Chapter 37
T he whiskey burns its way down my throat—smooth and unforgiving. The glass is heavy in my grip, the amber liquid catching the dim glow of the penthouse.
I shouldn’t be drinking.
Shouldn’t be thinking about Elena.
But I am.
The way she looked at me before she left. The haunted look in her eyes. The sting of her slap.
Liar. Traitor. Whore.
I grit my teeth, my jaw tightening as I tip the glass back again, letting the alcohol drown out the fucking mess in my head. I should be thinking about the merger, about my next move.
But all I can think about is her.
The way she felt under my hands.
The way she tasted.
The way she looked at me like I was the only man who could touch her. Like she trusted me. Wanted me.
God, it felt so fucking real.
And now she’s gone.
A muscle ticks in my jaw as I grip the edge of the counter, my knuckles going white. She played me. I should have known better. This is exactly why I don’t do relationships.
Why the list of people I trust has about three names on it.
For the second time today, the penthouse doors explode open, slamming against the walls hard enough to rattle the fucking chandelier.
The hit comes fast and brutal.
Lucian’s fist connects, snapping my head to the side—the sharp crack of bone against bone ringing in my ears.
I barely feel it. Because I want this fight.
I want somewhere to put the fucking pain.
I slam into him, grappling, my fist driving into his ribs. Lucian grunts, but he doesn’t slow down. He catches my collar, twisting as he shoves me back.
My spine hits the wall with a thud, drywall cracking beneath the force.
Lucian’s hand fists my shirt, his eyes dark. Livid.
"What the fuck did you do to my employee?" he snarls, his voice low and deadly.
I snarl right back.
"Your employee?" I shove against him, dislodging his grip, throwing him back just enough to swing again. My fist catches his jaw, but he barely flinches.
“She’s a fucking liar. A traitor. A gold-digging slut who played us all.”
Lucian’s fist collides with my ribs, stealing my breath.
“Watch your fucking mouth about her.”
He swings again.
I meet him halfway.
Fists fly.
Glass shatters.
The rage is animalistic, raw, spiraling out of control—neither of us backing down.
The elevator doors slide open, and I hear the familiar voice of my friend ring out across the chaos.
“Jesus Christ—break it up!” Marcus growls, James right behind him.
Arms pull at me, wrenching me backward as Lucian is hauled away.
We’re both breathing hard. Seething.
James holds a hand to Lucian’s chest, keeping him at bay. “Did you fucking hit her?” Lucian spits out, rage in his eyes.
Marcus has me pinned against the wall, his forearm pressed against my throat, fisting my torn shirt.
“Fuck you, Lucian.” I spit back at the same time before I answer his stupid fucking accusation. “I would never.”
Lucian wipes blood from his mouth, spits onto my floor like he doesn’t give a shit. “Yeah, that’s not what my guys said it looked like.”
We are two seconds from tearing each other apart again.
“Are you fucking working with them too?” My voice is hoarse, my chest heaving as I push against Marcus. My vision tunnels in on Lucian, still fucking furious. “You, Elena, and Adrian?”
Lucian stills.
Then he laughs.
A low, dark, menacing sound that slides under my skin like a blade.
“You stupid fucking asshole.” He shakes his head, spitting more blood onto the floor. “You mean the guy who set her up to be gang-raped when she was eighteen?”
Silence explodes across the room, and I swear to God the entire building shifts.
Marcus and James both go rigid.
Something inside me goes cold, freezing me in place.
Lucian's eyes are full of disgust. Fury still vibrates through his frame, but it’s colder now. Controlled.
He takes a step forward, his voice dropping into something even more lethal.
"The only involvement I want with that prick is to watch the light leave his eyes when I fucking strangle him to death."
His words sink deep, settling in a place that makes my stomach twist, my pulse hammer.
“What the fuck happened with my contract, Wolfe?”
“Damien,” Marcus cuts in. “We were wrong, Damien.” His hold on me tightens. His voice breaks, raw with conviction.
