J.A.JACKSON

Lovers, Players & The Seducer Series

The Crystal Secret

A Kadira & Mateo Exclusive Chapter Excerpt

💖 Book V — Kadira & Mateo: Where Truth Hides

Kadira read the message three times before the words became real.

“That isn’t Mateo,” she said.

Nicholas took the phone from her and enlarged the photograph. “No.”

“Then why call Draven my guardian?”

“It doesn’t.” Mateo stood close enough to see the screen without touching her. “It says your guardian dies. The photograph may be a warning, not the intended victim.”

Kadira looked at him. “You think they’re threatening you.”

“I think Julia wants us uncertain.”

“Julia just left with the crystal. Why would she kidnap her own son?”

Nicholas’s expression hardened. “Because Blackheart loyalty has never included mercy.”

The ballroom alarm continued to shriek while hotel personnel guided confused employees outside. Nicholas’s security team formed a barrier around the garden terrace. To them, the shattered doors and cracked fountain resulted from a pressure malfunction. No one could explain the gray rose petals or the scorch marks shaped like fingers across the marble.

Kadira could.

That frightened her more.

Mateo examined the photograph again. “The chair is banquet furniture. The carpet has the Hilton’s old pattern.”

“Old pattern?” Kadira asked.

“The hotel renovated the public floors five years ago. Some service levels may still have it.”

Nicholas issued instructions to his team. Within minutes, hotel schematics appeared on a tablet. The building contained two sealed sublevels, storage rooms, laundry passages, an abandoned kitchen, and a private tunnel once used to move performers between the ballroom and a neighboring theater.

“We search now,” Kadira said.

“You leave now,” Mateo replied.

Her gaze snapped to his.

“This isn’t an argument about your right to know,” he said. “It is a direct threat using you as the requested object.”

“And Draven may be tied up somewhere beneath our feet because he tried to stop his mother.”

“Or he may be pretending.”

“You don’t believe that.”

Mateo looked again at the blood on the fountain ledge. “I believe pain can be genuine inside a larger deception.”

“He warned us about the crystal.”

“After breaking into your apartment, stalking you on campus, and attempting to gain access to your research.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“Then don’t let one decent act erase ten dangerous ones.”

Kadira stepped closer. “I’m not confusing gratitude with trust. But if the prophecy is true, one betrayer will save me. Draven may already have done that.”

“Which does not tell us what he does next.”

Nicholas handed the phone back to Kadira. “Mateo is right about one thing. You cannot join the physical search.”

“Then neither of you understands what happened here. The crystal reacted to me. The creature called Mateo Guardian. Whatever is beneath this hotel may remain hidden from everyone except us.”

Mateo’s expression darkened. “That is exactly why you should not go toward it.”

“And if staying away causes someone to die?”

The question landed between them.

Kadira lowered her voice. “You promised to protect my choices.”

“I did.”

“Then help me make a careful one.”

For several seconds, Mateo said nothing. Fear, frustration, and reluctant respect moved across his face.

“You remain between Nicholas and me,” he said at last. “You do not touch any object that glows, whispers, changes temperature, or claims to know your ancestors.”

“That eliminates most of my week.”

“Kadira.”

“Agreed.”

They entered the service corridor behind the ballroom.

The hotel’s public elegance disappeared within twenty feet. Floral carpeting gave way to concrete floors. Exposed pipes crossed the ceiling. Their footsteps echoed beneath the hum of ventilation machinery.

Nicholas led with the schematics. Mateo walked half a pace behind Kadira, close enough to reach her without crowding. Two security officers followed, but at the first stairwell both men stopped simultaneously.

Their eyes lost focus.

“Sir?” one officer asked. “Why are we standing in the kitchen?”

Nicholas looked at Kadira.

She understood. “They can’t see the stairwell.”

Mateo passed one hand before the nearest man’s face. The officer did not react.

“A ward,” Mateo said. “Recent, but built over something older.”

Nicholas ordered the officers to guard the corridor. The three of them descended alone.

At the first sublevel, Kadira’s pendant warmed. At the second, it pulsed in time with her heartbeat.

The old carpet from the photograph covered the final landing.

“We’re close,” she whispered.

Mateo moved in front of her.

