Chapter 2
The dark had teeth. It bit at me every time I closed my eyes, scraping over my skin, sinking into my bones. Down here, there was no sense of day or night, just the hum of the old pipes, the stink of mildew, and the shuffle of chains whenever one of the other girls moved in her sleep.
I stopped counting the days after the first week.
The Irish had taken me fast. One minute I was leaving the store where I worked, the next there was a rag over my face, hands on me, and then the sting of a needle.
I woke up in this place with my wrists cuffed and a shackle on my ankle, chained to a rusted iron loop drilled into the floor.
The others were already here, their faces pale, eyes hollow.
Some cried. Some didn’t speak at all. I refused to do either.
They’d tried to break me, but I refused to let them win.
The food was minimal, we were lucky to get a stale roll here, a bottle of water there.
Sometimes nothing at all. A guard would come down and run his mouth, hint at what would happen to us when they sold us off, what we’d be worth.
I learned quick that answering them only made it worse.
I stayed quiet, but I met their stares with all the hate I had left.
And when they hit me, I didn’t cry, but now my body ached in ways I couldn’t catalogue.
My wrists were raw, scabbed over from the manacles, my lip split from the last time I’d mouthed off.
But worse than the pain was the stillness.
The waiting. The knowing that, at some point, someone would buy me and whatever life I had before would be gone for good.
And I had liked my life, at least, it had been mine.
I’d grown up in a small town on the coast, the kind of place where everyone knew your name and half the town had eaten your mom’s Sunday roast at least once.
My father had been a fisherman until the sea took him, and after that, it was just my mom and me.
She’d passed a few years back, which left me with an apartment over a bookshop and no one to answer to but myself.
I worked days in that shop, dusting shelves, restocking, sometimes curling up behind the counter with a novel when it was slow. Evenings, I pulled shifts at a bar two streets over, it was not glamorous, but the regulars were mostly harmless, and I could handle the ones who weren’t.
I had friends and I had freedom. I could take a walk at midnight with music in my ears and not think about chains or dark rooms or the value of my body on some sick underground market.
Now, those memories felt like they belonged to another woman entirely.
I didn’t know if anyone was looking for me. I had no siblings, no one close enough to kick up a fuss. That was the real gut punch, the understanding that I could disappear from the world and it wouldn’t stop spinning.
Here, I wasn’t Sorcha Wyatt, stubborn and mouthy and free. Here, I was just merchandise.
It was the sound that broke the monotony.
At first, it was distant muffled thuds, a sharp yell cut short. Then closer and louder. Boots were pounding above us, the echo of a body hitting the floor. In the distance someone swore. A gunshot cracked through the air, deafening in the enclosed space.
Every woman in the room froze, and then there was another shot. Then another. The clang of steel on steel. Something heavy was dragged across the floor upstairs, and then the sound of footsteps, they were steady, purposeful and they were coming down toward us.
The chain at my ankle felt heavier than ever. My pulse slammed against my ribs, my palms damp. Was it rescue or just another shift change of guards?
The door exploded inward. Not literally, but it might as well have as the heavy steel swung wide, and a flood of black-clad men charged in. They moved with precision, weapons up, scanning the room.
The first thing I noticed was that they didn’t look like Irish. No cheap tracksuits or whiskey stink. They were… sharper. They looked like predators in tailored armour.
And then I saw him. He was tall, broad-shouldered, moving like he owned the air around him.
His presence hit me harder than the sight of his weapon, harder than the chaos behind him.
Dark hair swept back from a face that was too sharp to be pretty, too cold to be gentle.
His eyes, Christ, his eyes when they landed on me like a blade point pressing into my skin took my breath away.
I didn’t want to look away. I couldn’t. For a moment, the room faded.
The chains, the dirt, the other women, they all blurred at the edges, leaving just that gaze pinning me in place.
My breath came quicker, not from fear, not exactly.
Something else, something sharper, something dangerous curled low in my stomach.
He started toward me, and my body reacted before my brain caught up. My fingers curled into fists, my shoulders squared. I wasn’t going to cower, not now. Not for him, I couldn’t show any weakness.
When he reached me, he crouched down, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off him. His gloved fingers slid under my chin, tilting my face up. The leather was cool against my bruised skin.
I hissed at the touch, it was a half warning, half reflex, but he didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. His gaze swept over me, not like the guards did, not like I was merchandise. This was… assessment and something much deeper.