“We were so fucking wrong.”
The tension in the room doesn’t break. It doesn’t dissipate.
It tightens, winding like a noose, constricting everything in its grip.
Marcus still has me pinned against the wall, his grip unrelenting, his forearm pressing into my chest.
He’s breathing hard, his jaw clenched so tight it looks like his teeth might crack.
I stare at my old friend like the explanation will be right there in his eyes.
Lucian hasn’t moved either. His fists remain at his sides, still coiled, still ready—like a predator calculating its next strike.
James lingers just in front of Lucian. His posture rigid, his normally cool composure shattered. His eyes burn with something dangerously close to fury—at me.
Their stares weigh down on me like lead, suffocating in a way the fight wasn’t.
The adrenaline is still there, thrumming beneath my skin.
But it no longer has an outlet.
Lucian exhales sharply, dragging a hand through his already-mussed hair, like even he’s barely keeping himself in check.
His voice is rough when he finally speaks.
“Sit the fuck down.”
He doesn’t wait for compliance, pulling a barstool out harshly—like I’m nothing more than an irritation.
I don’t move at first.
Because I can’t.
My muscles are still locked, my breath coming sharp and uneven, my mind trying to make sense of the last five minutes.
Marcus stays close by, still not trusting that I won’t launch myself at Lucian. James walks over broken glass back to the elevator and picks up Marcus’s laptop bag from the floor.
Lucian pours four glasses of whiskey, setting them down with deliberate force, the crystal ringing against the marble counter.
He slides one toward me.
Lucian throws his liquor back in one go and rolls his shoulders. Dragging in a slow, measured breath, he keeps his steely eyes firm on me as he speaks.
“She was an orphan.”
“I know that.” I interject.
“Shut the fuck up and listen, Wolfe.”
Lucian bites back, pouring another whiskey and pushing mine closer to me.
I finally gulp it down and slam the crystal glass onto the counter.
“Elena St. James.” He pauses. “Not her real name. But they didn’t know who she was. All the unidentified kids are named after the orphanage. The only name she had to claim when she left its walls behind.”
It suddenly strikes me why she knew so much about the orphanage. Claiming she volunteered there. Margo’s contributions.
Because that was fucking real.
Lucian keeps going, oblivious to the revelation hitting me like a freight train.
“She lived there until she had to leave on her eighteenth birthday. Got a job at a strip club, living with a few of the other girls. She met Adrian there. He was her first real relationship. A connection she thought was something solid. Something secure.”
I already fucking hate this.
That video of the two of them on the beach—she couldn’t have been any older than eighteen, nineteen. Already having to fucking survive by herself, and she crosses paths with a snake.
“Adrian made a deal with some guys who were a bigger deal than he anticipated. They wanted Elena as part of it. He thought he could outsmart them. He fucked up, and they came to collect.”
Lucian pauses, the weight of the next part already bearing down upon the room.
“Five of them.”
Jesus.
“She never even fucking knew. Just walked into that club one night, expecting the usual—a VIP dance—and suddenly, her whole world was gone.”
Lucian’s voice is calm. Too calm.
But beneath it, there’s something sharp. Something lethal.
“She told me Adrian found her bleeding on the bathroom floor of the club. Told her to clean up. She smelled like a whore.”
I flinch at this part.
My own voice—calling her the same fucking thing—slams into my chest, stealing the air from my lungs.
I have to brace myself against the counter.
“She went to the hospital. Filed a police report. But what did that matter? The men who took her had connections. She had nothing. No one. A stripper reporting a sex crime? Who the fuck would care? So she did the only thing she could.”
Lucian leans forward, bracing his hands on the counter—a mirror of my stance.
“She changed her name. Started over. Some old guy gave her a job at a bakery. She put herself through school.” His gaze flickers up, locking onto mine with something that burns. “Eventually, she joined The Ledger.”
A bitter taste crawls up the back of my throat.
Every breath feels too shallow. Too fucking insufficient.
Five.