The passage ended at a steel door marked ARCHIVE STORAGE—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

Kadira almost laughed. “Of course it says archive.”

Nicholas entered a security code. The lock flashed red.

Mateo examined the hinges. “Stand back.”

Before he could force it, Kadira heard music on the other side.

A carousel tune.

Bright, mechanical notes rolled through the underground corridor, carrying with them the scent of saltwater, clove, and burned sugar.

Santa Cruz.

Kadira saw the Boardwalk as clearly as if a door had opened inside her memory. She and Nadine had visited Madame Cleo’s fortune-telling booth during freshman year. At the time, the woman had refused to read Kadira’s palm.

Not until the crystal wakes, Madame Cleo had said.

Kadira had dismissed the words as theater.

Now someone knocked three times from inside the room.

“Kadira Marie Catherine Ina La Cour,” a woman called. “If you want the young man to live, open the door.”

Nicholas went pale.

“You know her,” Kadira said.

“Cleo Baptiste.”

“The fortune teller?”

“She is not a fortune teller. She is a Witness.”

“A witness to what?”

“Blood memories. Oaths. Events the families would prefer to rewrite.”

The voice came again. “We have very little time.”

Mateo placed his marked palm against the steel. The serpent-and-moon symbol flared. Ancient lines appeared beneath the modern paint, forming two trees divided by a river.

The door unlocked.

Inside, hundreds of crystal glasses hung from racks designed for banquet storage. Each bowl caught the weak ceiling light. At the center of the room, Draven sat tied to a chair.

Madame Cleo stood behind him.

Her silver hair fell over a sapphire coat. Rings shaped like moons and dragons covered her fingers. She held a knife against the rope at Draven’s wrists, not his throat.

Draven’s head lifted. One eye was swollen, and blood darkened his shirt.

“You took your time,” he said.

Mateo scanned the room. “Where is Julia?”

“Gone,” Madame Cleo answered. “And if we are fortunate, she believes I still obey her.”

Kadira remained near the door. “You sent the photograph.”

“Yes.”

“You threatened my guardian.”

“I repeated the words Julia ordered me to send. I changed the photograph.”

Nicholas understood first. “Julia wanted Mateo shown in the chair.”

Madame Cleo nodded. “Her people were meant to take him when the garden memory opened. Draven interfered. They took him instead.”

Kadira looked at Draven.

He offered a damaged version of his usual smile. “Apparently one heroic decision does not erase a disappointing childhood.”

Mateo did not relax. “Why help us?”

“Because Julia intends to open the crystal during Kadira’s speech,” Madame Cleo said. “Every person in the ballroom will be exposed to Goldonna’s final memory. Most will experience terror. Some will lose themselves inside it. A few with compatible blood will become doors.”

Kadira thought of the faceless creature. “Doors for what?”

“The Unremembered.”

The hanging glasses began to tremble.

Madame Cleo cut Draven’s ropes. “Not here. The room is listening.”

Nicholas helped Draven stand. Mateo remained between him and Kadira.

“I’m injured, not contagious,” Draven muttered.

“The distinction remains unproven,” Mateo said.

They left the storage room through a second door that opened into the abandoned kitchen. Rusted counters lined the walls. Madame Cleo drew a circle of salt on the floor and placed a small piece of black glass at its center.

The vibration stopped.

“This will give us minutes,” she said.

A crash sounded in the corridor they had just left.

Mateo extinguished the kitchen light. Nicholas guided Draven behind an overturned preparation table while Kadira crouched beside Madame Cleo. Boots struck the concrete outside—four people, perhaps five, moving with trained precision.

“Julia’s team?” Nicholas whispered.

Draven nodded. “Solstice.”

The door handle turned.

Mateo pressed his marked palm to the wall. The abandoned kitchen appeared to lengthen. Rusted counters repeated into the distance, each reflection dimmer than the one before it.

The door opened.

Two armed men entered and looked directly at Kadira without seeing her. Their eyes followed the false corridor Mateo had created.

“Thermal scan shows five bodies,” one man said.

“The Witness is bending the room.”

Madame Cleo’s lips tightened. “That is not my work.”

The second man lifted a small device. Violet light swept across the kitchen and stopped over Draven’s hiding place.

“There.”

