I Belong To My Three Forbidden Masters

Chapter 103: Chapter 103

Darius’s pov

The black screen of the phone reflected my own hollowed-out face back at me.

Call failed.

I tapped the screen. Dialed. Held the glass to my ear.

The number you are trying to reach is currently unavailable...

I pressed red, tapped the contact, and dialed again.

Call failed.

"Pick up!" I shrieked into the empty, ruined study, my voice cracking into a high, hysterical pitch. "Pick up the fucking phone, Balthazar! Pick it up!"

For fifteen excruciating minutes, I sat at my battered mahogany desk, my thumb slamming against the glass screen in a frantic, ceaseless rhythm. Dialing. Disconnecting. Dialing again.

My breathing came in ragged, hyperventilating hitches, cold sweat soaking through the collar of my dress shirt. I stared blankly at the dark screen, praying for the feed to flicker back on, waiting for Drake’s dark, mocking face to appear and tell me it was a trick. A illusion. A Mind-game meant to break my resolve.

Just a game, I bargained with the silent room, my hand trembling so violently the phone almost slipped from my grip. He’s a pure breed. He plays psychological games. It’s an illusion.

But why was I feeling cold all of a sudden in the center of my chest. It was so violent and yet so deep.

Was it truly a game?

I felt it, the moment he snapped Gideon’s neck, I felt the invisible tether of blood that bound me to him snap. Followed by a hollow opening in my gut.

I knew one thing for sure, Gideon was dead.

My thumb froze over the screen. The phone slipped from my numb fingers, clattering against the floor.

I buried my face in my hands, a long, low wail tearing from my throat. My eyes burned as my voice echoed off the ceilings.

The empty mansion repeated the echo to me and mocked me for my loss. My boy. My heir. The ruthless, arrogant prince I had built to carry the Thorne legacy into the next generation.

He was not perfect but he was still the heir to my legacy, everything I built from my father was going to be passed to him.

For five minutes, I rocked back and forth in my chair, clutching my head, drowning in the suffocating silence of a house that was now entirely empty.

Elena had left me and now my son has been ripped away from me. I gritted my teeth when I realized Drake had this all planned, disarming me by making me watch him and Lysander only to take the one thing I had left.

I slammed both palms onto the desk, pushing myself up to my feet so hard the heavy chair crashed backward onto the floorboards.

"You stupid, arrogant bastard!" I screamed into the dark, my jaw aching as I clamped my teeth together.

I warned him. I had stood in this very room trying to talk some sense into him, shaking him until his teeth rattled, begging him to stay away from Drake.

I warned him that those people were not ones to be played with but he chose to call me a coward and go after Lysander himself.

But Gideon was a fool. He was arrogant, reckless, and blinded by his own twisted, obsessive lust for Lysander. He thought he was untouchable. He thought a silver knife and holy water amade him a god. And now he was lying on a cold stone floor with his neck snapped like a cheap toy.

"You didn’t listen," I gasped out, pacing frantically back and forth across the blood-stained rug, my chest heaving. "You never fucking listened!"

I stopped near the shattered window, looking out at the dark, desolate mountain peaks in the distance.

The realization settled over me with a horrifying, crystallizing clarity.

I had nothing left.

My wife had walked out on me. My legal standing was shredded. My company was collapsing. L

My son was dead. The empire I had spent twenty years building from the ground up had been reduced to ash in less than forty-eight hours.

There was nothing left to save. Nothing left to lose.

A dark, vicious smile slowly spread across my face, pulling the skin tight over my cheekbones. If I had no future, then I had no reason to play by the rules anymore.

I didn’t care if I had to burn the entire world to the ground and die in the flames.

I was going to take Lysander back.

He was the key to my success. The only piece of leverage left on the board. Drake wanted him? Drake loved him enough to murder for him? Then I would rip that boy out of his master’s hand, drag him through the dirt, and bleed him dry before I let a pureblood leech keep my prize.

DING-DONG.

The loud, crisp chime of the front doorbell echoed through the hollow mansion, shattering the quiet.

I flinched violently.

My head snapped toward the archway leading out into the grand foyer. My heart hammered against my ribs, a sharp spike of adrenaline shooting through my blood. I froze in the middle of the study, my eyes wide, my breathing suspended.

DING-DONG.

The chime rang out a second time, this time it was persistent.

I reached into my desk drawer, my hand closing around the cold, heavy steel of a loaded 9mm pistol. I racked the slide with a sharp, metallic clack, holding the weapon low at my side as I stepped out of the study and into the dark, cavernous foyer.

My boots made no sound against the marble. I approached the massive, dark oak double doors at the front entrance, my knuckles white around the grip of the gun. The frosted glass panels beside the frame showed a dark, heavy shadow slumped against the porch light.

I swallowed hard, the taste of copper thick on my tongue. I raised the pistol, aiming it straight at the center wood panel, and reached out with my left hand to twist the heavy brass deadbolt.

CLICK.

I pulled the heavy oak door open half an inch, keeping my body behind the frame. "Who is it?" I rasped, my voice tight and lethal.

There was no answer.

The door didn’t push open. Instead, as soon as the latch released, whatever heavy object was leaning against the outside wood gave way.

The door swung wide open, and a heavy, limp shape fell backward into the threshold, slamming hard against the marble floor at my feet with a wet, sickening THUD.

I stumbled backward, dropping the pistol as a choked scream tore from my throat.

Lying face-up on the cold marble of my own foyer was Gideon.

His clothes were torn and soaked in dark, congealed blood. His skin was an unnatural, milky gray, his lips blue, and his broad shoulders rested at a grotesque, impossible angle, his head twisted completely backward, his empty, glassy pale eyes staring directly up into mine from the floorboards.

Pinned to the lapel of his bloody jacket was a single, crisp white note, written in elegant, dark red ink:

Returned to sender.

I fell backward onto my hands and knees, scrambling away from the corpse, my chest heaving in violent, uncontrollable gasps as my own hysterical screams filled the empty hall.

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