8. Lena
Lena
My heart is hammering long after they leave the room.
I don’t move at first. I just stand there, staring at the door, my arms wrapped tightly around myself because I can’t seem to stop shaking. Stepping between them felt insane even while I was doing it. One wrong move, one wrong word, and I’m not sure either of them would have stopped in time.
I was scared. Terrified, actually.
But fear doesn’t mean I get to be stupid. That much is already clear.
I force myself to breathe slower, to think past the panic, to sort through what just happened instead of letting it crush me.
Havoc is dangerous. That’s obvious. Not just dangerous in the normal way men like him are dangerous, but in a stranger way.
There’s something wrong with him. Something loose in his head.
He smiles at the wrong moments. He says awful things like they’re jokes.
He looks amused when he should look angry, and calm when he should look guilty.
He feels deranged. Almost. And that should make this simple. Stay away from him. Avoid him. Never be alone with him again.
Except it isn’t simple, because I’m not stupid, and I saw the way he looked at me.
He wants me. That much is obvious too.
And if Havoc wants me, maybe that’s useful. Maybe I can use that. Maybe attraction is the one thing that might make him careless around me, softer with me, easier to read. Easier to steer.
The thought makes my stomach twist. Because using him means getting close to him, and getting close to him feels a lot like stepping toward the edge of something steep and black and endless. Still, it might be better than having nothing.
Voices break through the silence outside. They didn’t go far. I turn my head toward the door, holding my breath without meaning to.
“I know what you were doing with her.”
Knox. His voice is lower now, rougher through the wall, but I’d know it anyway.
Havoc answers, too quiet for a second, and I miss the first few words.
Then his voice gets clearer, lazy and wicked and completely unashamed.
“I had her against the window,” he says, each word clear enough to make me want to disappear.
“Bared to me. Fingers inside her. Tasting her while she came apart for me. Is that enough detail for you, or should I keep going?”
I clap a hand over my mouth.
Oh my God.
My whole face burns. I can feel it, the heat climbing from my neck to my cheeks, and I take an instinctive step back from the door like that will somehow make it less humiliating to hear.
Outside, Knox swears under his breath, and the sound of it sends something through me. Anger, embarrassment, something else I don’t want to name.
Havoc laughs softly. I can picture it without seeing him, that maddening smile on his face, that look like he enjoys every second of making things worse. “You asked,” he says.
“You think this is funny?” Knox snaps.
“I think,” Havoc says, voice turning cooler, “that you care a lot more than you should.”
Silence.
Heavy silence.
My pulse kicks harder. Because I hear it too now, the thing under the fight. Not just anger. Not just Knox being furious that Havoc is reckless or irresponsible or whatever excuse he keeps trying to sell himself.
Something else. Something uglier.
I inch closer to the door again before I can stop myself.
Knox says something lower this time, too muffled to make out, and Havoc answers with a short laugh.
I shut my eyes. I should move away. I should stop listening, but I don’t.
Because this matters. Because whatever is happening between them matters.
Because if Havoc keeps pushing Knox like this, and Knox keeps reacting, then that’s something I need to understand.
A weakness. A fracture. A place to press if I have to.
And I may have to.
Havoc’s voice drops lower, but I still catch it. “She liked it.”
My eyes fly open as Knox says something savage under his breath.
I step back again, flustered and furious now, hugging myself tighter because I don’t know what to do with the mess inside me.
He has no right to say things like that out loud.
No right to turn what happened into some weapon in his fight with Knox.
But part of what makes it unbearable is that he’s not entirely wrong, and that only makes the shame worse.
Outside, Knox says, “Stay away from her.”
That freezes me.
Then Havoc laughs. “No.”
For a few more seconds, I keep standing there with my hand pressed to my mouth, listening. Their voices get lower. More distant, moving from the door.
They’re leaving. Or at least they’re leaving me alone for now.
I swallow hard and force myself to move. My legs feel weak, unsteady under me, but I make myself cross the room. Every beat of my heart feels too loud, too hard, like it might give me away all by itself.
