Chapter 35 Cloe
CLOE
They strapped me tighter this time.
No more rope. No more half-knots that left room to twist or slide.
This time it was leather. Thick. Stiff. Fastened with buckles that groaned when tightened. My arms pulled behind me until my shoulders screamed. Ankles shackled to the legs of the chair so wide it felt deliberate, like the posture itself was meant to humiliate.
My skin stung where they’d cleaned the blood too roughly. Salt water, maybe. Something meant to disinfect. Or punish.
My hair stuck to the side of my face. My lip was split again. I could taste the iron every time I tried to swallow.
They didn’t gag me this time. Not because they were giving me kindness. Because they were waiting for the scream. I didn’t give it to them.
The room was lit from above now. Harsh. Fluorescent. Artificial to the point of cruelty. It made the concrete gleam. Made the cracks in the floor pulse like veins. Made the shadows longer than they should have been.
There were no windows. No clock. No sense of time except the way my body ached in cycles.
The light flickered.
I flinched.
Not from fear.
From instinct.
The hum of the bulb buzzed in the walls. It echoed in my skull. A white noise that filled every breath I didn’t take properly. I counted between the flickers. Between the soft scrapes of movement I heard behind the walls. Between my own shallow inhales.
Someone was watching. I knew it. I could feel it in my spine. The same way I used to feel Wolfe watching me from across the room, back when I thought his silence was the scariest thing in the world.
I would have traded this for his silence in a heartbeat. This wasn’t silence. This was theater.
The room had been cleaned. The floor scrubbed. The smell of bleach not strong enough to erase the metallic tang that lived in the corners. The chair bolted to the floor now. A camera mounted high in the corner—I only saw it because the lens caught a glint when the light above it blinked.
They weren’t hiding me anymore. They were staging me.
My chest rose and fell in slow, even breaths. I made it do that. I made myself inhale when I wanted to choke. Exhale when I wanted to sob. Every controlled breath was another second they hadn’t taken from me.
The wound on my hip throbbed. I didn’t know if it was infected. I didn’t care. Pain was familiar. Pain I understood. Pain was the thread I followed back to myself.
My fingers were going numb. The leather bit into the nerves at my wrist. I tried to move. Just a twitch. Enough to keep blood moving. A mistake. A speaker clicked on overhead. Static. Then silence. They were listening.
I blinked up at the camera. Didn’t flinch. Let them watch. Let them see what I looked like after Wolfe put a collar around my throat and taught me to kneel. Let them see who they took.Because I wasn’t prey. Not anymore.
The door didn’t open. Not yet.
But I heard the lock turn.
The air shifted.
I inhaled.
Held it.
Let the war start with breath. They didn’t rush. That was the first thing I noticed. No one rushed in this place. Everything was done slow. Calculated. Like they were trying to teach me what helplessness looked like when it wore confidence.
The door opened with the same calm it always did. Just a click of the lock, a gentle push, the metal swinging wide like it had nothing to fear.
The man who entered wasn’t one I recognized. Not from before. Not from the others. He was clean-cut. Suit crisp. Black-on-black. Like he thought the sharpness of his appearance made him more civilized. Like the shine on his shoes made him less monstrous.
But I knew better. I’d learned that kind of polish before. I’d kissed it. Served it. Let it use my mouth until I forgot my own name. And still I knew Wolfe was something else. This man didn’t hold power. He wore it like it could be washed off.
He didn’t speak at first. Just set a black case down on the table beside the chair. Flipped the latches open. One by one. The clicks echoed too loud in the cement room. Sharp. Precise.
I kept my eyes on him. He didn’t look at me. Not yet.
Inside the case was a camera. Not a handheld. A mounted one. High-end. Professional. With a wireless feed and a red light that blinked slow and steady like a heartbeat.
He lifted it carefully. Set it on a tripod. Turned it toward me. That’s when he looked up. And smiled.
It was a practiced smile. The kind people give to news anchors and politicians. Empty. Meant to distract.
“We’ll be live in five,” he said.
Live.
The word hit harder than his stare.
I clenched my jaw. Didn’t speak. He didn’t seem to mind. He adjusted the lens. Zoomed in. Tilted the frame. He took his time. My chest rose and fell slowly.
I could feel every bruise stretch with each inhale. Every cut throb beneath the bandages they wrapped too tightly. My wrists were already bleeding again. I could feel the drip tracing down the side of my palm.
He stepped back. Nodded once.
“You’re going to be the proof.”
I said nothing.