Mateo struck before the man could raise his weapon. He crossed the distance in three steps, caught the man’s wrist, and drove him into the doorframe. Nicholas swept the first attacker’s legs from beneath him.

Two more figures rushed through the doorway.

Kadira saw the black sun emblem on their collars.

One seized Nicholas from behind. Another aimed a compact weapon at Mateo.

The pendant at Kadira’s throat burned.

She grabbed a metal serving tray and hurled it. The tray struck the weapon aside as it discharged. A dart buried itself in the ceiling.

“Still fond of improvised furniture,” Draven observed as he pulled the attacker away from Nicholas.

“Be useful or be quiet,” Kadira snapped.

“I am attempting both.”

Draven was injured, but anger made him fast. He drove his shoulder into the Solstice guard, then collapsed against the counter when the effort reopened the wound beneath his shirt.

The first attacker recovered and lunged for Kadira.

Nineteenth-century fire flashed across her vision. For a heartbeat, the man wore Étienne La Cour’s face. Kadira recoiled, uncertain which body was real.

Mateo caught the attacker inches from her.

His marked hand closed around the man’s throat—not tightly enough to crush it, but with enough force to send black light crawling beneath the man’s skin.

The guard screamed.

“Mateo.” Kadira seized his wrist. “Let him go.”

Mateo did not appear to hear her. His eyes had darkened until the irises were nearly black. The DeVille mark wanted more than protection. It wanted punishment.

“Mateo, look at me.”

His gaze found hers.

“You’re here,” she said. “Not in Goldonna. Here.”

The black light receded.

He released the guard, who crumpled unconscious to the floor.

Mateo stared at his own palm with horror. “I could have killed him.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Because you stopped me.”

Kadira lowered her voice. “Then remember my voice next time.”

The words passed between them like a vow neither was ready to name.

Nicholas secured the attackers with plastic restraints taken from their own equipment. Madame Cleo scattered violet powder across the threshold. The corridor outside filled with the illusion of smoke.

“More will come,” she said. “The crystal tells Julia where its memories are disturbed.”

Mateo took the abandoned dart weapon and checked the passage. “Then speak while we move.”

They entered a laundry tunnel that climbed toward the neighboring theater. Kadira walked beside Mateo. His breathing had steadied, but he kept his marked hand closed.

“You did not betray me,” she said quietly.

“Not this time.”

She disliked the answer. “Do you expect to?”

“I expect the prophecy to exploit whatever each of us fears most.”

“And what do you fear?”

He looked at her then. “That protecting you will become an excuse to stop seeing you.”

Kadira had no answer that felt safe.

Ahead of them, Madame Cleo opened a narrow maintenance door. Evening traffic moved beyond the alley, ordinary and unaware.

Kadira paused before stepping outside. The hotel rose above them in mirrored tiers, every window reflecting the same bruised sky. Somewhere inside, Julia’s people would be finding the restrained guards. Somewhere above, workers were still preparing a gala whose decorations might become instruments in a ritual.

She opened her research journal and wrote three lines before the details could blur:

The DeVille mark creates as well as closes.

The crystal can turn memory into a place.

My voice brought Mateo back.

The last sentence felt too intimate, so she drew a line beneath it instead of crossing it out.

Mateo waited beside the car. “What did you write?”

“Evidence.”

“About me?”

“Some of it.”

“Should I be worried?”

“Probably.”

His brief smile steadied her more than she wanted him to know.

For the first time since the prophecy appeared, Kadira understood that knowledge alone would not save her. She would need judgment—especially when truth arrived wearing the face of someone she loved.

Only when they reached Nicholas’s waiting car did Cleo continue.

Kadira faced her. “You knew my full name before I entered your booth.”

“I attended your naming ceremony.”

“My mother never mentioned you.”

“Lacey was not the woman who named you.”

Silence filled the car.

Nicholas closed his eyes.

Kadira turned toward him, her heart beginning to pound.

“You knew,” she whispered.

Nicholas did not deny it.

To Be Continued…

What secret has Kadira’s family concealed since the day she was born?

Some family secrets are buried so deeply… even love may not survive them.

Read Kadira & Mateo: Where Truth Hides

© J. A. Jackson. All rights reserved. This excerpt may not be reproduced without permission.