Chapter 31 – Lydia - Thin Ice #2
The room feels too tight. The walls lean in, the blinds slice the light into bars across the table, the smell of scorched toast thick enough to choke on.
Elias exhales, then pushes his mug away. “I’ve heard enough.” His gaze flicks between us, between Silas burning holes into me and me refusing to step back. “Sort this out or let it kill you. But don’t do it in my kitchen.”
He stands, chair scraping, and Mara moves with him. She doesn’t let go of his arm. She doesn’t even look at me. They both vanish down the hall, their footsteps fading into the safehouse’s thin bones.
The silence that follows is louder than the fight.
Silas is still too close. His shadow falls over mine, his hand flexing once at his side like he’s resisting the urge to grab me. I hold my ground, nails biting into my palms.
“You’re insane,” I say. It comes out thin, but it’s the only thing between me and the way my pulse hammers when his eyes pin me like that.
“Maybe.” His voice is rough, low, scraping through the air like gravel. “But I mean every word, all the same.”
I should walk away. I know I should. Every rational part of me screams it. But my body betrays me. It’s there, how he affects me: in the way my chest rises, the way my knees feel unsteady, the way I can’t stop looking at his mouth.
I shove him. Hard enough that my palm slams against his chest. “You think this is protection? You’re smothering me.”
His hand snaps to my wrist before I can pull back, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to anchor me. His stare drills into mine, blue-gray and burning. “I’m keeping you alive.”
“And if I don’t want to be kept?” My voice breaks against the question.
He doesn’t answer with words.
He drags me in and crushes his mouth against mine.
It’s not gentle. It’s not tender. It’s a war. His hand clamps my wrist above my head against the wall, his body pinning mine, the kiss brutal and desperate. My teeth clash against his, my gasp swallowed whole as his tongue pushes in, claiming, consuming.
I should fight him. I should claw at his chest, spit in his face. Instead, my free hand fists in his shirt, dragging him closer, pulling instead of pushing. Rage and hunger bleed into each other until I can’t tell which is which.
When I finally tear free, my lips are swollen, my chest heaving. I shove him again, harder this time. He lets me, his hand falling away, his jaw clenched tight enough to crack.
“I should hate you,” I whisper, “but I don’t even know if I want to.”
His answer is a growl, stripped bare. “You’ll figure it out. But either way, you’re mine.”
The air between us sparks, hot and burning, neither of us moving, neither of us willing to give the other ground.
Before I can give a response. Elias steps back in, Mara at his shoulder, her hand brushing the frame like she’s anchoring him there. She gives me a small look—the kind that says she’d rather not hear what’s about to happen—then moves to the counter, tugging down the bag she left earlier.
Elias stays planted. Watching.
“You two look like you’re chewing glass,” he says, his voice flat. “Something I should know?”
My eyes flick to him, but I say nothing.
Silas gives him the look that screams this is none of your business.
Elias finally moves when he sees we’re not ready to spill, crossing to the table, leaning his weight against the back of a chair. His eyes are knives.
For a second, the room holds its breath. Mara keeps her back to us, methodical in the way she folds the paper bag at the counter, but her shoulders are tight.
Silas leans forward, eyes pinned on me, not Elias. “I’ve said it exactly as it is. Believe me, or don’t.”
And that’s the problem: I don’t know if I believe him. I don’t know if I want to.
Silas doesn’t move. He doesn’t blink. The words hang between us, thick as smoke.
I want to spit that I see through him. That the Bureau still has him by the throat, no matter what he says. But before I can, Elias drags a folded map onto the table and slaps it flat.
The sound breaks the moment, scattering the charge that was building.
“Enough,” he says. “We’re not wasting time gnawing on each other. Drazen’s already circling. And this,” he jabs a finger down at the grainy aerial photo, “is where we hit.”
I lean forward, palms braced against the edge of the table, my pulse catching on the name. Petrov Station isn’t just a building. It’s a cage. I know that better than anyone. Drazen made me clean its floors once, walk those halls with files in my hands I wasn’t allowed to open.
“I’m going,” I say.
Elias’s eyes cut up, cold and precise.. “You’re not.”
“I am,” I bite back. “If this is my cage, then I should also have a say.”
The silence stretches. Elias’s throat works, his stare narrowing.
And then Silas speaks, his voice steady but threaded with iron. “She goes.”
