Chapter 388
Duncan didn’t hesitate. He seized her arm with unyielding force.
“Dallas! Please!” Adella screamed, her voice tearing at my soul as he dragged her toward the elevator. “Don’t let him win!”
The doors shut.
The silence that followed was a freezing, bottomless void. I stood alone among the shattered glass and the lingering ghost of her perfume.
Don’t let him win.
The words echoed in the empty room. Ragnar was still howling about betrayal, but the cold, calculating logic of my years as a Special Forces commander had begun to claw its way through the haze of whiskey and rage. A double? A perfectly replicated scent? It sounded like the desperate rambling of a cornered traitor.
But it was also exactly the kind of sick, theatrical mind game Braydon Hyde would play.
A sickening seed of doubt took root in my chest. I needed to know. I needed to see it with my own eyes, even if the truth finally killed me. I snatched my car keys from the mahogany bar.
The elevator chimed and Duncan stepped back in. He took one look at my bleeding hand and the keys in my fist.
“Alpha, don’t do this. The storm outside is blinding, and you’ve been drinking—”
I shoved past him without a word. The lingering fever from my old battle wounds flared beneath my skin, mixing with the alcohol in my blood as I stepped into the elevator.
I was going to the Hyde Estate.
Dallas POV
The drive was a two-hour blur of torrential rain and burning whiskey. My black armored SUV sat hidden in the overgrown brush off the coastal road — a silent beast waiting in the dark. I slipped through the shadows of the Hyde Estate’s perimeter, the freezing downpour soaking through my clothes, chilling the lingering fever of my old battle wounds that still smoldered beneath my skin.
Ragnar clawed at my skull, pacing relentlessly. He was desperate for her scent, desperate to prove her innocence. Don’t let him win. Her voice echoed in my mind. I needed to see it. I needed to know if the girl whose mother had once saved me was truly gone.
I stood in the muddy side garden, a pathetic voyeur in the storm. The rain was a deafening roar, masking my approach and washing away the scents of the world. Ahead, the massive floor-to-ceiling windows of the estate’s kitchen glowed with warm, golden light — a perfectly illuminated stage suspended in a black void.
Through the water-streaked glass, I saw her.
The alcohol in my blood and the relentless rain blurred the edges of my vision, but I recognized the soft, pale pink cashmere sweater she wore. I had bought it for her. Her face was scrubbed clean of makeup, her posture relaxed. There was no fear in her movements. No trace of a captive fighting for her life.
She was smiling.
Then Braydon Hyde walked into the frame.