Chapter 12
Elias
The crash of the door rips me out of sleep so violently the world pitches sideways.
Hands—too many of them—clamp around my arms, my ankles, dragging me off the bed before I can even form a thought.
“Wh-what the hell?” My voice cracks, raw with sleep and panic. The sheets twist around my waist as I claw at the mattress, trying to anchor myself. “Get off me!”
They don’t. They aren’t here to listen.
My feet hit the floor. The cold jolts through me, clears my head just in time to recognize two of the men hauling me: Vincent and Johnny. Lucian’s men. The same ones who dipped their heads politely at me in the hall yesterday. Now their grips are iron and punishing.
“What are you doing?” I twist, slam my shoulder into Vincent’s ribs. “Where’s Lucian? Let me talk to him!”
No answer.
Vincent’s hand clamps over my mouth when I start to shout.
“Orders,” he mutters against my ear. “That’s all you need to know.”
Orders.
My stomach drops hard enough to rattle my bones.
Lucian ordered this.
The realization hits like a fist I can’t see coming.
I thrash harder, but Vincent sweeps my legs out from under me. I hit the floor on my knees, pain detonating up my thighs. I don’t stop. I can’t stop. My nails scrape the floorboards as I try to wrench free.
Behind me, Johnny hisses, “Stop making this worse.”
Worse. As if I’m the problem. As if I asked for any of this.
They haul me upright. My heart slams against my ribs, drowning out breath and thought. Are they here to kill me? I didn’t think... Lucian said I was safe here, and I was stupid enough to believe him.
“Tell me what he thinks I did,” I choke out. “Tell me why—”
They drag me into the hallway before I can finish. The manor is dark except for dim sconces that cast patches of soft gold along the walls. Everyone’s asleep. That fact lands sickly in my stomach.
Lucian didn’t want witnesses. This is humiliation in silence. Punishment behind a locked door.
“Mara!” I cry out.
“Elias, please don’t. Mara wasn’t built to see these things.” Johnny drags me along.
But I am meant to bear them?
They shove me toward the back stairs—the ones no guest ever uses. My mind sprints through possibilities: something I said? Something I didn’t say? Something Xavier—
Xavier.
My throat closes. Ice floods my veins. Maybe Lucian found something. Misread something. Assumed something. But Lucian wouldn’t—
Except he would.
He has.
Vincent’s palm presses between my shoulder blades, shoving me down the last steps. I catch the railing before my skull meets the wall.
“You’re making a mistake,” I snap, breath shaking. “Lucian’s making a mistake.”
They put me in a black van before Johnny speeds off into the city. Is Lucian letting me go home? The thought makes my heart squeeze until I think it might burst. We ride along for twenty minutes until we pull up in front of Lucian’s office.
Down another hallway. Through a coded door I didn’t know existed.
A mechanical groan as a heavy steel gate slides open. Cold air slams into me. Damp, metallic, stale.
The underground cells.
I didn’t know they were here—but of course they were. Everything in Lucian’s world has a shadow beneath it. A place where the real work happens. They drag me inside.
Fluorescent lights flicker overhead, casting long skeletal shadows across concrete floors and thick walls built to swallow screams.
I freeze.
I’ve seen rooms like this in nightmares. In rumors whispered by people who never came back.
“Lucian wants him in the second,” Vincent says.
Lucian.
Not my father.
Not Hartford.
Lucian.
It lands heavy.
I pivot, slam my shoulder into Johnny’s chest with everything I have. He grunts but holds on. I go for his throat, his jaw—anything. He’s trained, faster than he looks. He twists my arm behind me, pain flashing white-hot.
“Stop,” he grits out. “Stop, kid.”
Kid.
The word burns. Humiliating. Dismissing. I spit at his shoes.
They shove me into the cell. The door slams shut. The metal clang echoes like a sentence being carried out. The air turns smaller. My breath tightens. Panic scrapes at my ribs. I stagger back until I hit the wall.
“What the hell is he thinking?” I shout, voice ricocheting off concrete. “What lie did you idiots tell him?”
Johnny looks at me with something not quite pity, not quite contempt. “Lucian saw the email from your boyfriend,” he says quietly.
My pulse stutters. “What email?”
But the look on his face tells me everything: they think I’m involved. They think I planned something. That Xavier and I—
My lungs seize.
