Chapter Eight - Diana
The room they’ve given me is nicer than my apartment.
That’s the first thing I notice when Taras leaves me alone and I force myself to take inventory instead of screaming.
King bed with crisp white linens, armchair positioned near floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking grounds I can’t access, bathroom with heated floors.
It’s a cage dressed up as luxury, and the pretense makes it worse.
I find the camera within thirty seconds—positioned in the upper corner near the door, small black dome that tracks movement with a faint mechanical whir. Someone is watching. Always watching.
The closet holds clothing in my size, which means Felix had someone gather my measurements or went through my apartment thoroughly enough to know. Jeans, sweaters, dresses I’d never wear, underwear still in packaging. The invasion of it makes my skin crawl.
I try the bedroom door. Unlocked, opening onto a hallway where a guard stands stationed ten feet down. He doesn’t acknowledge me when I step out, but his posture shifts slightly.
I walk the opposite direction, testing boundaries. The hallway ends at a window overlooking the east gardens. I try the exterior door at the landing. Biometric scanner glows red when I touch it, denying access with a soft beep.
Trapped.
The reality settles slowly, each locked door and stationed guard reinforcing what Felix told me downstairs. I’m not chained or physically restrained, but I can’t leave, can’t call for help, can’t do anything except exist within the parameters he’s set.
I return to the bedroom and sit on the edge of the bed, trying to slow my breathing enough to think clearly.
My phone is gone. My laptop, my bag, everything I had in the office garage—all of it disappeared during the extraction. I have no way to contact anyone, no access to the files I’d been building, no evidence of what I found in Ethan’s research.
Everything I worked for over the past week is gone, and I’m sitting in a bedroom that costs more to furnish than I make in six months while armed men patrol outside my door.
The absurdity of it breaks something loose in my chest. I press my palms against my eyes and force the tears back through sheer stubbornness. Crying won’t help. Panic won’t help. I need to stay sharp, stay angry, and figure out how to survive this until I can find a way out.
A soft knock interrupts the spiral. The door opens without waiting for permission, and a woman in her fifties enters carrying a covered tray. She sets it on the small table near the window, offers a polite nod I don’t return, and leaves without speaking.
I wait until the door clicks shut before approaching the tray. Dinner—roasted chicken, vegetables, bread that smells freshly baked. My stomach clenches with hunger I’ve been ignoring since this morning, but I don’t touch it.
Eating feels like compliance. Like accepting the structure Felix has built around me and agreeing to exist within it peacefully.
I carry the tray to the door and leave it in the hallway, untouched.
***
The next morning, the tray is gone and a new one sits in its place. Breakfast this time—eggs, toast, fruit, coffee that smells strong enough to cut through the exhaustion clinging to my thoughts.
I leave it untouched too.
By afternoon, lightheadedness sets in. I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday in the office, before everything fell apart. My body is running on adrenaline and stubbornness, neither of which are sustainable fuel sources.
Giving in—sitting down at that table and eating the food they’ve provided—feels like surrender. I’m not ready to surrender.
I spend the day pacing the bedroom, testing the window latches (locked), examining the camera angle (comprehensive coverage with minimal blind spots), and mapping the guard rotation schedule through the crack beneath the door. They change every four hours, precise and professional.
The new dinner tray arrives at six. I leave it outside the door again.
By evening, my hands shake when I stand too quickly. The room tilts slightly when I move from the bed to the window. I know this is stupid, pointless resistance that only hurts me.
It’s the only control I have left.
The door opens without warning just after 8:00 p.m. Felix enters, his gaze sweeping the room before landing on me standing by the window.
He’s changed from the blood-streaked suit into dark slacks and a white shirt with sleeves rolled to his forearms, looking more like he belongs in a boardroom than overseeing my captivity.
His eyes shift to the untouched dinner tray sitting in the hallway, then back to me.
“You’re not eating.”
I don’t respond. I turn back to the window, staring at the tree line beyond the manicured grounds. The woods are dense enough that I can’t see through them, but somewhere beyond that perimeter is the road we took last night, the city, my life.
“This accomplishes nothing,” he says, his tone carrying less patience than it did yesterday. “Not eating doesn’t weaken me. It weakens you.”
“Good.” My voice comes out hoarse from disuse and dehydration. “Maybe I’ll pass out and you’ll have to explain to whoever’s watching those cameras why your hostage is unconscious.”
“You’re not a hostage.”
I turn to face him, anger flaring hot enough to cut through the exhaustion. “What would you call it?”
“Protected custody.”
“Fuck your semantics.” The curse feels sharp and satisfying in my mouth. “You kidnapped me, brought me here against my will, and won’t let me leave. Call it whatever sanitized bullshit makes you sleep better, but don’t insult me by pretending this is protection.”
His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly, the only crack in his controlled exterior. “You were being abducted by men who would have killed you after extracting whatever information you had. I prevented that.”
“Replaced it with a prettier cage.” I gesture around the room, my movements sharper than I intend. “You think I don’t see what this is? Comfortable furniture, nice clothing, meals delivered on schedule—it’s all just window dressing for imprisonment.”
“Then eat the food and be a comfortable prisoner.” He steps farther into the room, closing the distance between us with deliberate precision. “Starving yourself doesn’t change your circumstances. It only ensures you’ll be weak when opportunities arise.”
