Chapter 31: Chains & Choices
****Dante’s POV****
There’s a sound a man hears before everything in him changes.
It’s not a scream.
It’s not a bullet.
It’s the silence that comes after someone you love disappears without a trace.
That silence—it carved its name into my bones the moment I stepped into Isabelle’s room and found nothing but an open window and a single rose.
And her necklace.
The one I gave her the night we thought we could still outrun hell.
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Nico was the first to react.
“We’ve been breached,” he said. “West quarter. Security feed’s gone. No forced entry—someone knew the codes.”
“Someone inside,” I muttered, staring at the necklace.
I didn’t say anything else. Didn’t need to.
The fire was already crawling up my spine.
Selene.
It had to be.
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We combed the
