DANTE- The Billionaire’s Ghost Vixen

Chapter 3: The First Wound

The silk wallpaper in Vivian’s bedroom looked like dried blood under the dim LED strips. Everything was gold. Everything was expensive. And everything felt like a tomb.

I sat on the edge of the sprawling king-sized bed, my fingers digging into the velvet duvet. My skin didn't fit. My bones didn't fit. Every time I caught my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, I wanted to claw the porcelain flesh right off my skull.

[Warning: Host focus is wavering. Maintain the facade. Retrieve the data.]

"Shut up," I snapped at the ceiling. "I’m in the house. I’m in the room. What else do you want?"

[The safe. Behind the portrait of the hunt. Vivian kept records. Find them.]

I stood up, my legs still shaky from the gala. I walked toward the massive oil painting. It showed a wolf being run down by hounds—real subtle for a guy like Dante. I swung the frame aside. A small, biometric keypad blinked red.

"I don't have the code, genius," I muttered.

[Use our finger. The biological signature is a match.]

I pressed my thumb to the glass. Click. The wall recessed, revealing a single, leather-bound book. No jewels. No ledger of millions. Just a diary.

I flipped it open. The handwriting was frantic, looping, and filled with a desperate kind of heat.

May 14th: Dante brought lilies today. He hates the smell, but he knows they're the only thing that makes me feel like I'm not drowning in this family. He pretends to be a monster, but when the lights are out... he's just a man who's afraid to be loved.

My breath hitched. The System had told me he was a butcher. A cold-blooded harvester who used his wife for parts. But this... this sounded like a woman in love.

June 2nd: I saw the plans. Project Vixen. He's trying to save me, but he doesn't realize he's losing himself. I'd rather die than see him turn into the thing he's fighting.

"He was trying to save her?" I whispered.

[LIES.] The voice in my head distorted, a screech of static that made me double over, clutching my temples. [SHE WAS WEAK. SHE DIDN'T UNDERSTAND THE SACRIFICE. WE ARE THE PERFECTION HE WANTED.]

"You’re glitching," I gasped, the room spinning. "You're lying to me!"

The bedroom door didn't just open; it hit the stopper with a crack that sounded like a gunshot.

Dante stood there. He’d ditched the suit jacket. His white shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, his tie hanging loose. He looked wrecked. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his eyes were bloodshot, fixated on the book in my hand.

"Put it down," he rasped.

I didn't. I held it tighter. "Why did you do it, Dante? The diary says you were trying to save her. Was I just the next spare part in line?"

He moved faster than I could track. In one heartbeat, he was across the room. In the next, his hand was wrapped around my throat—not squeezing to kill, but pinning me against the cold gold of the wall.

"You don't get to read her thoughts," he snarled. His face was inches from mine. I could smell the scotch on his breath and the raw, electric scent of his anger. "You don't get to use her voice to ask me questions you haven't earned the right to ask."

"What am I then?" I spat, looking him right in the eye. "Number Twelve? A lab rat in a pretty dress?"

Dante’s grip shifted. His thumb brushed against my pulse point, which was drumming like a trapped bird. His gaze dropped to my lips, then back to my eyes. The hatred was there, but beneath it was a hunger so sharp it felt like a blade.

"You’re a ghost with a smart mouth," he whispered. "You look like her. You smell like her. But there’s a gutter-born fire in your eyes that Vivian never had. She was a saint. You? You’re a stray dog snarling in a palace."

"Then let me go back to the gutter," I challenged.

"I can't." He leaned in closer, his chest pressing against mine. I felt the heat of him, the solid, terrifying reality of a man who owned everything he touched. "Because every time I look at you, I want to see how long it takes for the machine to break."

He was so close I could feel his heartbeat. It was fast. Too fast.

Suddenly, my right hand—the one pressed against his chest to push him away—began to itch. Then it burned.

[Siphon active. Extracting Life Force. Target: Moretti, Dante.]

"No! Stop it!" I screamed internally, but I couldn't move my arm.

A dark, oily light began to pulse under the skin of my palm. Dante’s eyes went wide. His grip on my throat slackened. A low groan of pure agony escaped his lips.

"What... what are you doing?" he gasped.

He fell to one knee, his hand clutching his chest right where I’d touched him. The color drained from his face, leaving him a ghostly grey. He looked up at me, not with anger, but with a terrifying kind of realization.

"You're... you're a parasite," he wheezed, collapsing onto the carpet.

[Energy levels: 15%. Reward: Increased Strength unlocked.]

I stared at my hand, horrified. I didn't want this. I didn't want to kill him—not like this.

I rushed to the window, my heart ready to explode, needing air. I threw the glass open and looked out into the moonlit gardens.

My blood turned to ice.

Down in the shadows of the hedges, something was standing. It was tall, its limbs too long and jerking in unnatural increments. It wore tattered rags that looked like a suit, but where a face should have been, there was only a glowing red optical sensor and exposed metal gears.

It was a nightmare of wires and rotting flesh. It looked up at the window, its mechanical head tilting forty-five degrees.

[The Prototype,] the System whispered, the static gone, replaced by a cold, sharp dread. [The one that didn't take. It's come for the heart.]

Dante groaned on the floor behind me. The thing in the garden began to climb the trellis with the speed of a spider.