Chapter 28 Captured
POV: Sienna
The piercing glare of halogen headlights violently fractured the suffocating darkness of the slaughterhouse.
I scrambled backward, my tactical boots slipping uselessly on the slick, blood-stained tiles of the dispatcher's office.
The screech of heavy tires was immediately followed by the concussive, deafening slam of reinforced car doors.
Voices barked sharp, guttural commands in the cavernous warehouse outside my fragile sanctuary.
Heavy, synchronized footsteps pounded against the rusted grating.
My chest heaved, my frozen lungs screaming as I looked frantically for a secondary exit. There was none. Just a high, barred window caked in decades of grime, and the single iron door I had just retreated through.
"Sweep the perimeter! Check the corners!" a voice shouted.
I pressed my spine flush against the rusted metal desk, bringing my trembling knees to my chest. The freezing rainwater soaked through my black turtleneck, chilling me down to the marrow, but the violent shivering wracking my frame wasn't entirely from the cold. It was the blinding, suffocating terror of a trapped animal. Caldris had sold me. I had cut the leash, bypassed Roman’s impenetrable biometric cage, and run straight into the jaws of the abyss.
A heavy boot kicked the dispatcher’s door.
The rusted hinges screamed, bucking inward under the force.
The door slammed against the tiled wall, sending a shower of plaster dust over my head.
Three men in dark tactical gear poured into the small space, the blinding beams of the flashlights mounted on their automatic rifles slicing through the gloom, instantly locking onto my shivering form.
I squeezed my eyes shut, raising an arm to shield my face against the harsh light.
"Target acquired," one of the mercenaries grunted into a shoulder comms unit. He stepped forward, his massive hand wrapping around my bicep and hauling me violently to my feet.
I cried out as the movement tore at the raw skin of my scraped shoulder.
My legs buckled, completely numb, but the mercenary held me up effortlessly, dragging me out of the office and into the center of the massive, echoing slaughterhouse floor.
The air out here was thick with the metallic tang of old rust and the exhaust fumes of two matte-black SUVs parked near the loading dock.
"Well, well. If it isn't the emancipated bride."
The voice was a smooth, cultured hum that sliced clean through the chaotic noise of the warehouse. It was a voice I recognized intimately from my father's galas, a voice that belonged to a man the entire syndicate believed was rotting at the bottom of the harbor.
I blinked against the glaring headlights, my breath catching painfully in my throat.
Jorath Nethra stepped out of the shadows.
He wasn't wearing a tactical vest. He was dressed in a meticulously tailored, charcoal-grey suit, an elegant black umbrella shielding him from the rain blowing through the broken skylights.
He looked exactly as he had at my eighteenth birthday party—charismatic, composed, and utterly lethal.
The rumors of his death had clearly been highly exaggerated, a strategic ghosting to avoid Roman's apocalyptic wrath.
"Jorath," I whispered, the name scraping out of my frozen throat.
His easy smile widened, a chilling, brilliant flash of white teeth that didn't reach his cold hazel eyes. He stepped closer, the sharp click of his Italian leather shoes echoing against the rusted drains. He reached out, his warm, dry fingers tilting my chin up. I flinched, trying to pull away, but the mercenary’s grip on my arm was ironclad.
"You look terrible, Sienna," Jorath murmured, his thumb brushing a wet strand of hair from my cheek in a mock-tender gesture.
"The Luvaris Don clearly doesn't know how to treat a lady.
Dragging you through maintenance shafts, locking you in a glass box, and leaving you to wander the freezing rain. Your father would be weeping."
"Dravek said you were dead," I spat, my jaw trembling violently as the freezing air whipped around us.
Jorath laughed, a dark, melodic sound that made my stomach pitch.
"Dravek is a pawn who only sees what Roman allows him to see. Luvaris wiped out my squad, yes. But I learned a long time ago never to stand on the front lines of a siege. I’ve been waiting, watching the tower, hoping your famed Moretti rebellion would eventually snap that leash.
And here you are. A gift delivered by the storm. "
He dropped his hand from my chin, stepping back to admire his prize.
"What do you want?" I demanded, desperate to inject a venom into my voice that I didn't feel. "If you want my shares, they're gone. The magistrate sealed the merger. I belong to the Luvaris syndicate now."
"Ah, yes. The Rite of the Aegis," Jorath sighed, shaking his head with a theatrical disappointment.
"A brilliant, ruthless legal maneuver. Roman completely neutralized my claim.
But archaic laws have archaic loopholes, little bird.
An unconsummated, forced marriage can be annulled by the Syndicate Magistrate if the bride is proven to have fled under extreme duress. "
My heart hammered a frantic, bruised rhythm against my ribs. "And then what? You force me to marry you instead?"
"Heavens, no," Jorath sneered, the charismatic mask completely slipping to reveal the sickening, bottomless greed underneath.
He stepped into my space, his voice dropping to a vicious whisper.
"You are tainted goods, Sienna. A Luvaris brand is not something I want anywhere near my sheets.
I don't need to marry you to absorb the Moretti legacy.
I just need you to publicly renounce the Don, annul the merger... and then die."
I stopped breathing. The cavernous slaughterhouse seemed to violently spin, the glare of the headlights burning directly into my retinas.
"A tragic accident," Jorath continued, gesturing grandly to the rusted meat hooks swaying gently on the chains above us.
"The grieving widow, fleeing her tyrant husband, falls victim to the cruel streets of the Vesperine District.
Once the marriage is legally dissolved and you take your final breath, the Moretti shares revert back to the highest-ranking blood-loyalist. Me. "
"Roman will kill you," I choked out. The name tasted like a desperate, jagged prayer on my tongue. "He will tear this entire city apart brick by brick to find you. You saw what he did to your men."
"Let him try," Jorath whispered maliciously. He snapped his fingers.
The mercenary holding me suddenly released my arm, only to strike the back of my knees with the heavy stock of his rifle. I crashed to the cold, wet concrete, a sharp cry tearing from my lips as the impact bruised bone.
"Bind her," Jorath commanded coldly, turning his back on me to walk toward the idling SUV. "Set up the livestream in the secondary warehouse at the docks. I want the entire underworld watching when we break the Luvaris Don by broadcasting his wife’s final confession."
As rough hands grabbed my wrists, pulling them viciously behind my back to bind them with heavy, unyielding zip-ties, I stared at the bleeding neon light reflecting in the puddles.
I had thought Roman was the monster. I had thought the gilded cage was my nightmare.
But as the cold, sharp reality of true evil closed in around me, a horrifying realization settled into my soul.
I was going to die in the dark, and the only man terrifying enough to save me was the one I had just betrayed.