Chapter 15 - Zane’s Game Begins

Raven had learned to read silence.

Jaxon’s silence was cold and calculated, measured like a blade, controlled like breath through clenched teeth.

Zane’s silence, however, was a loaded gun. No aim, no safety. Just a countdown to chaos.

It was why she stiffened the moment she stepped into the VIP lounge and found him sprawled across one of the leather couches, his boots propped up, glass of bourbon in hand, smirking like sin.

“I was wondering when you’d stop avoiding me,” Zane said, raising the glass in salute. “Did big brother finally let you off the leash?”

Raven didn’t answer. She wasn’t in the mood for his games. Not after the last seventy-two hours of Jaxon pulling her deeper into his world, and her own reflection reminding her of the bruises she hadn’t asked to enjoy.

She turned to leave, but Zane was faster. He rose in a single fluid motion, stepping into her path before she could exit.

“That’s rude,” he said. “We were just starting to have fun.”

“I’m not here for fun.”

“No,” he murmured, stepping closer. “You’re here for the story. Still pretending this is about the missing girls? Or are you finally honest enough to admit it’s about him?”

She didn’t flinch. “Move.”

But Zane didn’t. Instead, he reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. His touch was light, but his presence was not.

“You know, he used to do that to Sabine. Just like that. Gentle. Controlled. As if by touching her slowly, he could pretend he wasn’t the one destroying her.”

Raven’s heart kicked against her ribs. “Don’t.”

“She thought she was different, too,” Zane went on, tilting his head. “Special. Chosen. The one he wouldn’t break.”

“Stop.”

Zane’s voice dropped to a whisper. “And then she went over that balcony. Screaming.”

Raven shoved him hard, slamming her palms against his chest. He stumbled back a step but didn’t lose his smile. “I said stop,” she hissed.

Zane held up both hands. “Just thought you’d want to know the truth before you become a headline.”

She didn’t sleep that night. Jaxon had wrapped his arms around her after one of their more brutal scenes, his fingers still red from gripping her throat, her thighs still trembling from the punishment he’d delivered with deliberate cruelty and care. And still, her mind wasn’t on him. It was on Sabine. The photos in the hallway. The unanswered questions. The balcony.

"She fell. She jumped. She screamed. Or maybe, she was pushed." Zane’s words refused to leave her alone.

And the worst part? He didn’t even try to convince her. He just planted the doubt, and let it grow.

By the next evening, Raven found herself shadowing Jaxon through Eden’s control room. It was the nerve center of the club, monitors, keycards, encrypted servers. A fortress behind glass and steel.

He was briefing two of his lieutenants about a shipment arriving through the back docks. Illegal? Possibly. She hadn’t had the courage to dig into it yet.

She stood silently to the side until the others left. When they were alone, Jaxon glanced at her. “You’re quiet.”

Raven hesitated. “Why didn’t you tell me Zane was back?”

His jaw twitched. “Because it doesn’t concern you.”

“He kissed me.”

That got his attention. He turned slowly, his eyes glacial. “He what?”

“I shoved him off,” she added quickly. “I didn’t invite it.”

Jaxon’s silence darkened the room more than the shadows. “I’ll handle him,” he said finally.

“Handle how?”

He walked toward her. His steps were slow. Measured. “I told you before, Zane is chaos. He ruins things just to see how long it takes someone else to clean up the mess. I should’ve kept you away from him.”

“I’m not your property.”

“No,” he said. “You’re something worse. You’re mine.”

And then his hand wrapped around her throa, not tight, not cruel, just a reminder. A signal. “I don’t share,” he whispered.

Zane didn’t show his face again for two days. Which, in hindsight, was more dangerous than when he was visible.

It was on the third night that Raven found something strange, a photo, slipped beneath the door of her changing room.

Sabine. Half-smiling. Wearing a silk robe. And in the background, Jaxon, sitting in the same chair he now used for Raven during punishment sessions. But what chilled her was the writing scrawled on the back of the photo: She begged him to stop. He didn’t.

No signature. But she didn’t need one. Zane was upping the game.

When she stormed into the east wing lounge, one of Zane’s favorite haunts, he was waiting. Leaning against the grand piano, whiskey in hand, eyes already dancing. “I see you got my note,” he said casually.

Raven didn’t speak. She walked straight up to him and slapped him across the face. Hard.

His head whipped to the side. The room went still.

Zane turned back slowly, a hand on his jaw. Blood touched the corner of his mouth. His smile never left. “You really know how to make an entrance,” he rasped.

She shoved the photo against his chest. “Where did you get this?”

“I was there,” he said simply. “I watched what he did to her. I begged him to slow down. She was crying. Screaming. And he wouldn’t stop.”

“You’re lying.”

“Maybe,” he whispered. “But maybe you already know I’m not.”

Raven swallowed.

“I’ll tell you what really happened,” he said, stepping close. “But not here.”

“Why?”

“Because if Jaxon finds out what I know… he won’t just punish me.”

He leaned in. “He’ll bury me.”

Against every warning screaming in her brain, Raven met Zane after hours, outside of Eden, in the city,at a quiet rooftop bar overlooking the skyline, where no one knew their names.

Zane was waiting with two bourbons and a look that didn’t match his usual cocky grin.

“You came,” he said softly.

“I shouldn’t have.”

“No,” he agreed. “But curiosity’s a bitch.”

They sat and for the first time, Zane didn’t try to seduce her. He just talked about growing up in the Morreau estate, about how Jaxon was groomed to be king, and he was left to rot in his brother's shadow.

He spoke about Sabine and how she’d once loved Jaxon, then feared him. How she’d tried to leave, and how, days before her death, she’d whispered to Zane in the kitchen: “If I vanish, it wasn’t an accident.”

“She was the only person who ever looked at me and didn’t see the spare,” Zane said quietly. “And the only one who knew Jaxon’s darkness better than I do.”

Raven was trembling. “Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

“Because you’re next,” he said. “And because I want to be the one who stops it.” Then he reached for her hand and kissed her knuckles.

No seduction. Just something dangerously close to reverence.

That night, she stood in front of the mirror in Jaxon’s penthouse, staring at her own reflection.

She didn’t recognize herself. Not the bruises on her thighs. Not the haunted look in her eyes. Not the mark at the base of her neck, a fading bite in the shape of a crown. She touched it and for the first time since she walked into Eden she wasn’t sure if she’d survived or surrendered.