The iron door to the cellar didn't creak; it groaned, a heavy, suffocating sound that had haunted Drake's nightmares for fifteen years. The air down here was different—colder, damp, and smelling of old stone and bitter memories.
Drake's hand was a vice around Alisha's, his knuckles white. He wasn't the boy who had been dragged down these stairs anymore, but the "Iron Predator" was fraying at the edges. The trauma was a physical force, pushing against his chest.
Alisha felt the tremor in his grip and tightened her hold. She didn't lead him, and she didn't follow; she walked besidehim, her presence a steady, lethal anchor in the dark.
"I see you finally came home," a voice drifted from the shadows.
Silas was sitting in a high-backed wooden chair in the center of the room, a single lantern illuminating the jagged scars on the walls—marks Drake had left with his own fingernails years ago. Silas held a glass of amber liquid, looking as if he were hosting a dinner party rather than a massacre.
"Let her go, Silas," Drake said, his voice dropping into a register that was barelyhuman. He stepped forward, shielding Alisha with his body, his possessive instinct overriding his fear. "This is between us. You want the company? You want the bloodline? It's yours. Just let her walk out that door."
Silas laughed, a sound like dry leaves skittering over a grave. "You still don't get it, do you? I don't want the chair anymore, Drake. I want to see you break one last time. And I know exactly what the breaking point is now."
Silas stood up, reaching into his coat.Drake leveled his weapon, his finger tensing on the trigger. But Silas didn't pull a gun. He pulled out a small, leather-bound ledger—the original records of the Miller workshop acquisition.
"She told you she wanted to ruin you, Drake. But did she tell you why she stayed last night?" Silas sneered, stepping into the light. "She stayed because she's waiting for the moment I kill you, so she can take the inheritance for herself. She's a Miller, Drake. They're scavengers."
"Liar," Drake hissed, but he didn't lower the gun.
"Am I?" Silas turned his gaze to Alisha. "Tell him, Alisha. Tell him about the contract you signed with my associates three months ago. The one where you promised to deliver the 'Iron Predator' on a silver platter."
Drake felt the air leave the room. He didn't look back at her. He couldn't. If he saw the truth in her eyes, he knew he would finally shatter.
"Drake," Alisha's voice was low, vibrating with a dark intensity. "Don't listen to him. He's trying to reclaim the only power he has—the power to make you feel alone."
She stepped around Drake, placing herhand directly over the barrel of his gun, forcing it down. She walked toward Silas, her movements fluid and predatory.
"I did sign a contract, Silas," she said, her voice echoing in the stone chamber. "But you didn't read the fine print. I didn't promise to deliver him to you. I promised to deliver you to him."
Before Silas could react, Alisha moved. She didn't use the knife. She used the weight of her father's memory. She lunged, her movements a blur of calculated violence, disarming Silas with a brutal efficiency thatleft him gasping on the cold stone floor.
Drake was there a second later. He didn't use the gun. He pinned his brother to the floor, his hands—the ones that had built an empire—now wrapped around the throat of his tormentor.
"This is the end of the architecture, Silas," Drake whispered, his face inches from his brother's. "You aren't the master of this house anymore. You're just a ghost I'm finally exorcising."
He didn't pull away until Silas's eyes rolled back in terror. Drake stood up, his chest heaving, the darkness of the cellar finallyfeeling like just a room not a prison.
He turned to Alisha. She was standing by the door, the lantern light catching the sharp edges of her face. She looked like a queen of the ruins.
Drake walked to her, his hands still shaking with the ghost of the violence. He grabbed her waist and pulled her into him so hard it knocked the breath from her. He buried his face in her neck, his possessiveness now tinged with a raw, desperate gratitude.
"You stayed," he rasped. "After everything... you stayed."
"I told you, Drake," she whispered, her arms locking around him, her fingers digging into his back. "I'm not going anywhere. You're my ruin, and I'm yours. We're the only ones who know how to live in the dark."
Outside, the first real light of morning began to bleed through the mist. The Wright family was dead. Something far more dangerous had been born in the cellar