Chapter 3 – Lydia - The Leash
Not a call. Not even a full sentence.
Just a word from one of Drazen’s errand boys, sitting in my inbox like a sealed threat: “Tower.”
Which means now.
I slide my phone face-down and let my eyes trace the ceiling.
There’s a crack there. Faint, threadlike. It wasn’t there when I moved in. But it’s there now. Like the plaster’s trying to mirror me.
I don’t ask why Drazen wants me. I already know it’s not for anything useful. Not to hear what I think. Not to request anything that makes sense.
Drazen’s invitations aren’t appointments. They’re reminders.
I throw off the sheets and stand, the tile cold beneath my feet. My knee aches, it always does in the morning. I stretch, let the stiffness pass through me, and head to the sink.
No coffee.
No time.
I scrub my face, tie my hair, and zip myself into a dress I don’t like. It’s black. Structured. The kind of thing that says I don’t flinch.
I do, though. I just know how to do it on the inside.
________________________________________________
The tower sits in Miramont’s glass district. Sleek, ruthless, designed for predators who sign their kills with ink. Drazen keeps a suite on the 38th floor, dressed up with floor-to-ceiling windows, plush carpets, and furniture so minimal but expensive it looks like it’s plucked from a catalog.
Dom’s already there when I step in. He doesn’t look up from his phone. Just gestures toward the leather chair beside him.
I take it.
Two men across the room are whispering over contract files. One of them is bleeding slightly from the cuticle. I don’t know why that bothers me more than the room itself.
We sit like that for ten minutes. Then twenty.
Drazen arrives exactly when he means to and not a moment sooner. Unsurprisingly, that’s thirty-three minutes late.
He walks in like he owns the calendar, time, and the temperature in the room. Wearing grey. Always grey. Because black would be too obvious, and color would be too forgiving.
He doesn’t look at me. Not at first.
He just crosses to the table, nods once, and says, “Begin.”
The negotiation is a blur of veiled threats, numbers too round to be real, and one man sweating so hard he soils the signature page before he can finish writing. No one corrects him.
I don’t speak.
That’s not why I’m here.
I’m here because Drazen wants me to be seen. This is what he does. He dangles the things he controls: Money. Fear. Me.
“Interesting signature you’ve adopted lately,” he says suddenly, flipping through a set of documents without even glancing up. “Still using the Carr name, then?”
My spine doesn’t move. “That’s the name I was born with.”
“Mmm,” he hums. “Names are funny, aren’t they? So permanent. Unless someone digs through the wrong archive. Or files a complaint in a small, inconvenient court.”
My pulse skips.
That story — the one he fabricated — it's tucked inside a sealed federal record somewhere. A body with no proof. A shipment with no manifest. A time-stamped call that can’t be traced but somehow always exists.
None of it is real. Yet it’s still real enough to destroy me.
He created it to own me.
And it works.
Every time he smiles like this, I can feel the leash, invisible, but tight.
Dom looks at me from the side, but says nothing.
That’s the game here. They all know I’m not free. They just enjoy watching me act like I am.
After the meeting, Drazen dismisses the rest with a flick of his hand.
“Stay,” he says, not looking at me.
I do.
He walks toward the private alcove behind the screen partition. I follow, steps soft across the marble.
Inside, he pours himself a drink in a lowball glass
Then he finally turns.
“You've been useful,” he says.
“I always am.”
A smile flickers, but it’s the kind that belongs on a knife.
“Useful doesn’t mean untouchable, Lydia.”
“I don’t need to be untouchable,” I say. “Just more convenient than whoever could replace me.”
He chuckles at that. It’s a real laugh. But it’s not pleasant.
“True. Everything’s got a line on it.” He leans in. “I make notes. Don’t give me a reason to read yours aloud.”
Then he moves past me. Gone like the whole exchange didn’t just happen.
But it did.
And I feel it everywhere.
In my ribs. In my throat. In the base of my spine where the heat started to rise before I could shove it down.
I walk out without saying a word.
By the time I reach the elevator, my hands are shaking.
The elevator ride feels too short.
Thirty-eight floors, and I only get six seconds to compose myself. I grip the brass railing. The walls are smoked glass, reflecting me in fragments: cheekbone, jawline, the tight seam of my mouth.
I keep expecting to see someone else looking back. A shadow. A man. A hand just behind mine.
But the only ghost is me.
The doors open to the lobby’s hush. Dom’s already there. Waiting, as if the universe choreographed it to make sure I never get a moment alone.
