Chapter Five - Lira
The Silk Root Chamber – Sublevel B, Dantès Estate
There’s a sound that wakes me. Someone is coming.
My heart lurches.
I push myself up from the bed, limbs heavy, skin clammy, dress clinging to my spine. My head pounds—cotton-stuffed and slow—but I force myself upright. My vision blurs, then sharpens.
The room is still beautiful.
Still wrong.
And then the door opens.
He walks in like the world knows him.
He’s tall, lean, built like someone who doesn’t need to fight because he already knows how it ends.
His black shirt is buttoned to the top, sleeves rolled neatly to the elbows, exposing forearms marked with faint veins and control.
His pants are tailored, his shoes polished.
There’s not a single crease on him. Not one detail out of place.
His hair’s tied back, jet black and glassy. His skin is pale, almost luminous against the shadows of the chamber. But it’s his eyes that trap me— blue, the kind of blue that feels like it’s staring straight through everything I’ve ever tried to hide.
And his mouth—curved into something that isn't quite a smile, not quite a smirk. Just… knowing.
“Lira Marcelline Falco,” he says, like my name tastes expensive.
My spine locks. “Who are you?”
He doesn’t answer right away. He walks further in—slow, graceful—and every step rings like a thread tightening around my ribs. He nods to the bed like it’s a request. It isn’t.
“Relax,” he says, low and calm. “Sit. Let’s talk.”
My hands tremble. I don’t want to obey.
But I do.
I lower myself onto the mattress like gravity gave up pretending and just commanded me outright. He watches every motion with clinical ease, like he’s used to things falling in line. My legs are stiff. My throat burns. My body wants to run. My brain won’t let it.
“I don’t know who you think I am, or what you think I’ve done,” I say quickly, hands spread out as if they could shield me, “but I have nothing. I don’t have money, or secrets, or anything worth taking. I work three jobs. I’m in debt. I’m a recovering addict.”
I say the word like it matters. Like it might humanize me. Like it might make me small enough to be spared.
“Just let me go,” I whisper. “And I’ll let this go.”
He doesn’t blink.
He says it again, softly.
“Sit.”
I realize I’ve started to rise. That my body tried to flee. I hadn’t noticed. My knees buckle and I return to the bed like a scolded child.
His eyes stay on mine the whole time.
“Good girl,” he says.
Two words. Nothing special.
But they land in my chest like a key in a lock I didn’t know was there. My pulse thunders in my ears.
I hate how warm my skin feels. I hate the way my body listens to him like it’s always known how.
Who is he?
Why can’t I look away?
He doesn’t sit like a normal man.
He folds into the armchair across from the bed like it was carved to fit him, legs crossed, wrist resting on the arm like he has all the time in the world. But he’s not relaxed, he’s coiled. Watching.
“I’ll make this easier,” he says, tone light but exact. “You’re Lira Marcelline Falco. Born and raised in San Remo, Italy. Moved to Victoria with your parents when you were twelve. Background in classical music. Violin. Very promising.”
My lungs stop for a moment.
He keeps going.
“You earned a full scholarship to Melba Conservatorium of Music in Carlton. You were a rising star. Composed, performed, conducted. Then your father died—ten years ago. Your mother followed three years ago.”
I feel my jaw set. My nails press against my palms.
“Your brother—Petty Officer Second Class Marco Falco—died one year after your mother. Active duty.”
My chest tightens.
He tilts his head slightly, voice still smooth.
“You spiraled. Stopped attending classes. Failed a major solo recital. You were dropped from the honors list. Lost your scholarship due to academic decline and behavioral reports. Drug use flagged. You were checked into Corwell Rehab Centre under an anonymous sponsor.”
My mouth is dry.
“You stayed ten months. Sober, but not stable. You left with no degree, no savings, and about seventeen thousand dollars in school debt after you lost your scholarship. You work at a pizza shop six days a week, tutor violin on weekends, and work at a bar every night you’re not passed out from exhaustion. ”
His eyes meet mine.
I sit frozen, skin burning. The words don’t even feel like they belong to me anymore.
“Who are you?” I manage.
