Chapter 31 – Lydia - Thin Ice
I sit at the kitchen table yet again, hunched forward with my palms braced against wood that smells faintly of disinfectant and smoke.
The table’s wooden grain is scarred from years of use, faint knife-marks crisscrossing like old wounds.
Elias is at the counter, pouring coffee into chipped mugs, his shoulders square under a black shirt, every line of him stiff as a warning.
Mara hovers by the stove. Not fussing—she’s never been that type—but the way she moves a pan, sets bread out, it’s careful, precise.
Like she knows, feeding men with guns and bad tempers is a way of keeping blood off the floorboards.
She doesn’t incessantly talk just to fill up the quiet.
She doesn’t need to. Her presence smooths the edges without asking for thanks.
Silas leans in the doorway, one shoulder propped against the frame, arms crossed.
His shirt is fresh. It’s a new one some of Elias’s people brought in last night after the SUV limped back with its tires shredded, but it hangs wrinkled on him, collar open enough that I can see the line of his throat, the bruise blooming at his collarbone. My bruise.
He hasn’t said a word. Not since the kitchen last night. Not since I called him a monster, and he told me that made me safe.
My jaw aches from grinding it in my sleep, but I can’t stop watching him. The way his eyes skim every corner of the room. The way his gaze catches mine when I’m not careful, and for a second it feels like he’s pinning me the same way he did against the kitchen wall.
I look away first. Always.
“Eat.” Elias sets a plate in front of me, not asking, not gentle. Two slices of toast and fried eggs. His version of care.
“I’m not hungry,” I say.
“Eat anyway.” He doesn’t look at me when he says it, just pours his own coffee. Mara glances at him, then at me, something soft flickering across her face. She doesn’t step in. She knows better than to put herself between us.
Silas shifts, the scrape of his boot against tile loud in the quiet. He doesn’t move further in. He doesn’t need to. Just standing there, watching, is enough to keep the air tight.
The fork feels heavy when I pick it up. I stab a piece of egg, shove it past the knot in my throat. My jaw works harder than it should. I can feel Silas watching. I don’t give him the satisfaction of meeting his eyes.
“Plans,” Elias says, finally breaking the weight. He sits across from me, steam rising from his mug, his stare unblinking. “Drazen won’t let Bellamy slide. We hit him hard, he lost men, and he lost his leak. He’ll want to remind us who owns the city.”
I swallow hard, the food turning to ash in my mouth. My pulse stutters, not from Elias’s words but from the shift across the room—Silas finally pushing off the doorframe, stepping closer.
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. The room tilts when he moves.
Elias notices. Of course he does. His eyes flick to Silas, then back to me, and his smile comes thin across his face. “What is this, Ward? You trying to stare her into submission?”
Silas stops behind my chair, close enough that the heat from him seeps into my back. His voice scrapes low, even. “I don’t need to.”
The words drag across my skin, more intimate than a hand, more dangerous than any gun. My grip tightens on the fork until the metal bites my palm.
Elias’s smile fades. Mara touches his arm lightly, a small anchor against the storm I can feel swelling in the room. He doesn’t soften much, but enough to look back at her before he sets his mug down hard.
I keep my eyes on the plate, pretending the eggs taste like anything but ash.
And then Silas leans just enough for his sleeve to brush my shoulder when he straightens. Barely a touch. A passing shadow of one. But it jolts through me harder than any bullet last night.
Elias sees it. His stare slices to me, then to him. His tone is flat, dangerous. “You keep this up, Ward, and I’ll start to wonder if you’ve forgotten whose roof you’re standing under.”
Silas doesn’t blink. “I haven’t forgotten a thing.” He straightens, eyes cold, fixed on Elias. “The difference is, I don’t mistake obsession for ownership.”
The line cuts through the kitchen sharper than glass.
No one speaks after that. The toast goes cold. The coffee steams between us like smoke on the edge of a fire we’re all waiting to see ignite.
The air curdles in the silence that follows Silas’s words.
Elias leans back, one hand curling slow around his mug. Mara lays a piece of toast on his plate without looking at him, as if the act itself might stop the kitchen from detonating.
I force another bite of egg down, just to keep my hands busy. The scrape of the fork against porcelain sounds louder than it should. My stomach knots tight around every mouthful, but I don’t stop. I can’t give either of them the satisfaction of watching me break.
Then the burner on the counter buzzes. Not loudly. Just a sharp, insect hum that cuts through everything.