My head jerks toward him. He doesn’t even look at me. His eyes are locked on Elias, his shoulders squared like he’s ready for a fight. “She knows that place better than any of us. She’s not baggage; she’s the blade.”
The way he says it is wrong. It’s not defense. It’s possession. Like my choice only counts because he’s already claimed it.
Elias notices too. His silence is heavier than his words.
The maps cover the table in shadows and ink, every line like a scar. Elias taps out routes, points of entry, fallback positions, his voice clipped, efficient. Jax and Ren are names in the margins, their usefulness already stretched thin.
I force myself to focus, but my skin tingles when Silas shifts beside me, when his hand brushes mine, his thumb lingers against my knuckle, sending heat that’s hot enough to make me falter on the next breath.
I glance up, catch him looking at me like the whole damn room doesn’t exist. My stomach knots hard. I pull my hand back, but too late; Elias has already seen it. He doesn’t comment, but the weight in his stare says enough.
Mara finally breaks the tension, her voice softer than the scrape of paper. “Celeste called earlier. She and Alec are engaged.”
The words feel like they come from another world. Light and distant, untouchable. For a moment the room softens, edges blurring with something almost warm.
I picture Celeste’s bold smile, Alec’s steady hands, the life they built out of something cleaner than this. The contrast twists deep in my chest: envy burning and alive, and beneath it, a strange warmth I can’t quite name.
“That’s lovely,” I hear myself say, though the words taste like rust.
Mara smiles faintly, but her eyes flick between me and Elias, then me and Silas. Like she sees the storm brewing and knows better than to step closer.
The maps sit between us like a loaded gun. Drazen’s name bleeding across the paper. And all I can feel is the weight of Silas’s touch still ghosting across my hand.
Elias lays out fallback routes; Silas keeps too close. The maps are still spread across the table when Elias calls it done. “We strike by 4pm, when they least expect it.” And just like that, he steps out.
The house settles. But the air doesn’t.
I’m left with the ache of Silas’s stare burning into me, the feel of his thumb still pressed to my knuckle long after it’s gone. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand him.
I leave the kitchen first, climbing the narrow staircase to the spare rooms above. The walls are old plaster, cracked and painted over too many times, blinds drawn low against the street. The air smells faintly of dust and old wood, the kind of place where nothing ever really gets clean.
I slam the door shut behind me, not because I think it’ll keep him out, but because I want him to know I’m done pretending.
It doesn’t even take a minute. His shadow breaks across the gap under the door, then the handle turns, and he’s inside like it was never locked.
“You want to know the simple truth? You scare me more than Drazen ever has.” The words cut out of me before he could speak. My hands are fists at my sides, nails digging half-moons into my palms. “And I don’t know what that makes me.”
His expression darkens, his eyes catching mine like a trap snapping shut. He steps forward, closing the gap, his voice rough enough to scrape bone. “It makes you exactly where you need to be.”
I should laugh. I should spit in his face. But instead, I shift back into the dresser, the wood biting into the backs of my thighs. My pulse hammers against my throat, too loud, too frantic. He sees it. He always sees it.
He plants his hands on either side of me, boxing me in. The weight of him crowds every inch of the room, every inch of me.
“You think I didn’t see it?” His mouth is near my ear, words jagged. “The way you looked at me in the basement. Like you were waiting for me to break. Like you wanted to know how far I’d go.”
My chest heaves, fury and hunger twisting until I can’t tell one from the other. “I wanted to know if there was anything human left in you.”
His laugh is humorless. “And what if there isn’t?”
The answer tears out of me in motion instead of words. I grab his collar and claim his mouth in a kiss. It’s not gentle. It’s punishment, teeth and fury. He takes it, deepens it, his tongue forcing mine open, his grip snapping around my wrists to pin them above my head.
The kiss burns like fire pressed to skin. My spine arches against the dresser, my wrists straining against his hold, but I don’t stop. I don’t want to. Every part of me aches with the wrongness of it, and with the need that coils deeper every second.
“Say it,” he growls against my mouth. “Say you need me.”
I bite his lip hard enough to taste blood. “I hate you.”
His eyes blaze, his body grinding closer, pinning me harder. “Then hate me louder.”
And when his mouth crushes mine again, I do.
His mouth devours mine until my lungs feel starved, until I can’t tell where fury ends and hunger begins. His grip on my wrists tightens, the dresser rattling against the wall when I arch against it. My pulse is a war drum in my throat, my body screaming even as my mind claws at reason.