CHAPTER 25
ALESSIA P.O.V.
I was suspended in the kind of deep, dead-to-the-world REM sleep that only hits when your central nervous system has completely bottomed out.
The heavy Egyptian cotton duvet felt like a concrete barrier between me and the blood I’d spilled a few hours ago.
The scent of Leon’s expensive sandalwood cologne was still baked into my skin, anchoring me to the memory of him scrubbing the grime off me in the shower.
I had been stupid enough to interpret the hot water and his bruised hands as tenderness.
I actually felt, for the first time in three straight years of living on a wire, that the war was over.
I thought I was safe. My fingers were loosely curled around the edge of the silk pillowcase, my breathing finally dropping into a steady, rhythmic cycle, entirely oblivious to the fact that outside these reinforced glass windows, the world was moving to obliterate me.
Inside the room, the man I just killed a rival syndicate boss for was seamlessly transitioning from savior to jailer.
The hum of the HVAC system and the faint smell of damp wool from Leon’s ruined suit were the only warnings I got.
The silent strobe alarm ignited the room, painting the walls in rhythmic, violent pulses of crimson.
My eyes snapped open, pupils dilating instantly as the red light slashed across the black ceiling.
Leon was standing at the foot of the bed, perfectly still, a dark silhouette watching the clock like a predator waiting for the trap to snap shut.
The transition from the soft oblivion of sleep to the sharp, metallic taste of adrenaline hitting my tongue was instantaneous.
My brain wasn't firing fast enough to process why he wasn't moving toward me, why he wasn't dragging me up by the arm and throwing a go-bag at my chest. I tried to sit up, but my heel caught clumsily on the slick silk sheet, a chaotic, entirely human movement in a room that had just turned into a tactical grid.
The light sensor clicked rhythmically. Click-click. Red, black, red, black.
"Leon? What... what's happening?" I choked out, my voice raspy. I was waiting for the order to run. I was waiting for him to tell me the extraction route. "Christ, the perimeter?"
I reached down toward the floor, scrambling for my discarded jeans.
Leon’s hand shot out out of the dark, moving with a cold, terrifying efficiency that halted the breath in my lungs.
He clamped his fingers around my wrist, pinning my arm flat against the mattress.
He didn't look like the man who had carefully washed my bare back an hour ago.
He looked like the apex predator who had run a sprawling smuggling empire for a decade.
The coldness in his ice-blue eyes was absolute, deadass empty.
His damp suit sleeve brushed against my bare arm, the cold moisture making me violently shiver.
"Leave the clothes, Alessia," he said, his voice flat.
He pressed his thumb directly into my radial artery, cutting off my circulation just enough to let me know he could snap my arm if he wanted to. Why wasn't he giving me a weapon? Why the fuck was he looking at me like I was a liability he was about to liquidate off the ledger?
"Stay where you are."
He leaned his entire body weight into me, driving his knee into the mattress and pinning the heavy duvet down over my legs so I couldn't kick.
He reached behind his back. For one split second of pure, unadulterated terror, I thought he was pulling a Glock to put a bullet in my brain and finish the job.
I braced for the flash. Instead, I heard the distinct, oily rattle of heavy steel chains.
My tactical training tried to kick in, but his superior size rendered it entirely useless.
I tried to buck my hips, to twist out from under him, but the duvet was too fucking heavy, tangling around my ankles like a snare.
The smell of rain and gun oil radiated off his chest as he pressed the air completely out of my lungs.
"Leon, stop! Talk to me!" I thrashed against him, gasping as the steel hit my skin. My brain spiraled into total panic. He wasn't protecting me from the breach. He was preparing me for it. "Leon, don't do this. Don't do this!"
He yanked my arm brutally upward, the violent motion jarring my shoulder socket.
The metallic snick of the tactical handcuffs was the loudest thing I’d ever heard.
It echoed in my skull. He locked the first cuff tight around my wrist, then looped the second heavy steel ring around the thick, immovable stanchion of the custom bedframe, ratcheting it shut.
