CHAPTER 5
ALESSIA P.O.V.
I instinctively wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, feeling the harsh friction of my own knuckles. I pull my hand away and look down. There’s a smear of my own blood and his saliva slicked across my skin. The taste of top-shelf bourbon and sharp copper coats my tongue.
He clears the chamber. The single round spins through the air and lands on the plush rug with a soft, final thud.
I should have jammed my thumb into his eye.
I should have shattered his kneecap. My tactical mind is frantically tearing through close-quarters combat protocols, trying to find another opening, but my body is completely wrecked from the shock of the physical encounter.
He disarmed me without even breaking a sweat.
Stripped of my primary weapon, my backup, and my goddamn dignity, I’m just standing here like an idiot in front of the very monster I spent three years trying to put in a cage.
"I expected a better fight than that, Alessia," he murmurs, his voice smooth and entirely unbothered.
I set my jaw, trying to lock down the tremor in my knees.
"You’re shaking," he points out, his gaze raking over my frame. "Is it the fear or the adrenaline?"
"Go fuck yourself," I spit out.
He doesn't react. He just looks at the stripped gun in his massive hand. "This gun is a toy. FBI standard is an insult to the profession."
Leon tosses the empty magazine onto the marble table, right next to my unredacted federal file. He doesn't even bother with a holster. He just slides my empty weapon across the marble like it’s garbage. The metal scratches against the stone, a harsh, ugly sound that grates on my raw nerves.
"The badge doesn't work in this zip code," he says, adjusting his cufflinks. It’s a casual, terrifying gesture of normalcy while my entire reality is currently burning to the ground. "Your handler sold you for a rounded figure. You should know your price."
I stare at the file reflecting the flickering light from the fireplace.
That file is my entire life. Every commendation, every psych eval, every piece of me that Trenton packaged up and sold to the syndicate.
I am a ghost in a system that just deleted my code.
Leon isn't just pissed that I'm a fed; he’s insulted by how fucking clean I tried to keep myself while swimming in his dirt.
"Time for a lesson in consequences," Leon says.
He closes the distance in two strides. Before my brain can even signal my legs to back up, his hand clamps around the back of my neck.
His thumb rests heavily in the hollow beneath my skull, and his long fingers wrap around my nape with a grip like an industrial shackle.
He doesn't squeeze to hurt me, but the pressure is absolute. Unforgiving.
He begins to steer me toward the private elevator at the end of the hall, his large body a solid, immovable wall of heat against my side.
I dig my heels into the hardwood floor. My shoes make a sharp, desperate screeching sound against the wood, but Leon doesn't even break his stride. He drags me forward like I weigh absolutely nothing.
"Walk, Alessia. Don't make me drag you."
"Get your fucking hands off me," I hiss, twisting my shoulder.
His grip just locks tighter, perfectly countering my shift in weight. "I like the way your pulse jumps under my thumb. Stay close. The air gets thin where we're going."
The heat of his palm against my cold skin makes me sick to my stomach.
I feel small. I haven't felt this physically overpowered since I was a rookie getting tossed on the mats at Quantico, and I absolutely despise the visceral, biological reaction my body is having to his size.
I want to kill him, but my nervous system is screaming at me to submit just to survive the next ten seconds.
We hit the elevator. It’s a claustrophobic cage of smoked glass and steel.
Leon doesn't release his hold on my neck as he presses his thumb to the biometric scanner.
The light flashes green, and the car drops with a stomach-turning lurch that leaves my organs hovering in my chest. We bypass the lobby entirely, plummeting straight down into the foundation of the building.
I stare at the reflection in the dark glass. I look unhinged. Pale, disheveled, my white blouse wrinkled, held like a stray dog by a man in a sharp, tailored dark suit who owns the entire goddamn skyline.
"We're going to the basement," Leon says, leaning down. The drop in altitude is already messing with my ears. "Where I keep the things that don't belong in the light."
I clench my fists at my sides, pressing my short nails so hard into my palms that the skin threatens to break.
"You're very quiet now," he whispers, his breath hot against my ear. "Calculating the exits?"
"Calculating how long it'll take to bleed you out when I finally get a knife," I lie.
He chuckles, a low vibration against my side. "There are no cameras here. No one is coming to save you."