And God help me; some part of me didn’t hate it. That’s when the scent hit me, something I couldn’t name but it was dark and rich, it gave me a sense of something wild. It tangled with the copper tang of blood in the air, and I realized it was him.
“Mine,” he said in a deep growl, low enough that I had to strain to hear.
My brow furrowed in confusion. “Go to hell.” I snap. My pulse jumped which he must have noticed because he smiled then, a slow, dangerous curve of his mouth that didn’t belong in this place.
The chains fell away with a single swipe of his blade, and before I could think I lunged at him on instinct, but to no avail as his arm was around my waist, hauling me up against him. My body screamed at the sudden movement, but his hold was unyielding, steady.
“Not hell, sweetheart,” he murmured, voice low and rough against my ear.
“Home.” I should have fought harder, but I didn’t.
I don’t know if I was too exhausted or if I just didn’t care anymore, but suddenly, I just wanted to be taken into this man’s arms and later once I got my strength back, I would fight.
So, I let him carry me, past the bodies cooling on the floor, their vacant eyes staring at nothing.
The metallic tang of blood mixed with the sharp bite of gunpowder and the heavier, almost sweet rot of death.
Every step he took seemed to put more distance between me and the nightmare I’d been trapped in, but it didn’t erase it.
The air outside hit me like a punch. Cold and very real. It smelled of rain-soaked concrete and exhaust, of life. The night sky stretched overhead, black and endless, dotted with stars I’d almost forgotten existed. My chest ached at the sight. I’d thought I’d never see them again.
His arms were solid, unyielding, the steady rise and fall of his breath a strange anchor.
My body screamed to be put down, to run, but the other part of me, the exhausted, bone-deep part, clung to that strength without meaning to.
Whoever he was, whatever he was, I knew one thing for certain, men like him didn’t exist in the quiet little life I’d lived before.
The world I’d known, the safe streets, the friendly faces, the illusion that evil was something far away was already gone. And looking at him, feeling the cold edge of danger rolling off his skin like smoke, I had the sinking feeling my life was about to get even more dangerous.
Not because of the monsters I’d just been freed from… but because of the one carrying me now.
His voice cut through the night, deep and unyielding. “Call the doctor and tell him to be at my house in thirty minutes.” It wasn’t a request; it was an order that carried the kind of weight that made the man he spoke to snap into motion instantly.
The men around us moved like shadows with their black combat gear, weapons still in hand, eyes scanning the dark as though more trouble might appear at any moment.
One of them, tall and broad with a scar down his cheek, broke from formation to hurry ahead.
By the time Lucien reached the waiting black SUV, the back door was already open.
He didn’t set me down. Not for a second.
He shifted me in his arms just enough to slide into the back seat, keeping me pressed against the wall of muscle and heat that was his chest. The door slammed shut, cutting out the night and sealing us into the low hum of the engine and the faint scent of leather and gun oil.
For a long moment, he just looked at me, his eyes so dark they were almost black, studying me like he was memorizing every inch. Then his voice dropped, low enough that it felt like it settled under my skin.
“What’s your name?”
I hesitated. My throat felt dry, my voice smaller than I remembered it being. “…Sorcha.”
His mouth moved like he was tasting it, slow and deliberate. “Sorcha,” he repeated, as if he was claiming it. Then, just as quietly, “I’m Lucien.”
And for some reason it didn’t feel like an introduction. It felt like a promise.
“Lucien.”
The name hit somewhere deep, like the low, thrumming note of a song I didn’t know but somehow recognized. It didn’t belong to the kind of man you forgot. It didn’t belong to a man who let you go.
I should’ve been afraid of him. I was afraid of him, just… not in the same way I’d feared the Irish. This was different. The Irish had taken me apart piece by piece. This man… Lucien… looked like he could burn me down all at once and leave nothing but ash.
The SUV rumbled to life, the city lights streaking past the tinted windows. I could feel the weight of his arm still locked around me, not loose or casual, but firm. Possessive. Like I was his, whether I agreed or not.
My body screamed for distance, for space to breathe, but there was something else, something pulling me closer instead. Something in the way his heartbeat was slow and steady under my cheek, the way his scent was sharp but clean, steel and leather and something darker beneath.
I glanced up once, catching his profile in the dim light. Strong jaw, high cheekbones, lips pressed in a line that could slice glass. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking ahead, watching the road as if the night might dare to reach through the glass and take me back.
The air between us was tight, almost electric. I didn’t know him. I didn’t owe him anything. But the way he held me… it felt like the first safe thing I’d touched in weeks.
And that terrified me more than anything.