He rises. And when he stands, he keeps standing. Doesn’t shift, doesn’t twitch. Just… exists. Above me.
His shadow eats the light. I barely breathe as he walks toward me.
He stops in front of the bed. Leans down.
I can smell his cologne—smoke and citrus, invasive. His breath ghosts against my cheek. My hands twitch. Every cell in my body screams.
He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t have to.
“You,” he says softly, “are someone who has something that I own.”
Our eyes lock.
His voice lands like a stone in my stomach.
And suddenly I’m not afraid. I’m furious .
Before I even register the decision, I whip my head forward—bone smashing into his nose with a sick crack. He staggers back with a grunt, one hand flying to his face. Blood spills between his fingers.
I don’t wait to see what he does.
I throw myself off the bed, feet hitting the floor hard. The tile is cold and slick under my soles. I bolt toward the door, heart exploding in my chest.
I reach it in seconds—yank the handle—and it opens .
A split second of hope.
Then—
I freeze.
Three guards.
Standing like statues just outside the door, rifles strapped to their backs, sidearms at their hips, faces stone-cold.
No surprise in their eyes.
They were waiting .
“NO!” I scream, trying to slam the door shut, but it’s too late. One grabs the edge, yanks it wide, and the others surge in.
I stumble backward.
Hands grab at my arms—my waist—one gets a fistful of my hair. I twist, scream, elbow anything I can reach. One lets out a curse. I shove my knee up—make contact with a groin—and he grunts but doesn’t let go.
“LET ME GO!”
They’re strong.
My feet leave the ground.
I thrash, kick, claw—but it’s useless. They drag me backward through the threshold, my heels scraping against the tile, my lungs burning from the scream.
The guards haul me in like I’m nothing. My body bends, writhes, but I can’t stop them. My arms are pinned. One of them jerks me upright, forcing me to stand in front of the bed again.
He hasn’t moved.
Still sitting in that chair like it’s a throne. One leg lazily crossed over the other, spine angled just enough to look amused. But his hand—his elegant, veined hand—is pressed over his nose, blood seeping between his fingers in a thin, dark trail.
And behind that hand, he's grinning.
Actually grinning.
He peels his fingers away slowly, revealing the curve of his mouth—smiling, teeth faintly pink-stained. His nose is crooked now, blood trickling from one nostril down to the swell of his upper lip.
“You broke it,” he says with a touch of awe, like I’ve given him an early birthday gift.
I’m still breathing hard, held tight between two guards, wrists trapped at my sides. My chest heaves. Sweat stings my eyes. And still, I glare at him like I can shatter bone with it.
He rises from the chair.
No rush. No threat in his pace. But the space shrinks the moment he stands.
He walks over and stops in front of me, eyes skating over my face—reading me, daring me.
Then his fingers lift—two of them—and he tilts my chin up. His thumb presses along the edge of my jaw, gentle but unyielding. My skin burns where he touches.
His eyes search mine like they’re looking for a secret I haven’t even told myself yet.
“I am so fucking glad you have some fight in you,” he murmurs, that crooked smile pulling wider. “This is going to be fun after all.”
His breath hits my cheek. Warm. Tainted with metal and citrus.
I try to jerk away. The guard holding my shoulders tightens his grip.
Severo drops my chin with a flick of his fingers and turns his head, speaking over his shoulder.
“No food. No water. Not until she apologizes for being mean to me.”
My stomach clenches.
He turns back, cutting me off with a soft voice laced in theatrical disappointment. “I didn’t think our meeting would be this intense,” he says, holding his hand to his chest like I’ve wounded him somewhere deeper than cartilage. “But I’ll be back when you’re ready to be nicer, okay?”
He winks.
And just like that, he strolls past me, past the guards, humming under his breath like we’re not standing in the middle of a velvet-wrapped prison and I’m not shaking with rage and fear.
The door slams shut behind him.
The finality of it hits harder than the guards’ hands.
One of them shoves me forward, hard. I fall—knees first, palms scraping the polished floor. The sound echoes like a slap against the walls. Then their footsteps retreat, fast and bored, like they’ve done this a thousand times.
The lock clicks.
