DANTE- The Billionaire’s Ghost Vixen

Chapter 4: The Ghost in the Machine

"Back the hell off me!"

Dante’s voice was a jagged scrape against the quiet of the room. He shoved my hand away, his chest heaving as he slumped against the mahogany bedpost. The dark, oily light that had been pulsing between my skin and his vanished, leaving my palm tingling with a greasy, electric heat.

He looked at me—really looked at me—and for the first time, I saw raw, naked fear behind that billionaire mask.

"What did you do?" he wheezed. His hand clutched his shirt, right over his heart. "What the f**k was that, Number Twelve?"

"I don't know!" I backed away, my boots hitting the heavy diary I’d dropped. My heart was a drum in my ears. "The voice... the system, it just started draining you. I couldn't stop it, Dante. I swear."

[Warning: Host empathy is compromising efficiency. Extraction successful. Life Force at 18%.]

"Shut up!" I screamed at the air.

Dante wiped a bead of cold sweat from his lip. He stood up, his legs shaking for a split second before he forced them into iron pillars. The fear in his eyes died, replaced by a cold, clinical frost that was a thousand times worse.

"A glitch," he muttered, more to himself than me. He adjusted his collar, hiding the faint, bruise-colored mark my hand had left on his skin. "The bio-receptors are overloading. I’ll have the tech team scrub your kernel in the morning."

"A glitch?" I stepped forward, my hands shaking. "Dante, you almost collapsed. You looked like you were dying. That wasn't a glitch, that was—"

"I said it was a glitch!" He slammed his fist into the doorframe. The wood groaned. "You are a machine, Ivy. A very expensive, very temperamental machine. Don't go getting delusions of grandeur. You aren't 'killing' me. You aren't even capable of it."

He turned, his back a wall of expensive fabric.

"Stay in this room. If you touch the door handle before sunrise, the guards have orders to tranquilize you like the stray you are."

The heavy door thudded shut. The lock clicked.

I stood in the center of the gold-leafed tomb, looking at my hands. They were beautiful. Manicured. Perfect. And they were weapons I didn't know how to aim.

I'm killing him. The thought settled in my stomach like lead. And if I don't kill him, this system kills me. Or Elena kills me. Or the thing in the garden...

I ran to the window. The trellis was empty. The mechanical nightmare from the garden was gone, leaving only deep gouges in the wood.

"I can't stay here," I whispered. "I'm losing my goddamn mind."

The air in the trailer park smelled like home: stale beer, woodsmoke, and damp earth.

I’d climbed down the balcony like the gutter-rat I was, tearing the hem of a ten-thousand-dollar silk robe in the process. I looked insane—running through the outskirts of the city in a shredded nightgown and bare feet—but I didn't stop until I saw the rusted-out shell of the '88 Chevy sitting on blocks.

"Jax!" I hissed, pounding on the door of the silver trailer at the end of the lot. "Jax, open up! It’s me!"

The door creaked open. A guy with grease-stained knuckles and a mess of blonde hair peered out. He looked exhausted, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

"Who the hell...?" Jax stopped. He looked at my face—Vivian’s face—and his jaw dropped. The cigarette fell to the dirt. "Holy sh*t. Lady, did you take a wrong turn at the country club? This ain't a place for tourists."

"Jax, it’s me. It’s Ivy."

He laughed, but it was a dry, ugly sound. He stepped out, looming over me. "Ivy? Ivy’s dead, sweetheart. Found her jacket in the alley three days ago. Cops said the strays got to her."

"No, look at me!" I grabbed his arm. "Remember the time we stole that crate of engine oil from the docks? Remember the scar on your ribs from when the Red Dogs caught us? I'm Ivy!"

Jax pulled his arm away as if I’d burned him. He looked at my porcelain skin, my whiskey-colored eyes, the sheer wealth radiating off my frame.

"I don't know what kind of sick joke this is," he spat, his voice trembling. "But you don't use her name. Not here. You Moretti types think you can buy anything, but you can't buy a ghost. Get the f**k out before I call the boys."

"Jax, please—"

"Go!" He slammed the door. I heard the deadbolt slide home.

I stood in the dirt, the cold mud squelching between my toes. The one person who was supposed to know my soul didn't even recognize the eyes looking back at him.

I wasn't Ivy anymore. I wasn't Vivian. I was just a void in a beautiful shell.

[Identity crisis is inefficient, Ivy. We are the Vixen. We have no friends. We only have targets.]

"Go to hell," I choked out.

Suddenly, the silent night was ripped apart by the scream of tires.

Three black SUVs tore into the dirt lot, kicking up a wall of dust. Before I could move, doors flew open. Men in tactical gear—Moretti security—swarmed the trailer.

"No! Leave him alone!" I screamed.

They didn't listen. They kicked Jax’s door off its hinges. I heard Jax shouting, the sound of a struggle, and then the sickening thud of a rifle butt hitting bone. They dragged him out, his face bloodied, his hands zip-tied behind his back.

"Ivy?" Jax wheezed, looking at me through one swollen eye as they tossed him into the back of a van. "What... what did you do?"

A fourth SUV rolled to a stop right in front of me. The window rolled down with a slow, mechanical hiss.

Dante sat in the back, his face half-hidden in shadow. He looked perfectly composed, as if he hadn't almost died in my arms two hours ago.

"You have a habit of running toward garbage, Number Twelve," Dante said, his voice cold and smooth.

"Let him go, Dante! He has nothing to do with this!"

"He has everything to do with it now." Dante leaned forward, the light hitting the sharp angle of his jaw. "The V-Series needs more than just biological grafts. It needs a catalyst. A 'Feeding.' You’ve been hesitant. You’ve been soft."

He opened the door, stepping out into the mud in shoes that cost more than Jax’s trailer. He walked toward me, grabbing a handful of my hair and forcing my head back. His eyes were predatory.

"If you want your 'trash' friend to live past midnight, you’ll perform your first public Feeding tonight," he whispered against my ear. "Elena is hosting an after-party. You’re going to go in there, and you're going to drain her dry. Every bit of her life force belongs to the System now."

He shoved me toward the open car door.

"Do it, or I let my men 'repurpose' your friend for the next experiment. Your choice, Ivy."

In the back of the van, Jax let out a muffled groan of pain. I looked at the blood on the dirt, then at the monster in the suit.

"I'll do it," I whispered.

[Excellent,] the System purred. [Target locked. Commencing lethal calibration.]