Page 10 of Dark Embers

Present Day

I’m not here for the show.

Not really.

But fuck me if I’m not captivated anyway.

From my spot in the shadows of the VIP booth at the back of the Golden Lights Hotel’s private lounge, my eyes track every move the petite blonde makes under the hot stage lights.

Sabrina Craft. She owns the stage like she was born in glitter and smoke. The red velvet curtain behind her sways with the bass, but she’s the real rhythm. All lean lines and coiled power, wrapped in sequins and sin.

I know dancers. Hell, I’ve had a few in my bed. But there’s something about her—something raw buried beneath the performance polish. The way her body bends… that’s not just talent. That’s control. Discipline. That’s a woman who could be trained to submit so beautifully, she’d forget what breathing felt like without permission.

My cock hardens behind my tailored slacks with a mind of its own like it always does when I see her and it’s been this way from the moment I first laid eyes on her. I was sitting at this same table two years ago with my cousin Radomir who had his eyes on her that night and for the same reasons I have tonight—information.

Back then, it had been information about Leigh. Now, it’s about Tara Craft. Sabrina’s older sister. The ghost at the center of my obsession. The woman I believe may have led my brother Gavriil to his death.

My back twinges as I shift in my seat while reaching for my vodka and I suppress a grimace. The burn scars on my back still ache sometimes. The explosion that ripped Gavriil and his wife apart eight months ago damn near took me with it. Fire licked up my spine like it wanted to claim me too, but I crawled out of that inferno with a vendetta burning hotter than the flames ever could.

Eight fucking months of dead ends.

Then, two days ago, I finally found something.

I’d forced myself to go back to Gavriil’s estate. Forced myself to open his closet, touch his things. Pretend he’d just stepped out and might come back for them. I don’t know what made me check the lining of his suit jackets, but there it was—tucked behind a false panel. A burner phone. Clean, untraceable. Hidden from even Pavel.

The messages I found on it were short and cryptic. But there was enough to paint a picture that the person on the other end of it was a woman—someone my brother cared deeply for and needed to keep secret—a mistress.

At least twice a day for nearly seven months they had exchanged messages about the woman’s progress. She was either climbing a mountain or getting fit for some grueling race as they were all about her health and how much harder and trying each day got. How lonely it was having to face the challenges and each day Gavriil would end his last message with:You’ve got this. It will all be over before you know it.

It had taken me a lot of fucking favors but I’d finally managed to trace where the messages had come from—a small town on the outskirts of Vegas where there are no more than ten hunting cabins. Cabins that I know are a front for people who have been erased from their old life and waiting to start a new one. A town run by the best friend of my cousin’s father-in-law and the late Sol Craft—Sabrina’s father.

As I know Sabrina wasn’t the one that had been fucking my brother for years it wasn’t hard to figure out that the woman on the other end of the burner phone was Tara Craft. Tara Craft who had disappeared around the same time my brother got that burner phone fifteen months ago.

I don’t really give a fuck who my brother was screwing on the side; what I do give a fuck about is whether Tara Craft cared for my brother or wanted him dead because the last message she’d sent him was a bit ambiguous. It had been sent ten minutes before the blast that had killed him and his wife.

This has to stop. Running is the only hope.

Was she trying to save him? Or lead him to his death? Just like the first cryptic message Pavel had heard the night Gavriil was killed about my brother’s time to deliver being up, I have no idea why running would be Gavriil’s only hope. Did Tara know what my brother was supposed to deliver that he didn’t? Was she the one demanding something from him?

As expected, Tara was long gone from the town and her father’s cabin by the time I got there a couple of days ago. Going to her mother turned up a dead end as well. Carla Craft wasn’t too happy to talk to me about Tara. In fact the woman was downright cold, wary, and had a dangerous air about her that I’d never seen before and I’ve known Carla since I was a kid. She’d been dancing at the club for over twenty years and started there when my late father still owned it.

Fuck, I even had a huge adolescent crush on her along with many wet dreams. Like her daughters, she was gorgeous, sexy, and subtle. But when I went to ask about Tara. It had been like seeing a whole different person—one you don’t want to mess with. I’m still a bit taken aback by that side of Carla which makes me wonder if there’s a lot more to her than anyone realizes.

Shaking the mystery of Carla Craft from my mind, my eyes land on her younger daughter—the petite Sabrina. While Carla wasn’t willing to say anything about Tara other than she hasn’t heard from or seen her daughter for fifteen months, the otherdancers at the Ember Club had a lot more to say. I was told that Sabrina and Carla had hired a private detective, PI Tom Williams, a first grade asshole con artist, to look for Tara eight months ago.

Which strikes me as odd seeing as though Carla told me Tara had been missing for fifteen. So why hire a PI to find her only eight months ago, around the same time Gavriil and Irina were blown to bits? What did the Crafts know?

I pour another shot of vodka and return my attention to Sabrina. Her hips roll with a sensual precision that’s both art and weapon. I imagine her tied up—naked and shaking, that fire in her eyes slowly fading to ash as I wring every last drop of resistance from her. I can picture her on her knees with her ass stained red by the sting of my belt and my cock down her throat.

I down another shot of vodka to burn away the desire pooling in my loins for her. She’s hands-off. Not just because she’s my cousin and his wife’s best friend, but because Sabrina’s the kind of woman who hides her darkness. She masks it behind that sassy mouth and vanilla sex exterior.

I hate that.

I don’t have the patience to peel back layers of denial. I want a submissive who already knows she’s mine. Who’s curious enough to bleed for it. Not a Barbie doll with a guarded core and guilt over who they really are.

Still... she’d be so fucking fun to break.

I down another vodka and savor the bite.

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