Chapter 37 — In the Dark Where Truth Breaks
Darkness didn’t fall.
It slammed.
The lights didn’t flicker or fail gradually — they vanished in a single, violent second, plunging the underground facility into absolute black. The kind of darkness that swallowed depth and direction, where even your own hands felt unreal.
Amara froze — not from fear, but recalibration.
Her heartbeat thundered once, hard, then settled. She counted her breaths. One. Two. Three.
This was not a power outage.
This was an ambush.
Metal scraped somewhere ahead. A boot struck concrete. A safety clicked off.
Then Alessandro was there.
His hand closed around her wrist — firm, grounding, unmistakably real. He didn’t pull her forward. He didn’t push her down. He simply anchored her, his presence cutting through t