He doesn't smile. Just starts walking, like I'm supposed to follow.
I do.
We pass the concierge, who gives me the same look they always do — the one people give women like me when they know they’re not allowed to ask what we do, but they guess anyway.
Dom’s stride is long. Confident. And too fast for someone who’s pretending this is casual.
I hate when he does this.
He stops just before the parking garage.
“You’re distracted,” he says.
I raise an eyebrow. “I’m exhausted.”
“No. This is different.” He tilts his head. “It’s the way you’re walking. Like something’s inside your skin.”
“It’s just you, Dom. You tend to have that effect.”
A flicker of amusement. Then gone.
“You weren’t focused in there.”
I hold his stare. “Wasn’t supposed to be. I was just a decoration.”
He steps closer. His voice doesn’t rise, but it cuts all the same.
“You used to be more than that.”
That lands harder than it should.
Because he’s not wrong.
I used to run rings around rooms like that. Back when I knew which man would fold first, which client had real money, which bodyguard kept his finger too stiff on the trigger.
And now?
I measure survival by how fast I can agree. How quickly I can nod, smile, sit still while men like Drazen poke me with jagged lies.
Dom’s still staring.
“Be ready tonight,” he says.
“For what?”
“Negotiation. You'll sit in. Maybe observe. Maybe remind them they’re being watched.”
“Which negotiation?”
“Does it matter?”
He turns on his heel, coat flaring behind him. He doesn’t wait for a reply.
It doesn’t matter.
Because it was never about my voice.
Just my presence.
I step outside and the city hits like a mouthful of smoke.
Miramont smells like money trying to hide its decay. Fancy sidewalks, brushed steel signs, hired palms in neat square plots. But the heat’s rising today, too much sun for early spring, and I can feel the rot underneath.
Beneath my feet. Inside my chest.
I start walking.
No destination. Just motion.
I didn’t flinch in that room.
But I remembered what it felt like.
The heat behind your eyes. The slow collapse of your spine. The way Drazen could break a body with nothing but a sentence.
That used to be me.
Five years ago…
Before Elias taught me how to hold a blade like a pen.
Before Drazen found the one thing I couldn’t erase and carved it into a leash.
Now I just hide it better. Now, I’m just tired. I’m tired of the tension never draining, of having to stay pretty while being watched from the inside out. Tired of the mask slipping and no one caring enough to catch it. Or I did.
I take the long way toward my place, zigzagging through the business district, then dip toward the arts quarter, where the pavement still cracks and the buildings are too old to pretend they’re something else.
When I hit the main crosswalk, something shifts.
It’s tiny.
Just a prickle.
The kind of chill that doesn’t come from temperature.
I glance sideways.
There’s no one close enough to call it a threat.
But my skin disagrees.
I keep walking, every sense stretching out like wire.
I don’t look over my shoulder. I’ve done this long enough to know how to check a tail without tipping your hand.
Window glass. Car mirrors. Reflections in shop fronts.
Nothing.
Still, my stomach curls.
Because it doesn’t feel like someone’s following me.
It feels like someone’s tracking me.
The difference is thin, but real.
Following is about distance.
Tracking is about intention.
I make one sharp turn and duck into a narrow alley between a pawn shop and a shuttered bookstore. I lean into the shadows, phone in hand like I’m checking a message — while actually watching every passing movement across the mouth of the alley.
Two pedestrians. One cyclist. No one else.
But I still feel it.
Like a net waiting just above my head. Not dropped. Not tightened. Just… there.
Waiting.
After a minute, I step out and keep walking.
I cross the street without looking both ways.
Someone curses. A horn blares.
I don’t stop.
When I finally reach my block, I glance once — just once — at the intersection behind me.
There’s no one.
But if there were?
If someone was watching?
They’d see the exact moment I exhale.
They’d know I’m still trying to convince myself I’m safe.
And I hate that most of all.
I step into the building without looking up.
Second floor. No elevator. Paint peeling on the banister where someone scratched in initials years ago. Every step on the stairs makes the same groan, like the whole place is breathing through its bones.
I don’t trust the stillness here.
It’s too thin.
I get to my door, key already in hand. Three locks. I twist the first one hard, jiggle the second. The deadbolt takes two full turns before the latch gives. I push the door open fast.
My apartment greets me with the same dull, familiar ache at the sight of the two rooms, beige walls, and curtains that pretend to keep the world out. It’s the kind of space you rent when you don’t plan to stay long. Or when you need to disappear somewhere even the light forgets.
I re-lock all three bolts.