Numbered days of his brother

Three days passed. Three long, silent days filled with the suffocating tension of waiting. Hades spent his time in Mateo’s study, a room with walls of polished wooden furnitures and a single window overlooking a serene garden.

While Charon and Christian were lodged in another wing of the estate.

Hades studied the maps, the schematics, the financial spreadsheets, the faces of Gregory’s men. He didn’t sleep, didn’t eat much. He just sat, a statue of a man, his mind working with a cold, relentless precision. The only thing that gave him peace was the small, worn-out locket he kept in his pocket.

He would run his thumb over it, feeling the smooth metal, a constant reminder of the woman waiting for him. Claudine. His Zaya. He thought of her face, the way her eyes would light up when she laughed.

He remembered her scent, the way she felt in his arms. She was the one thing that kept the darkness at bay.

The one thing that kept him from turning into the very monster he was hunting. He would