The safe house was located in the "Steel Gut," an industrial wasteland where the sky was perpetually bruised by the orange glow of refinery fires. Dante navigated the SUV through narrow alleys until they reached a decommissioned shipyard. Inside a hollowed-out shipping container, hidden behind stacks of rusted iron, lay a high-tech bunker that smelled of ozone and expensive whiskey.
Dante practically carried Elara inside. She was a ghost of the woman who had entered the cathedral. Her midnight blue gown was little more than a collection of rags, the silk clinging to her damp skin.
As soon as the heavy steel door hissed shut, the silence of the bunker became deafening. Elara stood in the center of the room, her father's blood dried in dark, flaking rust across her hands and the pale swell of her breasts. She didn't cry. She just stared at the wall, her body trembling with a rhythmic, violent chill.
"Elara," Dante said, his voice unusually soft.
He moved toward her, his own shirt discarded. The sight of his scarred chest, still glistening with the sweat of the fight, usually sent a jolt through her, but now she felt hollow. He reached out to pull the remnants of her dress away, and it fell to the floor in a heap of ruined dreams.
She stood before him in only her torn lace stockings and her tattered bra. The movement caused her breasts to heave, the heavy mounds jiggling with her shallow, panicked breathing. Her nipples were dark and hard, a physical reaction to the cold air and the residual adrenaline.
"I saw him die, Dante," she whispered, her voice cracking. "I saw him, and I couldn't... I couldn't stop it."
Dante didn't offer empty words. He stepped into her space, his large hands coming up to cup her face. He forced her to look at him, his dark eyes burning with a possessive, dark heat. "He died so we could live. He gave us the key to the bank. Don't let his death be for nothing by breaking now."
"I'm not breaking," she snapped, a flash of fire returning to her eyes. "I'm burning."
The intensity of her gaze ignited something primal in Dante. He didn't want to comfort her; he wanted to consume her. He wanted to drown out the image of the blood and the gas with the raw, visceral reality of their bodies. He crushed his mouth against hers, a kiss that tasted of salt and iron.
Elara fought him for a second, her hands pushing against his chest, but the contact was like a spark to dry tinder. She needed to feel something other than the crushing weight of grief. She needed to feel alive.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, her breasts flattening against his hard pectorals. The friction sent a jolt of electricity straight to her core, making her pussy throb with a sudden, insistent ache. Dante groaned into her mouth, his hand sliding down her back to grip the curve of her hip, pulling her flush against his rigid, pulsing length.
"You're mine, Elara," he growled against her skin. "In life, in death, in the dark. You belong to me."
He lifted her, her legs automatically locking around his waist. As he carried her toward the low, wide bed in the corner of the bunker, the rhythmic motion caused her breasts to sway and jiggle, the tips raking against his skin. He dropped her onto the dark sheets and followed her down, his body a heavy, welcome weight.
He didn't waste time with gentleness. He needed to mark her, to erase the touch of the "Holy" men and the memory of the catacombs. He buried his face between her breasts, his tongue swirling around the sensitive peaks until Elara was arching her back, her fingers digging into the muscles of his shoulders.
"Please, Dante... make me forget," she sobbed, her hips jerking upward as his hand found the soaked center of her stockings.
He entered her with a single, powerful thrust, filling her completely. Elara let out a choked cry, her head falling back against the pillow. The sensation was overwhelming—the stretch, the heat, the way her private parts pulsed and gripped him with every movement. The jiggling of her breasts with each of his thrusts was a blur of pale skin and dark shadows in the flickering light of the computer monitors.
It was a desperate, grieving erotism. Every slap of their skin felt like a defiance of the death they had just witnessed. Dante watched her face, his eyes never leaving hers as he drove into her, his pace relentless and dominant. He wanted to see her eyes glaze over with pleasure, to see the grief replaced by the sheer, blinding light of their obsession.
As she reached her peak, her body convulsing around him, Elara felt a strange, terrifying sense of clarity. The "normal" girl was truly dead. The woman who remained was a creature of the shadows, an architect of vengeance.
Minutes later, they lay in the dark, their breathing slowly returning to normal. Dante sat up, his back to her, the blue light of a nearby screen reflecting off his scars.
"The Bank of the Eternal Sun," Dante said, his voice cold again. "It's not just a bank. It's the Circle's laundering hub. Every girl they sell, every company they liquidate, the money goes there. If we hit it, we don't just hurt them—we paralyze them."
Elara sat up, pulling a silk sheet over her bare chest. "My father said the foundation. He didn't mean the money, Dante. He meant the physical foundation. He designed that bank too."
She moved toward the computer, her body still aching from their passion, her pussy still throoning with the remnants of his touch. Her breasts swayed as she leaned over the keyboard, her fingers flying.
"If I can find the original schematics... there's a structural weakness," she murmured. "Something he built in case he ever needed to bring it down."
Dante stood behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders. "Find it. Because tomorrow, we stop being the hunted. We start being the wrecking ball."
Suddenly, the screen flickered. A new message appeared in a secure chat box. No name, only a symbol: the weeping angel.
"The Architect's daughter has the key. The Zenith has the door. Come to the vault, Little Bird. Let's see who breaks first."
Dante's grip on her shoulders tightened. The organization wasn't hiding anymore. They were inviting them into the heart of the beast.