“That the Lawlors bleed like anyone else.”
The screen mounted behind him flickered to life.
A feed.
Live.
The Lawlor building. Wide shot. Pulled from street level. A cameraman’s vantage. Cars passing. People walking. A normal day. Then the timer appeared in the top left corner.
Red.
Counting down from fifteen seconds.
I stared.
The seconds fell like teeth.
Twelve.
Ten.
Eight.
Something moved in the window.
Third floor.
The office I used to stand outside when Wolfe wouldn’t let me in.
Five.
Four.
A flash.
Not fire.
Light.
Then the glass exploded outward.
A bloom of orange and black erupted through the facade. The windows shattered. People screamed. The camera jolted. Refocused. Smoke poured out of the hole in the building like the structure was exhaling its secrets.
I didn’t blink. The man beside me didn’t move. He just adjusted the volume. The screams got louder. Sirens in the distance. The feed switched angles. Another camera.
Closer.
The fire crawled across the frame like it had hands.
And then I saw him. Not Wolfe. Royal. Stumbling out of the smoke. Shirt torn. Blood streaking down one arm. His mouth moved, shouting something I couldn’t hear.
The audio lagged. Then it caught up.
“WOLFE!”
His voice cracked through the speaker like it had teeth. My body jolted like he'd screamed it into me. The name hit harder than anything they'd done to my skin.
It wasn't just pain. It was a vow. And I knew—if Wolfe was still a name being shouted, then Wolfe was still alive. Then Wolfe was still alive.
He dropped to his knees in front of the building. Grabbed at the dirt. Dragged himself forward. Then the screen cut to black.
The man beside me turned the camera toward me. I stared into the lens. Not at him. Not at the feed. But at what they thought they were doing.
They thought they were making a statement. I was the proof. But I was also the weapon. Because they hadn’t buried me yet. And Wolfe? He would set the world on fire to drag me out of this room.
They changed the feed. No warning. One second I was staring at Royal—bloodied, staggering, clawing his way toward the front of the Lawlor building like he could pull it back from collapse with his bare hands.
The next?
Wolfe’s apartment filled the screen.
Not from the inside. Not the way I remembered it. Not the warmth of the kitchen under low lights. Not the smell of cedar and espresso in the morning. Not the way the bedroom looked when I stripped for him in silence.
This was outside. Street-level. Distant. A wide shot of the building’s face. The windows all mirrored black. Still. Untouched. Until they weren’t.
The camera zoomed in just as the second window blew out. Third floor. His bedroom.
The fire wasn’t loud on screen. It rolled out of the frame like it had been waiting to breathe.
Smoke thick and crawling. Glass rained from the frame.
Pieces scattered across the sidewalk like broken promises.
I knew that window. I knew that room. I knew the shape of the sheets he’d made me bleed into.And I knew he hadn’t been in that bed since I left.
But still—
“Oh.”
Agony ripped through me, like a rib cracked open. That building held more than his name. It held the last place I felt chosen. The last place I felt real.
This wasn’t about killing him. This was about burning the last place I had been real. The place I had curled against his chest and slept like I wasn’t made of teeth. They weren’t trying to destroy him. They were trying to erase me. The man beside me chuckled.
“No one was home,” he said. “Shame. But you get the point, right?”
“You were his home,” he said, too casual. “So we burned it.”
I didn’t blink.
Because I knew what came next.
If they thought that house held him—
They never understood what it meant to be Wolfe’s.
I didn't answer. I'd already seen the point. And soon, Wolfe would too.
The screen flickered. Went black again. Silence pulsed in its place. I stared into it like it could stare back. And I realized—
They weren’t just trying to hurt him. They were trying to unmake him. By taking me. By burning every space I had ever touched. By showing me exactly what it looked like to be erased. But I wasn’t gone yet.
And Wolfe? Wolfe was still breathing. Which meant they’d made their final mistake. I didn’t speak. I didn’t move. Not even when the screen went black.
I closed my eyes. Squeezing them tight. I wanted to scream again. I wanted to tear at the leather straps cutting into my wrists, wanted to claw through the chair, the wall, the fucking city. But I stayed still. Because stillness was the only weapon I had left.
The door opened behind me. No sound, no warning. The only sign was the shift in the air, the subtle shift of pressure, like the room itself knew who had walked in and was already bracing for impact.
I didn’t turn. I couldn’t. But I felt him. The clean one. The man with shoes that didn’t touch dust. The one who set the cameras, controlled the angles, directed the grief.