I close my hand around the knob, more out of instinct than hope. I expect it to be locked, but it isn’t. The handle turns easily in my grip.
For a second I just stare at it, too surprised to breathe. They left it open. In the middle of their argument, in all that anger and distraction, they left the door open.
My pulse slams harder.
I crack the door and peer out first, every nerve in my body straining.
The hallway beyond is dim and long, lit by low wall sconces that cast more shadow than light.
The floor is dark wood, old enough to groan in places, and the walls are painted a deep charcoal that makes the whole corridor feel narrower than it probably is.
Framed pictures hang at uneven intervals, but I can’t make out much beyond dark shapes and gold edges in the half-light.
A thin runner stretches down the middle of the floor, muffling sound, and the air smells faintly of smoke, old polish, and something colder underneath, like stone and dust.
I step out slowly, easing the door shut behind me without letting it click. My heart is beating so hard it makes me dizzy. I force myself to listen.
Nothing.
Then, faintly, from farther down the hall, the last edge of their voices.
To the left, the hallway stretches toward a wider pool of light, and I catch the tail end of movement there, just enough to know they went that way. Both of them.
I stare after them for one long second, my mind racing.
Follow them and risk walking straight into whatever they’re doing. Or go the other way.
Right. I turn in the opposite direction.
The right side of the hall looks darker, quieter. Fewer lights. A bend farther down that hides whatever comes next. My chest tightens, but I start moving anyway, one careful step after another, keeping close to the wall, trying not to breathe too loudly.
Every instinct I have is screaming at me to run, but I don’t. Not yet.
Running without knowing where I am could be worse.
So I go right, heart hammering, senses stretched thin, disappearing into the dim hallway before either of them can come back and realize the door was never locked at all.
The corridor seems to stretch forever, dim and silent, every closed door looking exactly like the last. The walls are dark, the air stale, and the place feels wrong in a way I can’t explain.
Not just unfamiliar. Wrong. Like the whole house was built to confuse you, to turn you around until you stop knowing where safety is.
My heartbeat won’t slow down. It pounds against my ribs so hard it makes me feel sick.
At the very end of the hall, I find another door. Dark wood. Brass handle. Closed. I grab the knob and push inside.
At first, I don’t understand what I’m seeing.
The room is lit low, with candles burning in corners and one lamp throwing a pool of amber over the floor.
It looks almost like a private chapel, if a chapel could be stripped down and made unsettling.
There’s a bench near the wall. A small table.
Heavy curtains pulled shut. The air smells like wax and sweat and something faintly metallic.
And then my eyes land on the man in the middle of the room.
Vale.
His back is to me. His shirt is open, hanging loose, and I can see the skin of his back, marked red. In his hand is a leather strap.
For one horrible second, I just stare.
Then he brings the strap down across his own back.
I stop breathing. My stomach turns so hard I nearly gag.
A chill rushes over me, but at the same time my face burns.
It feels too intimate, too disturbing, like I’ve walked in on something I was never meant to see.
Something private and ugly and full of pain.
My skin crawls. My mind tries to reject it, to tell me I’m seeing it wrong, but there’s no other way to understand it.
He’s doing this to himself.
Why?
The question hits me and makes everything worse.
Because I don’t want to know the answer. Because no answer is going to make this place feel less twisted. Because every single thing I learn here just proves I’m deeper in something rotten than I realized.
I take a step back, ready to get out before he notices me, but my sock catches slightly on the floor. The smallest sound.
Vale stills. The strap hangs at his side. Slowly, he turns.
The moment he sees me, something changes in his face. He looks stunned for a second, like he can’t believe I’m there, and then it gives way to something heavier. Shame, maybe. Regret. I can’t tell. I don’t want to. I grip the doorknob so tightly my fingers ache.
He drops the strap. “I’m sorry,” he says. His voice is rough, low, like he hasn’t spoken in a while. “For before. I’m sorry.”
