Chapter 3 The Dark Tiger's Debt
~Dante's POV ~
"I don't walk away clean," she said, taking a step backward toward the server rack, her eyes never leaving mine. "I take what I want, and I leave you holding the bill."
She turned her back on me, grabbed her bag off the rack, and walked straight past me toward the exit.
I didn't move to stop her.
I stood rooted to the stone floor, motionless in the quiet room, black eyes tracking every step she took into the shadows.
I slammed my heavy leather gloves onto the wooden bench, the sharp thud echoing through the private locker room beneath the ice rink.
Jax kicked a metal folding chair across the floorboards. It clattered against the lockers with a deafening screech.
"She's an active liability, Dante," Jax growled, his knuckles white against his belt. "She slammed you onto the floor in the lecture hall, bled all over your shirt, and squeezed our encryption key out of Zayn in under ten minutes. If The Black Cat syndicate finds out some new girl has our dockside routes, the Dark Tigers get put in a box."
Kian stood near the doorway, tossing a small flip blade between his knuckles, his stone eyes flat and unreadable.
"He's right. She's unpredictable," Kian added coldly. "We wrap her in a tarp before midnight, drive her past the campus cliffs, and dump her in the water. Clean and quiet."
I stepped out from behind the bench, my heavy boots hitting the concrete hard enough to make Jax take a quick half-step back.
"You touch one hair on her head," I said, my voice dropping to a low, rough rasp, "and I'll personally take a skate blade to your neck."
Jax leaned forward, his shoulders rigid under his black jacket. "Are you out of your mind? She put steel to your throat and dropped your leverage!"
"And she didn't blink when I pressed the edge into her skin," I snapped, stepping right into his space, my collar brushing his shoulder. "She stood her ground in my zone, locked her eyes on mine, and took my weight down without a drop of fear in her blood."
I shoved my hands into my jacket pockets, my silver rings clicking against the cold handle of my switchblade.
Dried specks of her blood were still caked under my thumbnail from the library tower. My pulse hammered against my ribs like a hard body-check straight into the boards, fast, wild, and heavy.
"She isn't your call," I growled, looking between the two of them. "She is not living in the dorm. Nobody goes near her without my orders. I'm handling her myself."
Kian caught his knife mid-air, the blade snapping shut with a cold click. "Handling her how, boss? She doesn't fold, and she definitely isn't scared of you."
I stared at the empty doorway, the phantom heat of her breath still lingering on my skin.
"That's exactly why she stays," I breathed.
Twenty minutes later, I slammed the door of my private off-campus study, locking out the noise of the city.
The vibrating hum of my encrypted burner phone shattered the silence, jolting me away from the edge of the mahogany desk. The screen flashed a secure line: Bronze.
I swiped to answer, pressing the receiver tight to my ear.
"Talk to me, Bronze," I said, keeping my voice low.
"The Black Cat is sniffing around the docks," Bronze’s gravelly voice came through, heavy with static and diesel smoke. "Word is spreading that Dante’s southern shipments are compromised. If those bastards realize our underground pipeline has a leak, they’ll tear us apart before the council even blinks."
"Let them try," I replied, pacing toward the frosted glass window. "The underground pipeline stays sealed. What’s your timeline?"
"Handling the remaining loose ends at the port tonight," Bronze said, his tone grim. "My flight touches down next week. Hold the line until I get there. The old guard is pushing to use Magda’s old protocols to purge the routes."
My grip tightened on the phone, the metal cool against my skin. "Magda built those routes with blood, Bronze. She didn't leave you in charge of the tunnels because you followed orders. She left you there because you don't flinch when the debt comes due."
"And I don't plan on starting now," Bronze muttered, cutting the connection with a sharp click.
The screen went black, plunging the study back into shadows.
In the stillness, my gaze drifted across the room to the heavy mahogany paneling. There, hanging in a tarnished silver frame, was the portrait of my mother, her sharp, unyielding eyes staring straight through the dark.
As I stood beneath her gaze, her strong, steady voice echoed clearly in my mind, cutting through the chaos of the night:
Never bend the knee, little blood. Let them break against you.
