My pulse rockets to a wild, erratic high.

Zver

CHAPTER 19

Dante

Dominic wheels in the enormous crate, the cart shrieking beneath its brutal weight before he vanishes through the door into the next room.

Screens flicker silently, ghostly blue washing over the hardened, merciless faces of my men.

Worse than six feet under? Try this hellhole—a forgotten bunker buried half a century ago and untouched ever since.

All courtesy of my grandfather.

Not my father’s father, Nonno Vito D’Angelo. He was brilliance and brutality stitched into Armani suits.

No, this tomb is the twisted inheritance of my mother’s father. Merciless with his enemies, unhinged and batshit beyond belief. Most traces of him, including his name, are erased beneath decades of blood, madness, and carefully crafted lies.

But thanks to Gramps—or rather, his legendary paranoia and obsessive devotion to secrecy—this fortress exists.

That, and the towering mountain of blood-soaked cash it took to fund it.

It’s the ideal graveyard for secrets.

Especially mine.

Layers of concrete and steel so thick, I wonder if a nuke could blast through it.

The air is suffocating, the silence perversely serene. That despite the man I know is in the next room, bound and probably choking on his own blood-curdling screams by now.

My eyes cut sharply to every face in the room, dread coiling hot and dangerous inside my gut.

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