Chapter 2

The man reached up and pulled off his black tactical gloves. The security team lowered their flashlights, and the ambient street light caught the sharp angles of his face.

Annabelle's soul jerked backward, floating until her back hit the plaster wall.

It was Dangelo Valencia. The arrogant heir. The violent bully she had despised her entire life at the prep school.

Dangelo ignored the grime and blood pooling on the floorboards. He walked straight toward her ruined corpse. His massive frame was visibly trembling.

He dropped slowly to one knee. The hem of his custom-tailored suit absorbed the dark blood on the floor, but he didn't even glance at it.

Annabelle thought he was here to mock her pathetic death. She lunged forward, swinging her fists at his face. Her hands passed harmlessly through his broad shoulders.

Dangelo reached out. His hands, covered in thick calluses, trembled violently as he gently brushed aside the matted, blood-soaked hair covering her face.

The moment he saw her hollowed cheeks and lifeless, staring eyes, the veins in his neck bulged. His deep-set eyes instantly flooded with red. His Adam's apple bobbed hard as he swallowed a choked breath.

He shrugged off his suit jacket. The fabric still held the heat of his body. He wrapped it around Annabelle's broken remains with agonizing care, tucking the edges under her shoulders.

Annabelle floated mid-air, entirely paralyzed by confusion. She couldn't process why the man who used to terrorize the school was looking at her with such devastating grief.

Dangelo pulled her corpse into his chest. He held her like a man clinging to the edge of a cliff. His knuckles turned stark white from the force of his grip.

A single, scalding tear fell from his jaw and splashed onto her cold, dead cheek. The heat of that tear felt like a physical burn against Annabelle's floating soul.

A man in a tactical vest stepped into the doorway. He was Dangelo's deputy.

"Sir," the deputy kept his voice low. "Axel and Fay's wedding is currently underway at the Silicon Valley Hilton."

The mention of those two names acted like a chemical catalyst. The suffocating grief surrounding Dangelo instantly hardened into a terrifying, physical aura of murder.

"Lock down the hotel," Dangelo ordered. His voice was a low, mechanical growl. "Every exit. Cut the cell towers. Kill the Wi-Fi."

The deputy hesitated, shifting his weight. "Sir, doing that will completely alienate the tech cartel. The Department of Justice will open an immediate investigation on the Valencia family."

Dangelo drew the heavy pistol from his waistband and slammed it onto the rotting wooden table. The wood splintered.

"I don't care if the Valencia empire burns to the ground," Dangelo roared, the sound vibrating through the floorboards. "They are going to the grave with her."

Annabelle's soul shuddered. The sheer magnitude of his violence terrified her, but the cracks in her lifelong prejudice against him began to splinter rapidly.

Dangelo stood up, lifting her body in his arms. He moved with extreme caution, as if a sudden jolt might wake her from a deep sleep.

"Get the medical chopper," he told the deputy. "No public ambulances touch her."

As he reached the broken doorway, he stopped. He turned his head and stared at the cracked phone lying in the pool of blood.

"Bag that," Dangelo pointed his chin at the device. His eyes were entirely dead. "Extract every audio file and call log."

The deafening roar of rotor blades hit the roof of the apartment building. The downdraft blew the garbage down the hallway in a chaotic swirl.

Annabelle felt that strange, magnetic pull again. Her soul was dragged through the ceiling, tethered to her physical body as Dangelo carried her onto the roof and into the waiting helicopter.

Inside the dark cabin, Dangelo sat heavily on the leather bench. He kept her cold hand trapped between his large palms, lifting her fingers to his mouth, blowing his warm breath over her frozen skin over and over again.

The deputy leaned over from the front seat, handing back an encrypted tablet. "We locked onto Axel's offshore accounts holding the trust fund."

Dangelo didn't even look at the screen. "Short everything. Dump it all in five minutes."

The helicopter banked sharply, flying over the glittering night skyline of San Francisco. Below them, the massive structure of the Hilton hotel glowed with thousands of lights.

Dangelo looked down through the reinforced glass. He pressed the button on his tactical radio.

"Execute."

Annabelle looked down. Dozens of matte-black SUVs suddenly swarmed the streets surrounding the hotel, aggressively blocking every intersection.

A second later, the entire Hilton hotel went completely dark. The power grid was severed. The glittering wedding venue was plunged into a dead, terrifying blackness.