Chapter 4
Ivy
The main room is not what I expected. It’s clean — almost clinical.
Tall ceilings, exposed brick, frosted industrial windows that let in nothing but a gray wash of light.
One corner has a cot pushed against the wall, a folding chair, and a camping stove.
The opposite corner is a workstation — a laptop, three monitors and surveillance equipment arranged with the kind of precision that tells me this man doesn’t do anything carelessly.
No decorations, no personality — everything has a function and nothing has a feeling. It reminds me of my bedroom.
I scan the room the way I scan everything. One door — the reinforced one we came through. Windows too high and barred. Concrete floor, that makes my footsteps echo. The escape probability is low. I could have told him that before we walked in.
“Stand there.” He points to the center of the room, then turns his back to me and opens a metal cabinet.
His back. To me. The door is fifteen feet away.
My core tenses. My legs are ready. I could make it in four seconds, maybe three if the adrenaline kicks in properly. But then what — run into the Iron District in a nightgown with no phone, no money, no plan? Run back to my fishbowl and wait for Harlow’s hands to finish what they started?
Stay. See what happens next.
He sets items on the folding table. Zip-ties. Duct tape. A bottle of water and a protein bar. The water and the protein bar are interesting. You don’t feed someone you’re planning to kill.
He turns to face me. “I need to search you.”
“Search me for what? I was sleeping. Unless you think I keep a firearm in my nightgown.”
My pulse jumps and I know he sees it because his eyes drop to my throat for half a second. “Weapons. Phones. Trackers.” Each word comes with a step closer, smooth and practiced, until he’s close enough that one deep breath would press my chest against his.
“Take off the nightgown.”
My heart rate spikes. I can hear it, feel it, count it — one-twenty, maybe higher.
Men have looked at my body my entire life — Malachi’s business partners at galas, measuring my value per square inch; Harlow’s bloodshot gaze crawling over me like I was already his; the doctors Malachi hired to confirm I was still pristine enough to sell.
I’m not a doll. I’m not a doll. I’m not a —
“I’m not a doll.” It comes out colder than I mean it to, sharper, like a blade I didn’t know I’d drawn. “I’m not undressing because you told me to.”
He doesn’t flinch. “It wasn’t a request.”
We stare at each other — his black eyes against my gray ones, the space between us charged with something I don’t have a clinical term for. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Neither of us blinks.
“Fine,” he says, and the word sounds like it costs him something. “Do it slowly. I need to see your hands.”
That’s the most autonomy I’m going to get, and I almost respect him for it. “Turn around.”
“No.”
“If you touch me without permission, I’ll find a way to make you regret it.”
He gives me a small nod. Almost imperceptible. But it’s there.
My fingers find the silk straps. The material is cold, thin, and I can feel every thread of it as I slide each strap off my shoulders. The gown pools at my feet with a sound like a whisper.
I’m standing in front of a stranger in a mask, in nothing but black underwear, and I am choosing not to cover myself.
His jaw clenches under the mask, and his hand moves — up toward his face, his fingers tracing the line of his scar through the fabric. He doesn’t seem to notice he’s doing it. But I do.
His eyes travel over me, and it’s not the way men usually look.
Not the appraising sweep I’m used to, the one that assigns a price to every curve.
He’s reading me the way I read anatomy — taking in the sharp collarbones, the visible ribs, and the lean muscle I’ve hidden under couture for years.
I see a flicker of something, surprise maybe, when he registers the definition in my arms and core.
The ballerina frame that’s stronger than it looks.
Then his eyes find the bruises.
My upper arms. Fingerprint-shaped, purple fading to yellow — Malachi’s grip from the gala, and Harlow’s hand on my thigh, pressed hard enough to leave a shadow.
His hands fist at his sides. Not a subtle movement — his knuckles go white, and something shifts in his eyes that isn’t about the job. He’s angry, and it’s aimed at whoever left those marks, not at me.
Nobody has ever been angry about my bruises before. Not even me.
I know exactly when he sees the garter — or, better said, the scalpel that’s in the garter — because the air changes. I can feel his gaze land on it like a physical thing — the silk strap on my right thigh, delicate, black, and the glint of surgical steel tucked inside it.
“Stop.”
He moves fast. One hand grabs my wrist, the other goes straight to my thigh.
The shock is instant — worse than the zip-ties, worse than anything. His gloved hand on my bare skin sends something through my entire nervous system that I don’t have a name for. I gasp, involuntary and undeniable, and I hate myself for it.