He literally tethered me to the architecture of the penthouse.
I was completely immobilized. Naked, unarmed, and chained like a fucking animal by the man I had just burned my badge for.
The jagged edge of my thumbnail scraped desperately against his damp collar as I tried to find a grip on his throat, but I couldn't reach him.
"You son of a bitch!" I screamed, the cold steel biting directly into my wrist bone. I ripped my arm back, but the chain held firm. My chest was heaving, collarbones sharp and jumping with every ragged intake of oxygen. "Unlock them. Leon, unlock them now!"
He’s leaving me. He’s leaving me here for them to find.
I pulled at the chain again, the metal clanging against the bedpost in a pathetic, hopeless sound.
I stared up at him, my eyes wide, begging for this to be some kind of twisted loyalty test, a sick joke before he pulled the key out.
He didn't flinch. Not a muscle in his jaw twitched.
He stood up, towering over me in the flashing red light, and calmly straightened the lapels of his wet blazer, looking as entirely unbothered as a CEO preparing for a board meeting.
The cold air from the vents hit my damp skin where his body heat had just been.
The absolute disparity between my raw, naked desperation and his polished, icy composure made my stomach violently turn over.
"What are you doing? Tell me what you're doing!" I yanked the chain again, my voice cracking. "They'll kill me, Leon. You know Trenton will kill me."
He leaned back down, closing the distance until his face was inches from mine. He gripped my chin in his hand, his knuckles still bruised red from the skull he’d caved in earlier. He forced me to look directly into his eyes, completely immune to my thrashing.
"They’re in the shaft. Three minutes out," he whispered, his voice a low vibration that I felt in my teeth. The distant, heavy hum of the elevator engines kicking into manual override bled through the walls. "Listen to me, Alessia. You are the victim. You were kidnapped, used, and discarded."
My mind stalled. The sheer, twisted brilliance of his master plan hit me like a physical blow to the head.
He wasn't just saving his own ass and leaving me to take the fall.
He was forcefully orchestrating my cover story through pure trauma.
He needed me utterly humiliated, visibly broken, and chained to a bed to make my victim narrative bulletproof to the feds about to kick down the door. He actually thought this was a gift.
All my pride, three years of hardened undercover grit, instantly dissolved into raw, unfiltered terror.
I didn't want to be found like this by the people I used to work with.
Not naked. Not chained up like a syndicate sex toy.
"Don't let them see me like this. Please.
" I begged him, my free hand blindly trying to pull the heavy duvet up over my exposed shoulders, but the fabric was caught firmly under my own body weight.
"Leon, give me my shirt. Fuck, Leon, please! "
Instead of answering, he dropped his hand from my chin, fisted his fingers deep into my hair, and yanked my head back.
He crashed his mouth against mine in a kiss that had absolutely zero love in it.
It was a brand. A violent collision of possession and betrayal.
He bit down on my bottom lip hard enough that the skin split, the warm copper tang of my own blood flooding my tongue.
He was marking his territory, making damn sure I remembered exactly who I belonged to while Trenton’s hit squad had their hands on me.
His fingers dug into the soft skin of my jaw, pressing so hard he left faint white imprints in my flesh.
"You are mine. Remember that," he snarled against my bleeding mouth. The metal chain rattled furiously against the bedpost as I struggled. "Survive. That's the only rule left."
He broke the kiss abruptly, leaving my lips bruised, swollen, and stinging.
He didn't look back. He just backed away, dissolving into the shadows toward the heavy wood-paneled wall on the far side of the room.
The rhythmic flashing of the red strobe light made his retreat look like he was stepping backward into hell.
The silence he left in his wake was ten times more terrifying than the noise of the impending breach.
"Leon! Come back here!" I wiped my mouth with my free hand, staring at the bright smear of red blood across my palm. The vents kicked into high gear, dropping the ambient temperature in the room by ten degrees. "Don't you dare leave me like this!"