“Are you insane?” I snap. “Xavier? He was never my boyfriend, and I haven’t talked to him in months! I didn’t even know he was still—”
Vincent cuts me off. “Save it for the boss.”
Boss. So this wasn’t some soldier going rogue. This was Lucian. Lucian’s call. Lucian’s hands. Lucian’s betrayal.
He didn’t ask. Didn’t look me in the eye. Just threw me in a box because Xavier breathed the same air somewhere in this city.
They turn to leave.
“Don’t do this,” I say, raw, unsteady. “Johnny.”
He pauses. For a breath, I think he might say something. Warn me. Help me.
He shakes his head and walks away.
The heavy door seals behind them. Silence grows until it crushes.
I sink to the floor. My legs shake too hard to hold me. Lucian thinks I’d betray him.
He tied that ribbon around my wrist last night, kissed me like I mattered—and caged me the next morning.
Something inside me fractures. Sharp. Clean. Irreversible.
I don’t know how long I sit there—minutes, hours—but eventually footsteps echo down the hall.
Boots. Measured. Unhurried.
Lucian.
I’d know his stride in the dark, blindfolded, half-dead. He stops outside my cell.
He stands like a carved threat—immaculate suit, lethal eyes, emotion sealed behind ice. Not the man who welcomed me into his bed.
This is the Devil.
“Elias,” he says, voice low. “We need to talk.”
I laugh. A broken sound.
“We’re a little past talking, don’t you think?”
He doesn’t move. Neither do I.
The air between us is cold, and I know whatever comes next will change everything.
He stands there forever, breathing slow, suit rising and falling. He looks devastating like this—composed, furious, fragile beneath it.
“You didn’t tell me about him,” he says finally, low, hurting.
“I told you,” I fire back instantly. “I told you he was someone from my past. He was obsessive. Messy. I left him.”
“You left him,” Lucian says dryly, “and two months later he shows up with a gun. That’s a coincidence?”
“It’s not like that.” My voice bounces around the cell, too loud, too panicked. “Lucian, I didn’t even know he was in the city.”
He presses his palms to the bars, leaning close enough that I can see the fury in him—jealousy scalding under control.
“You met him at the cinema,” he says. “We have the photo. You were laughing.”
“I ran into him,” I say. “I was playing a part. He used to...he used to hurt me, Lucian. I was scared.”
His face softens just a fraction and for a moment I think he will gather me in his arms. But he stays where he is.
“I saw the email you sent him, Elias. Please just be honest with me.”
“What email?” I ask suddenly. “What did you see?”
He hesitates.
“Hartford showed it to me. It came from an address linked to you,” he says finally. “Referenced a meeting with Long. Said: ‘See you at Pearl. I’ll bring what you asked for.’”
My stomach flips.
“I don’t know who sent that.” My voice comes out strangled. “That’s not me. Someone’s framing me. Why would I call Long? Why would I do anything that gets you shot?”
“Because someone wants to destabilize me,” he says. “And using you is efficient.”
The words hit like a slap.
“Lucian,” I say, voice cracking, “I didn’t send that email. I didn’t know Xavier was around. If I had known, I would have told you. I don’t want him near me. I don’t want any of this. Let me prove it.”
He studies me a long time, exhaustion creeping through his eyes.
“For now,” he says quietly, “you stay here.”
The sentence lands like a blade.
“You ordered this,” I whisper.
“Yes,” he says. “Because you’re my vulnerability. And I can’t let you be someone else’s weapon.”
“Or because you want to control me.”
His jaw tics. “Maybe I do. Maybe I’m afraid enough to want to own what I can’t afford to lose. That doesn’t make you guilty. It makes me human in the worst possible way.”
The honesty stings.
“You could have asked me,” I say, barely a breath.
Regret flickers through him—brief, sharp, real.
“I needed truth,” he says. “And I didn’t trust you enough to tell me.”
He turns and walks away.
No goodbye.
No apology.
Just the measured steps of a man who believes he did the right thing.
The door closes behind him.
Silence fills the cell again.
I pull my knees to my chest, press my forehead to the cold concrete, and finally let the tears spill—not for the cell, not for the fear, but for the hollow, tearing ache of loving a man who put me in a cage to feel safe.