Something tightens in my chest, and I rub my sternum, trying to stop the images my imagination is conjuring up.
Elena fighting for her life. Those men—taking her. Breaking her.
Her body—broken and bleeding on a floor. Makeup streaming down her face.
She probably couldn’t call out for help. Her voice too hoarse.
Then that fucking waste of life—Adrian. Finding her. Leaving her.
I grit my teeth so hard I think I’ll hear them crack.
“I’ll fucking kill them.”
I don’t even realize I said it out loud until Lucian’s lips curl into a slow, dark smile.
A predator’s smile.
The kind that means the killing’s already been done.
“You’re a few years too late for that, buddy.”
His voice is calm. Almost indifferent.
But the look in his eyes is anything but.
Lucian found them. All of them.
Tracked them down one by one. Stacked their bodies in the middle of that club where they took everything from her.
Tied the owner to a chair and doused the whole fucking place in gasoline.
Then listened to him scream as he threw a match and watched it burn.
Walked out. Never looked back.
His voice remains steady, void of regret. “I wanted to kill Adrian next.”
He exhales slowly, fingers tapping once against the counter.
“But Elena begged me not to.”
The words knock the wind out of me.
Lucian wanted Adrian dead. So do I. So would any man with a shred of fucking decency.
But Elena stopped him.
Lucian doesn’t stop for anyone.
He can see the question brewing in my mind. Why?
“Said it would come back on her.” His jaw flexes. “His family had money. She just wanted to move on.”
The bitter taste in my mouth worsens.
She was eighteen when it happened. Barely out of that orphanage. Barely had a chance to build anything for herself before it was ripped away.
And I was fucking blind. Selfish.
I picture the way she looked at me this afternoon—the betrayal in her eyes. The way her voice cracked when she tried to defend herself.
I called her a liar. A manipulator. A whore.
I threw her out.
The world tilts again as Lucian keeps talking.
“You need to know, Wolfe—Elena called me the second Adrian approached her,” he says, his voice quieter now. “That’s protocol. That’s what she’s supposed to do.”
Lucian drags a hand down his face, looking wrecked in a way I’ve never seen before.
Because this was personal.
Because Elena isn’t just some contract to him.
She’s one of his girls.
She’s his responsibility.
“So if you want to be pissed at someone, Wolfe,” he says finally, meeting my gaze, “you can hate me. I already hate myself because I wasn’t there when she needed me.”
His words land like a punch to the gut.
Lucian isn’t making excuses. He’s not dodging blame. He’s owning it.
Because he wasn’t there.
And I?
I was.
I was right fucking there. And I failed her too.
“Another Ledger girl was taken by her contract. I had to find her before it was too late. I—” Lucian swallows hard. “I should have called someone else in to help Elena. I shouldn’t have fucking waited until she felt like she was in danger. She called in for us to bail her out of here because it wasn’t safe anymore.”
The breath in my chest stills.
“Why didn’t she come to me if she wasn’t safe? I would have fucking done anything to protect her.”
“She did.”
Marcus finally speaks, and my head snaps to him.
“What?”
“She did come to you.”
He blinks slowly, looking exhausted.
“Your security threw her out of the fucking building,” James adds.
He’s fuming at the entire situation.
I finally sit down on the barstool.
My mind is rushing with a million thoughts, but it’s like I can’t hear a single one.
“It’s why we came over here.”
Marcus opens his laptop bag, pulling out his computer. “Watch. Everything.”
The series of events guts me.
Elena leaves the cafe, fire in her eyes.
Adrian follows her, and I watch her call someone.
“She called the car service to bring her to the office,” Marcus fills in, his tone grim. It’s clear he’s looked into every minute of what happened—just like I asked him to do.
Adrian chases her, and we all tense when he slams her into the wall by her hair.
Her phone clatters across the sidewalk, away from her, and I feel like I’m going to vomit.
She fights back.
When he slaps her, my entire world turns red.
“I’m going to kill that fucking asshole,” Lucian grits out, and I agree with the sentiment.