The floor numbers on the digital display count down into the negatives. Sub-levels. I studied the city blueprints for this building for six months. These floors aren't on any public record. The Bureau completely missed this. I completely missed this.
"Forget the rules you memorized, Alessia," Leon tells me, his voice a dark hum over the soft whir of the elevator motor. "Loyalty is the only currency down here. I want to see if you have the stomach for the life you've been chasing."
He’s trying to break me. He’s treating this like a psychological op, systematically stripping away my agency to create a vacuum he can fill with his own bullshit. It’s an aggressive, textbook conversion tactic, and the worst part is how effective it feels.
The doors slide open to a world of dead grey.
The corridor is raw, unfinished concrete.
The walls look like they're weeping moisture. The fluorescent tubes overhead buzz with an irritating, high-pitched frequency that instantly triggers a migraine behind my eyes. The temperature drops ten degrees the second we step out. It smells like damp earth, stale cigarette smoke, and a sharp, metallic undertone that hits my olfactory nerves like a sledgehammer. Old blood. It’s the distinct, unmistakable scent of a slaughterhouse.
A drop of cold condensation falls from an exposed pipe overhead and splatters directly onto my shoulder. I violently flinch, my nerves completely shot.
"Not quite as pretty as the view from the top, is it?" Leon asks dryly. "Keep moving. We're expected."
He marches me down the hall. The echo of our footsteps is harsh against the concrete. Then, his touch shifts. His grip on my neck remains an iron vice, but his thumb begins a slow, rhythmic stroke against the sensitive skin at the base of my skull.
It’s completely unhinged. A terrifying, intimate gesture of affection from a warlord who is currently marching me to a dungeon. The repetitive motion is hypnotic, forcing me to focus entirely on the calloused texture of his skin against mine.
I hate him for it. I hate that my frayed nervous system is actually clinging to the steady rhythm of his thumb because it’s the only stable thing in this nightmare. Don't lean into it, I scream at myself. Don't you dare lean into it.
His thumb brushes against a stray lock of my auburn hair, casually tucking it behind my ear while his palm stays locked on my nape.
"Breathe, Alessia," he orders softly. "Your heart is going to burst if you don't slow it down."
I grit my teeth. "I'm fine."
"You’re soft here," he says, pressing right into the juncture of my neck and shoulder. "It’s a weakness."
We stop in front of a heavy steel door equipped with a small, reinforced glass slit. Leon doesn't knock. He just shoves it open. The heavy hinges scream in protest, and he pulls me inside.
The moment the door clicks shut behind us, the silence becomes suffocating.
The walls are lined with thick acoustic foam.
It’s a sensory vacuum. Every breath I take sounds like a hurricane in my own ears.
I swallow hard, the wet click of my throat echoing way too loudly in the dead air.
I smell industrial bleach fighting a losing battle against the stench of fresh trauma.
"This is the inner sanctum," Leon states, his tone absolute. "No one hears what happens in here. Remember that."
I look toward the center of the room, and my stomach completely drops out.
Under a single, harsh hanging bulb, a man is zip-tied to a heavy metal chair.
His face is a ruined landscape of purple bruises and rapid swelling.
Standing over him is Sven Torv. Leon’s primary enforcer is methodically rolling his sleeves up over his thick, ink-stained forearms, his knuckles already split and red.
My eyes lock onto the man in the chair, and a cold shock of adrenaline paralyzes my lungs. It’s Russo. The syndicate logistics coordinator. He was my primary point of contact for the first six months I worked the front company. We drank shitty coffee together in the breakroom.
Russo’s head lolls to the side, and a thick thread of bloody saliva drips from his chin onto his shredded button-down shirt.
"Look who decided to join us, Sven," Leon says, his voice projecting authority. "Is he talking yet?"
Sven cracks his knuckles, the sound sharp in the insulated room. "He's being stubborn, Boss."
Sven turns his gaze toward me, and his eyes narrow into predatory slits.
He doesn't like me. He’s never liked me.
He views me as a liability Leon is keeping around for kicks.
Sven hawks up a wad of spit and launches it onto the concrete floor, landing mere inches from my leather shoes.
A blatant, territorial show of disrespect.
I stare right back at the motherfucker. I refuse to blink, keeping my face as apathetic as possible, even though my left hand is trembling so hard behind my back I have to grab my own wrist to steady it.
"She's watching, Sven," Leon says casually. "Make it a good show."