Page 112 of Empire of Dark

My stomach dropped, every muscle in my body tensing.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Damen? This is a gift for all of us—no matter what pulls us apart, all of the brothers will be pleased that you have her. Why isn’t she chained down in the undercrofts? You know what she can do, don’t you?”

Three more steps, the heels of his boots echoing in my ears, and then he was in front of me. Cletus. Standing between me and Damen.

Folotto brother number four. The only one that had ever mattered.

I should have figured it out when the popcorn bowl dropped from Venetia’s hands. Who else would she be so terrified of that she would send the earth to tremble? Cletus had tortured her, experimented on her, just the same as he’d done to me.

Cletus Folotto. The ghost. The scientist. The monster.

He turned to me, his dead eyes looking me up and down, the smile of a viper on his lips. The sides of his dark hair were buzzed down, an odd pattern cut into it that looked like railroad tracks ringing his head.

But he was the same. Evil incarnate.

The ice that had filled my bones at his first words shattered, gutting me from the inside out.

He was here for me.

Here because Damen had called for him.

Just when I’d forgotten about Damen’s blood, what he was, I was reminded that he was a Folotto. He always would be. United front.

My pinky twitched, aching to grab my dragonfly dagger from my leg. I squelched the urge. I had to, even as the familiar fury that I had nurtured for a century started to simmer out of control in the lower part of my gut.

I tore my stare off of the devil and looked beyond him to Damen.

Only cold ice in his amber-brown eyes. Bitter and crystalized.

“She’s not going anywhere,” Damen said, his glare never leaving me.

Out.

Escape.

I had to get out before the fireball headed straight for my head erupted and I woke up chained to a wall in the dungeons. Or on a gurney with a drill shoved up my nose.

I offered Damen a weak smile, one that I prayed was as submissive as I’d ever been. “You will excuse me to go change for dinner?” I turned to his brother, feigning ignorance on who this malefic was. “If you will excuse me, sir.”

Without waiting for a reply, I walked out of the room, praying my legs didn’t crumple under me, for my body was jelly, not of my own control at the moment.

At the stairs where I should have stepped upward, I veered left, going to the servants’ stairs on the south side of the caste. Down and out onto the rear courtyard, I headed straight for the carriage house.

I slipped in a side door and scanned the nine black SUVs housed within the structure. My heart thundering, every muscle in my body so tight I could practically hear tendons popping under my skin, I searched around for some sort of key cabinet.

None.

Running to the first SUV, I yanked open the door, my hands running everywhere along the console and dashboard for a key. None visible. I jumped into the seat, set my foot on the brake, and pushed the start button.

The engine purred to life.

Thank the gods, the key was already in the vehicle.

My hand shaking, I started tapping on the screen, hoping for some icon to open the carriage door in front of me. There.

Squeaking slowly open, the heavy door lifted and I punched my foot down on the accelerator the second I had a wide enough opening. Straight down the drive and then the only thing between me and freedom was the inner gate of the courtyard.

With one hand on the wheel, I started tapping on the screen again, desperately searching for the icon to open the gate—I’d seen the driver do it when we had left for Sardinia, but I hadn’t noted what it looked like. There—a stupid little gate icon.

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