Real, stifling silence.
My shoulders tremble. My arms start to give.
I don’t rise. I can’t.
I slide down, curling in on myself. My forehead rests against the cool tile. My breaths come fast and shaky—then burst out of me all at once.
I sob.
Not the clean kind.
Not the elegant, wounded kind.
This is ugly, cracking, soul-shaking grief.
Tears wet the tile beneath me. My fingers curl against the floor like they’re trying to claw into the earth itself. My chest burns. The realization— he’s not letting me go —lands heavy and final. There’s no ransom. No reason. Just… this.
He wants me.
And no one’s coming.
Nicola might look, sure. But Nicola is just one girl. One poor girl. One tired, hungry, overworked girl who has enough of her own nightmares to fight through.
No cops. No family.
I collapse sideways, folding into myself on the cold, unforgiving tile. My cheek presses against it, sticky with the sweat and tears already slicking my skin. I try to hold back the sob that swells in my chest, but it tears out anyway— raw, jagged, and ugly.
It’s not delicate. Not cinematic.
It’s the kind of sob that scrapes up from the gut, choking its way through clenched teeth, gurgling into the air like a wounded animal.
I don’t just cry—I unravel. My fists clench against the floor.
My toes curl against the hem of my dress.
My spine curls tighter, like I can make myself disappear if I fold small enough.
He’s not letting me go.
Not tomorrow. Not next week.
Not ever.
No one even knows where I am. No one can know. He made sure of that.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to hold the thought back, but it slams through anyway.
Nicola.
Maybe she’ll notice. Maybe she’ll call. But what could she even do? What could she say that anyone would believe? That her best friend vanished into thin air? No leads, no help. Just another poor girl whose calm gets swallowed by the world.
Another poor girl with no power. Like her.
Like me.
My hands slide beneath me, shaking, trying to anchor myself, but the floor is slick with my own tears now. I fold deeper, curling my knees to my chest. My shoulders quake. A sound claws out of my throat—a strangled gasp caught between a sob and a breath that never finishes.
The calm in the room wraps around me like a net.
The images of my past come back, slicing into the darkness like glass catching light.
Back to three years ago, after my mother died. In the kitchen. The smell of lilies clinging to everything sickening.
I’m standing at the sink, arms elbow-deep in soapy water, wearing that awful black dress that clings to my ribs and hugs nothing. The sleeves are rolled up, but they keep slipping down. I keep pushing them back up, over and over, because my hands need something to do.
There’s a plate in my hand. I scrub it like it’s done something to me.
Outside the window, I can see Marco. He’s out back with our dog, the leash dangling in one hand, a trash bag in the other. He’s doing the chores like it’s any normal Thursday. Like we didn’t just lower our mother into the ground less than three hours ago.
The sink water is warm. I hate it. It’s the only warm thing in the whole house.
I don’t hear Mico come in.
I just feel him.
His presence fills the air beside me like heat— grounding. I can smell him before I see him: rain and cologne and something , like laundry soap and aftershave.
He steps next to me. Doesn’t speak.
Then softly, “Let me help.”
My hands stop moving.
The plate slips.
It shatters against the side of the sink—porcelain splintering against metal, a sharp echo.
The sound shatters me, too.
My breath halves and then it breaks, full-bodied and sudden.
I turn toward him like the grief was just waiting for permission.
I crash into him.
My arms wrap around his waist, hands fisting the back of his shirt. My face presses into his chest, and I cry—really cry—for the first time since the call, since the doctors, since the coffin closed.
His arms wrap around me in return.
“I’ve got you,” he whispers, rocking me. “You’re okay.”
I shake my head against him. My body trembles and the sobs keep coming, wrenching from me like water from a burst pipe.
“Don’t go,” I murmur, words muffled in his shirt. “Don’t leave.”
He pulls back, just enough to meet my eyes.
“I’ll never leave you,” he says, voice low and steady.
“Swear,” I whisper, hands tightening on his shirt like a lifeline. “Swear you won’t.”
His eyes search mine. So blue. So open.
“I swear.”
He cups the back of my head and draws me in again. He doesn’t let go.