My thighs tremble as the leather slides against my skin. He pulls the scalpel free with a swift, practiced motion — he knows blades — and holds it up to the light.
“What the fuck is this?”
I swallow, recompose. “A scalpel. Obviously.”
He turns it in his fingers, examining the edge, the handle, his grip professional and unhurried. He knows how to hold a blade. “I’m guessing you don’t carry it for first aid purposes.”
The composure cracks. Just for a second, just enough. “I carry it because it reminds me that I’m not helpless.” My voice breaks on the last word and I hate that too. “It’s the only thing that’s ever been mine.”
He’s silent, still holding my scalpel, still close enough that I can feel the heat coming off his body. The factory is cold, but he runs warm, like there’s a furnace somewhere under all that tactical black.
“Where did you get this?”
“I have a degree in biomedical illustration. Scalpels are tools of the trade.” I shrug. Half-truth. He knows it’s a half-truth — I can see it in the tilt of his head.
“You know how to use it.” Not a question.
“I know where every major artery is in the human body. The depth required to sever the femoral. The angle to puncture the carotid without hitting bone.” I straighten my spine and meet his eyes. “So yes. I know how to use it.”
“Why didn’t you use it on me?”
The question is genuine — no accusation, no mockery. He actually wants to know.
“Because you’re not the one I want to cut.”
Yet.
We’re standing too close again. I’m half-naked, he’s fully armed, and the power dynamic should be obvious. It isn’t. He has my weapon, but I have his attention, and I’m starting to think that’s worth more.
His forearms are visible below his rolled sleeves. My clinical mind activates before I can stop it — they are covered in blackout tattoos, dense and deliberate, and beneath the ink I can see the texture of older damage. The tattoos aren’t decoration. They’re camouflage.
“How many scars are under those tattoos?”
His whole body stiffens. “Enough.”
“Cigar burns? Impact trauma? Blade cuts?” I’m not mocking him — I’m diagnosing.
He just doesn’t know the difference yet.
“You favor your left shoulder — old rotator cuff damage, probably never properly rehabbed. And your gait has a micro-hesitation on the right side. Fractured femur, maybe age twelve or thirteen, based on the degree of compensation.”
He releases my wrist and steps back, and the distance feels violent, like he’s pulling himself away from something.
“Get dressed.” He picks up my nightgown from the floor and throws it at me.
I catch it and pull it on slowly, never breaking eye contact. “You didn’t answer my questions.”
Nothing.
“Who hurt you?”
His eyes are black holes. The question hangs in the air between us, and he doesn’t answer it, doesn’t move, doesn’t blink. Then he turns away and it feels like a door slamming shut.
“Sit. Don’t move. Don’t speak. Stop testing me.” He points at the cot.
I walk to it, slide down the wall, and sit on the edge with my hands folded in my lap. Obedient. On the surface.
Killian
I move to the workstation because I need something between us — a desk, monitors, the professional architecture of a job. I pull up the estate surveillance feed and wait for Malachi to notice his daughter is gone.
Her scalpel is still in my hand.
I should destroy it. Toss it in the river on the way back. That’s protocol — hostages don’t get to keep weapons and kidnappers don’t keep souvenirs.
I slip it into my pocket.
I can feel her watching me from the cot.
Her eyes tracing the same lines she traced on my forearms, cataloguing what’s underneath.
No one has ever looked at me like that — not at the ink or the muscle or the threat, but at the damage.
She looked at my scars and didn’t flinch.
She diagnosed them, the way you’d study a patient you were trying to understand rather than a monster you were trying to survive.
Who hurt you?
She asked me that, and I couldn’t answer, because the honest answer is too long and too ugly, and she’d look at me differently if she heard it. Or maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe that’s what scares me.
The monitor shows the estate, dark and still. Malachi hasn’t noticed yet — sleeping in his east wing while his daughter’s bed grows cold.
I adjust the angle of the screen so she can’t see it, but I can feel her eyes on me like heat through glass. My fingers find the scalpel in my pocket. Cold steel. Her pulse still ghosting on my glove.
Dawn is bleeding through the frosted windows — gray light, industrial and nothing warm about it. I have a job to do. A ransom to arrange. A timeline to follow.
But her question is still sitting in my chest like a blade she slid between my ribs without me noticing.
Who hurt you?
Everyone. The answer is everyone. And no one has ever asked.