The phrasing catches me off guard. Opportunities, plural. As if he’s acknowledging escape routes might exist, or situations where I’d need physical strength to act.
“Did you kill my brother?”
The question comes out before I fully decide to ask it, raw and desperate. I’ve been circling it since I found his name in Ethan’s files, since the surveillance footage showed him watching me sleep, since he dragged me into this estate and made it clear I’m not leaving.
Felix goes still. Not the frozen stillness of surprise, but the controlled stillness of someone deciding how much truth to reveal.
“Answer me.” My voice cracks despite my effort to keep it steady. “Did you kill Ethan?”
“No.”
The word is simple, definitive, but his expression remains unreadable. I search his face for signs of deception—hesitation, deflection, the subtle tells that suggest lying—and find nothing conclusive.
“You knew he was going to die.” It’s not a question this time.
His silence stretches long enough to feel like confirmation. The air between us grows heavier, charged with something that makes my chest tighten painfully.
“You knew,” I repeat, and the composure I’ve been clinging to fractures. Tears gather despite every effort to hold them back, hot and unwelcome. “You knew Sartore was going to kill him and you did nothing.”
“I didn’t kill your brother.” His tone doesn’t soften, doesn’t offer comfort. “I knew he was investigating things that made him a liability, and I knew Sartore would handle it.”
“Handle it.” The euphemism is obscene. “You mean murder him and stage it as an accident.”
Felix doesn’t deny it. He stands there watching me with pale eyes that give away nothing while my entire foundation crumbles.
Ethan died because he asked the wrong questions. Because he traced money through shell corporations and maritime logistics and political channels that connected back to men who operate above consequences.
Felix—who’s been inside my apartment, who watched me sleep, who pulled me from that van with blood on his knuckles—knew it was going to happen and allowed it.
“Why?” The word barely makes it past the tightness in my throat. “Why didn’t you stop it?”
“Stopping it would have required going to war with Sartore over a journalist who wouldn’t have stopped digging even if we’d warned him.” His voice remains level, clinical. “Your brother made his choices. Those choices had consequences.”
The casual dismissal of Ethan’s life—reducing his death to consequences and choices—ignites something white-hot inside me. I cross the space between us and shove both hands against his chest, hard enough that he has to shift his stance.
“He was a person,” I spit out, shoving him again when he doesn’t move. “He had a family, a life, work that mattered—and you let them kill him because it was inconvenient to intervene.”
Felix catches my wrists before I can strike a third time, his grip firm but controlled. “Your brother was digging into operations he didn’t understand, threatening exposure that would have destabilized multiple territories. Sartore handled him. I didn’t stop it because the alternative was worse.”
“Worse than murder?” Tears are streaming now, hot and angry. “What could possibly be worse?”
“War.” He pulls me closer, our faces inches apart, his breath warm against my forehead. “Open conflict between Bratva and Sartore that would have killed dozens, destroyed carefully built protections, and ended with your brother dead anyway. At least this way the damage was contained.”
The logic is monstrous. I wrench against his hold, but his fingers tighten around my wrists.
“Let go of me.”
“Not until you stop trying to hurt yourself as much as me.” His voice drops lower, something shifting beneath the control.
“You want to be angry? Be angry. You want to hate me? I’ll give you plenty of reasons.
Destroying yourself to prove a point accomplishes nothing except making you easier to control. ”
The energy between us shifts abruptly—anger bleeding into something more volatile and dangerous.
We’re standing too close, breathing too hard, the heat from his body seeping through the thin fabric of my sweater.
His eyes drop briefly to my mouth before snapping back up, and I feel the moment awareness crashes into both of us simultaneously.
This isn’t just anger. It’s something darker, more complicated, edged with the kind of tension that makes my pulse spike for reasons that have nothing to do with fear.
His grip on my wrists loosens slightly, thumbs brushing against the inside of my forearms where my pulse hammers visibly. The touch is almost gentle, incongruous with everything else about this situation.
I should pull away. Should put distance between us before this tips into something I can’t take back.
I don’t move. Neither does he.
Our faces hover dangerously close, breath mingling in the shrinking space between us. I can see the faint stubble along his jaw, the barely perceptible tension in the muscle there, the way his pupils have dilated despite the bright overhead lighting.
Neither of us initiates the kiss. Or at least, someone does, but I don’t know who.
The moment stretches, taut and unbearable, until Felix releases my wrists and steps back deliberately. The loss of contact feels abrupt, leaving my skin cold where his hands were.
“Eat something,” he says, his voice rougher than before. “I’ll have fresh food sent up.”
He turns and walks toward the door without waiting for a response, movements controlled but less fluid than usual. At the threshold he pauses, one hand braced against the frame.
“Your brother’s death wasn’t random,” he says without turning around. “It wasn’t painless, but it was quick. Sartore gave him that much, at least.”
The door closes behind him with a soft click.
I stand alone in the center of the room, tears drying on my cheeks, pulse still racing from proximity that should never have happened. My wrists ache faintly where he held them, a phantom pressure that lingers even after he’s gone.
Twenty minutes later, a new tray arrives. I stare at it for a long time before finally sitting down and forcing myself to eat.