Chapter 5 - The Trigger and the Revelation
I got both hands on Cerberus’s collar and somehow held him. The dog did not calm when I spoke. He did not settle when I touched him. He stood there vibrating with murderous certainty, staring at Silas like he had seen him in another life and wanted the debt paid with interest.
Enzo saw it. I knew he saw it because the room changed around him. Not visibly. Internally. Like a lock turning behind his eyes. Take him out, he said.
I dragged Cerberus from the room and spent the next two hours on the kitchen floor with him while he paced and whined and kept checking the door. When Enzo finally came in, his tie was gone and the top button of his shirt was open. Explain, he said. I can’t. He’s never done that before.
Enzo crouched beside the dog without touching him. Cerberus usually tolerated him. That night he stayed tight against my side. Men lie, Enzo said quietly. Dogs don’t. I looked at him. You trust a dog over your own lieutenant. I trust survival instinct over loyalty purchased by salary, he said. Cerberus has been broken by human hands before. If he reacted like that, there is a reason.
That answer should have comforted me. Instead it made my skin prickle. Because if Enzo Dante trusted the dog more than the man who had served him for years, then the fault line under that penthouse was bigger than I understood.
We started watching Silas after that. Not obviously. Not enough to tip him off. But once suspicion enters a room, even rich carpets cannot soften the sound.
Cerberus gave us the second clue three days later. Silas arrived unannounced in the late afternoon while I was reading in the living room. He came in all charm and cologne and false ease. Cerberus rose from the rug and planted himself directly between us. No snarling this time. No lunging. Something worse. He blocked him. Every time Silas tried to step around the sofa, Cerberus adjusted. Every time the man smiled at me, the dog shifted wider, shoulders squared, gaze locked. Not the behavior of an animal guarding territory. The behavior of an animal remembering pain.
Dogs don’t always hate the people who hurt them. Sometimes they fear them first. That distinction did not hit me until 3 a.m. the next morning.
I woke to a sound so broken it ripped me upright before I was fully conscious. Cerberus was shoved into the corner of my room, shaking so violently his tags clinked against each other. His eyes were wild. Not aggressive. Lost. As if whatever he had survived before me had reached into his sleep and dragged him back there. I dropped to the floor slowly. I made myself small. I hummed before I spoke. He crawled toward me inch by inch. When he finally reached my lap, my hands came away wet. Blood. He had clawed the floor until his paws split open.
I wrapped them in bandages with fingers that would not stop trembling. And as I did, memory opened like a trapdoor.
The night Sarabus was stolen had been noise and grief and adults speaking over my head. But underneath all of it there had been one voice. A man laughing while my puppy cried. A high cruel laugh with casual pleasure inside it. Not rage. Not desperation. Entertainment.
May you like
Three days earlier, Silas had made a joke in Enzo’s dining room. I had barely registered it then. But now, with blood on my hands and Cerberus cowering against my knees, I heard it again. The same laugh. The same shape. The same filth tucked inside charm.
Oh my God, I whispered. It’s you.