Elias's eyes flick to it. Mine do too. Silas doesn't move right away, but his body shifts like a shadow knows it's being watched.
The phone keeps buzzing. Steady. Inescapable.
"Yours," Elias says finally, his tone laced with contempt. "Answer it."
Silas steps forward, past my chair, and picks it up. His thumb swipes across the screen. "Ward."
I can't hear Naomi's voice clearly, but I recognize the sharp, clipped cadence even through the tinny speaker. She's pressing him again—harder this time, if the way his jaw locks is any indication.
"You'll get what you need when I'm ready to give it," Silas says, his voice stripped down to cold steel.
Whatever she fires back makes his shoulders go rigid. His free hand curls into a fist at his side.
"I told you what I told you," he says flatly. Then, after a beat: "I'm not asking for permission."
The line clicks dead.
Silas sets the phone down like it weighs more than the building. For a second no one moves.
Elias watches him with that predator's stillness, the kind that precedes violence. But he doesn't speak. Doesn't taunt. Whatever he saw in Silas's face was answer enough.
The silence stretches until Mara clears her throat and reaches for the coffee pot.
Then Silas mutters under his breath, but the silence in the room carries it anyway: "I'm done with them. Why can't she get that? I’m not theirs anymore."
“Bullshit,” Elias says, voice cracking like a whip. “You don’t get to just walk away from the Bureau. Not alive.”
The weight in the room presses tighter. Mara lays her hand on Elias’s arm again, a tether. He doesn’t shake her off, but he doesn’t look at her either. His eyes stay locked on Silas.
And me? I can’t seem to unclench my fists.
“Then whose are you?” I whisper.
Silas’s stare cuts to me. The whole room narrows down to that look. The way he pins me without touching, the way his voice drops to something stripped and raw.
“Yours.”
The word slams through me, harder than any bullet last night.
The word hangs there.
Yours.
Like a brand I didn’t ask for, pressed into my skin in front of Elias, in front of Mara, in a kitchen that smells of burnt toast and coffee strong enough to strip paint.
Elias doesn’t blink. He just sets his mug down hard enough that it cracks against the saucer. “Obsession talking again. Not allegiance. Don’t confuse the two.”
Mara doesn’t speak, but I see the way her hand curls tighter against his arm. Not stopping him. Just reminding him she’s there.
I push back from the table, the chair legs shrieking against the tile. My pulse thuds hard in my throat, too loud, too fast. “Obsession or not, I’m not a fucking prize to stake your claim on, Silas.”
He doesn’t move closer, doesn’t back off either. His stare doesn’t slip. “You think I don’t know that?”
“Do you?” My voice cuts cold, harder than I mean it to. I want it to hurt. “Because every time you say you’re not Bureau anymore, I hear it in the same tone Drazen used when he called me his leverage. Different leash. Same chain.”
That cracks something. He takes a step forward, his shadow spilling over the table. “I’m not Drazen.”
“No?” I’m on my feet now, shoulders squared, the fork still in my hand like a blade. “You torture men in basements, you lie to your handler, you drag me through bullets and then tell me I’m the only thing keeping you breathing. How the fuck is that different?”
His chest rises once. His voice lowers to something darker. “Because I don’t use pain to control you. I use it to protect you.”
The words make the air hum. My grip tightens on the fork. I want to laugh, want to spit at him, want to kiss him until I can’t breathe. The pull tears me in half.
Elias’s voice cuts through before I can move. “You hear yourself, Lydia? You’re already bending. He’s not protecting you; he’s binding you to him. And it’s the same story every time. Men who swear they’re different while they watch you bleed for them.”
I snap toward him. “And what are you, Elias? A savior? You used me as your shadow for years. You taught me to bleed quietly, prettily, so no one saw it. Don’t stand there and act like you don’t recognize the mirror.”
The silence after that lands like glass shattering. Mara’s eyes flick to Elias, her hand still tethered to him, and for the first time, I see something ripple across his face. Not shame. Not guilt. Something heavier. Something that looks a little too much like truth.
Silas closes the distance in two strides.
He doesn’t touch me—not yet, at least—but his presence scorches me down to the marrow.
His voice is stripped bare when he says, “You’re not leverage to me.
You’re not my mission. You are who I threw my mission aside for.
You’re what matters to me. You’re the only thing I won’t lose. ”
Each word drips fealty.
And I don’t know which part of me wants to shatter more: the part that knows I should walk away, or the part that wants to believe him.