I can’t answer. I’m too busy trying to make sense of the marks on his back, the look on his face, the fact that this man, who always seems so composed, so controlled, was standing here hurting himself in the dark like some kind of punishment would fix whatever he’s done.
He takes a step toward me, and I flinch hard before I can stop it.
He freezes at once. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says.
That should help.
It doesn’t.
Because nothing about this is helping. Nothing about this is normal. I don’t know what kind of apology this is, or what he thinks it changes, or why it feels like I’ve just walked into the middle of a wound I don’t understand.
“That’s what everyone keeps telling me.”
I hate that part of me reacts to the apology at all. Hate that he sounds sincere. Hate that he looks like he means it.
“I need to go,” I whisper.
His gaze moves to the doorway behind me, then back to my face. He seems to be thinking fast, measuring something. “You shouldn’t be here alone.”
A disbelieving laugh escapes me.
Of all the things to say.
His face tightens. “That came out wrong.”
Everything here is wrong.
He comes a little closer, slow enough that I know he’s trying not to frighten me, but it doesn’t matter. Every instinct in my body is screaming now. I don’t know if I’m more afraid because of what I saw, or because some part of me can see that whatever is happening in his head right now is real.
“I was trying to keep my distance,” he says quietly. “That was a mistake.”
Before I can respond, before I can decide whether to run past him or shut the door in his face, footsteps sound in the hall.
Then the door opens wider, and Havoc appears. He looks from me to Vale in a single sweep, taking in everything. Me standing frozen by the door. Vale half-dressed. The strap on the floor. The silence in the room.
His mouth curves slowly. “Well,” he says, “this is interesting.”
I turn the second Havoc appears. No thinking. No planning. Just instinct.
Run.
I shove past the doorframe, aiming for the hallway, but I don’t even make it two steps.
Havoc catches me like it’s nothing. One second I’m moving, the next his arm wraps around me from behind, solid and unyielding, and I’m lifted off the ground.
A startled sound escapes me as my feet leave the floor, my balance gone instantly.
“Not happening,” he murmurs.
His grip is firm, effortless. Like I weigh nothing at all.
The shock hits first. Then something else, something I don’t want to name. The way he holds me, the sheer ease of it, the control in it… it sends a strange heat through me that clashes violently with the fear.
I hate that my body reacts at all.
“You—put me down,” I say, breathless, trying to twist free.
It doesn’t work. If anything, it only makes him tighten his hold slightly, adjusting his grip like I’m just a restless thing he needs to steady.
He leans in closer, his voice dropping near my ear. “You know,” he says softly, his breath warm against my neck, “that just turns me on.”
I freeze for a second.
Then he adds, softer, “The running.”
My face burns. I stop struggling, not because I want to, but because I can feel how pointless it is. He’s too strong, too steady, too completely in control of the situation. Fighting him like this only makes me more aware of it.
And somehow, that awareness makes everything more intense.
He shifts me in his arms and turns back toward the hallway like this is the most natural thing in the world, carrying me as if I belong there, like I don’t get a say in it.
“You can’t leave,” he says. The words aren’t threatening, just certain.
I stop struggling, not because I’ve given up, but because I’m thinking. Because fighting him like this isn’t going to work, and I already know it. Because I need to be smarter than this. Because if I want any kind of control here, I need to pick my moments better.
His arm is still around me, solid and steady, and I can feel the strength in it without him even trying. Every step he takes is easy, unhurried, like he’s completely in control of everything around him.
When we reach the door, he doesn’t set me down right away. Just pauses at the threshold for a second, like he’s considering something, then finally lowers me back onto my feet.
But he stays close. Too close. Like he hasn’t decided yet whether I’m allowed space.
His eyes are on me, that same maddening look in them, amused and intent all at once.
“Next time,” he says lightly, “try harder.”
I lift my chin, even though my pulse is still racing. “There won’t be a next time.”
He smiles.
Like he doesn’t believe me at all.