Elena knees him, runs away—and I stare at her phone, still on the sidewalk.
I know what happens before I watch it.
The pit in my stomach plummets deeper.
Adrian picks it up and chases after her again.
Marcus clicks another video. The Blackstone valet.
The driver greets her, notices Adrian, and helps her into the car before pulling away.
That smug fucking bastard watches as the car drives right past him.
Another video is opened. Wolfe Industries lobby.
Elena nearly runs inside. The seventieth-floor reception.
The guard calls her over, and the shattered look of defeat on her beautiful face when she is handed the phone?—
“She called in a Code Red-One,” Lucian adds, his voice quieter now. “Gave your penthouse address. That’s a companion’s last resort. It means they’re in danger and need an immediate extract.”
Everything clicks into place.
And I want to throw myself off this building.
She never betrayed me.
She was trying to protect me.
“What was in the envelope she gave to Adrian?”
Lucian snorts an angry laugh through his nose. “That asshole sent her pictures of her rape from the strip club. He was going to blackmail her when she refused to help him.”
My throat closes, and black dots form on the edges of my vision.
My own words, screamed at her earlier, haunt me.
I saw the pictures, Elena.
“I’m going to be sick.”
I can’t sit here anymore.
The stool scrapes across the floor as I stand up—too fast.
The air in the penthouse feels thick. Suffocating.
I press my fingers against my temples, trying to fight off the nausea rolling through me.
But it’s there—deep and gnawing.
In my mind, I replay every second with her this afternoon.
What I said to her.
Each word slicing into her.
The look in her eyes.
Fuck.
That might be the worst part.
I was too angry to see it then, but replaying it now, I see the fresh cut on her lip.
Her red cheek.
The way she grimaced when I grabbed her.
It wasn’t guilt.
It was fear.
It was pain.
Because Adrian had already bruised that same fucking wrist?—
Then I did too.
He treated her like a whore.
And I called her one.
My grip tightens around the edge of the counter, my knuckles going white.
I failed her.
Lucian failed her.
This whole fucking world has done nothing but fail her.
And for the first time, I understand.
Why she keeps people at a distance.
Why she doesn’t ask for help.
Why she built herself into a woman who doesn’t need saving.
Because the only person who hasn’t let her down—is herself.
My voice is hoarse when I finally speak.
“Where is she?”
Lucian exhales sharply, dragging a hand through his hair.
The rage simmering beneath his skin has lessened, but it’s still there.
Still directed at me.
“I don’t know.” His voice is clipped. “Her best friend knows but isn’t talking.”
He levels me with a look that fucking burns.
“She needs time, Wolfe.”
He reaches into his pocket and tosses something onto the counter.
“And you’ll fucking give it to her.”
The small metal-and-diamond ring pings as it bounces—like it’s nothing more than a trinket.
Lucian doesn’t even glance at it.
Then he’s gone.
The silence claws at me.
I close my eyes as reality crashes over me like a freight train.
She’s cutting ties with me.
And she doesn’t even want to be near me to do it.
And why the fuck would she?
I was a monster to her.
My throat tightens, something raw and unfamiliar lodging in my chest.
I don’t realize I’m still staring at the ring until James speaks, his voice bitter.
“Anyone could look at her and see she fell in love with you.”
A muscle in my jaw twitches.
James scoffs. “And you fell in love with her too.”
The words gut me.
Because they’re true.
I fell.
I fell so fucking hard.
She did too.
And I ripped her apart.
“You fell in love with her and then thought the worst of her.”
James shakes his head, his disappointment cutting deeper than any of Lucian’s fists.
He turns toward the door, Marcus following.
Neither of them say another word as they leave me alone.
They don’t need to.
Because James is fucking right.
I sink onto the barstool, staring at the ring like it holds all the answers.
My chest feels like it’s caving in.
Like I’m the one suffocating now.
Because I was so fucking wrong.
And now?—
I have no clue how to fix it.