Chapter 24
Lidiya
Iwake up the way I always do. Too fast, like I’ve been yanked out of my own body.
For a second, I don’t know where I am.
Then I feel the mattress beneath me, too soft and too expensive, and smell soap and something sharper—clean linen and the ghost of Damien’s cologne like it lives in the fabric.
I’m in his bed.
Again.
I go still.
The room is still dark, but I can tell it’s early morning, not night.
Damien is on his side, back to me, one arm bent under the pillow. He looks… normal. That is the worst part.
Not normal like men in Brixton who go to the gym and complain about rent. Normal, like someone who could be sleeping next to a girlfriend after a date, like this isn’t a house full of armed men and locked gates and a contract I never signed.
My stomach twists.
I close my eyes and force myself to breathe.
I chose this.
Yesterday, with that quiet guest room and my brain insisting something was going to come through the door, I chose his bed because my body wanted the nearest thing to safety, even if it came wrapped in danger.
It makes me angry.
At him. At myself. At my stupid animal instincts.
I slide one inch away, as if distance can fix anything.
Damien shifts.
I freeze again.
He doesn’t turn. He doesn’t reach. He doesn’t do anything.
A second passes.
Then his voice, rough with sleep, breaks the quiet.
“You’re awake,” he says.
It isn’t a question. It’s an observation.
“Yes,” I say, and my throat is dry. “I am.”
He rolls onto his back slowly, keeping his hands to himself like he’s demonstrating restraint on purpose. His eyes find mine in the gloom.
“What time is it?” he asks.
I hate that the question feels almost… ordinary.
“I’m not sure,” I say and glance at the clock. “Early. I’ve slept for about twelve hours.”
“Good.”
I stare at him. “Are you going to pretend this is normal?”
His mouth curves, faintly. Not a smile. Something close to it.
“You needed the rest, obviously.”
Obviously. I needed it more than I thought.
I push myself up to a sitting position, dragging the duvet higher. “I can feed myself.”
“Not in my kitchen,” he says, and swings his legs out of bed. “Come down when you’re dressed.”
“I never got undressed,” I say with a short laugh. “I was only going to take a nap before actual bedtime.”
“Doesn’t matter. You have spare clothes now.”
He stands, and for a second my eyes betray me—tracking the line of his shoulders, the way his tee pulls across his back.
I look away fast.
The rule doesn’t say anything about looking, but my brain feels like it’s doing something traitorous anyway.
He disappears into the bathroom.
I sit there, listening to the sounds of a man starting his day like he doesn’t keep guns in his bedside drawer.
I climb out of bed. The mirror in his room catches me as I move about in these designer clothes, rumpled from being slept in. It’s probably sacrilege in Belgravia.
I stare at my reflection until my eyes burn.
I’m not safe.
I’m a problem someone bought, and someone else wants to steal.
I slip out of the room and into the guest room where my bags are. I shower and change quickly into jeans and a jumper.
Downstairs, the house is quiet in that way rich places are quiet, as if sound costs money.
I follow the smell of coffee.
Damien is at the counter with a mug already in his hand. He’s dressed in black as usual, like he’s attending a funeral; he just doesn’t know whose yet.
There’s a plate waiting for me. Eggs. Bacon. Toast.
He takes a sip of coffee. “Sit.”
I do, because if I don’t, I’ll start screaming, and I don’t know what screaming buys me in a house with locked doors.
I take a bite of toast and immediately hate that it’s good.
Damien watches without being obvious about it. He’s learned how to look like he’s doing nothing while he’s actually tracking everything.
It makes me feel exposed.
“So,” I say, swallowing. “Any updates. Any names. Any anything?” I wave my hand, indicating the nightmare.
“Not yet, but soon,” he replies.
The words should soothe me.
They don’t.
Because when the information arrives, it means the day has a direction again. It means the calm is temporary.
It means we’re going to do something. Go somewhere. Hurt someone. Be hurt.
And I don’t know which part I’m more afraid of.
“What happens when he finds her?” I ask.
Damien’s gaze stays steady. “Then we talk to her.”
“Talk,” I repeat, flat.
His mouth curves again, that humourless hint, but he says nothing.
“Do you have hobbies?” I ask because if I don’t shift the topic, I’m going to spiral.
He looks at me like he’s deciding whether to answer honestly or mock me.
“Violence,” he says.
“I walked into that,” I mutter.
“You did,” he agrees, and there’s something almost pleased in it.
I chew another bite and force my voice light. “Do you have art taste too, or is it just intimidation?”
He sets his mug down. “Finish eating.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“It was.”
I exhale hard through my nose, irritated.
When I’m done, Damien gestures with his chin toward the hall.
“Go,” he says. “Do whatever you do when you’re not trying to survive.”
“What I do,” I say, standing, “is go to work. Pay rent. Try not to circle the drain.”
His eyes sharpen. “Not today. There are books in the living room, TVs to watch, crosswords in the newspaper.”
Crosswords?
I walk away before he can see the panic on my face, and move into the sitting room as he takes the hallway that leads to the back of the house.
The hideous Basquiat painting screams at me. It’s bright and aggressive and expensive in a way that feels like someone bought chaos and framed it to prove they could.
The colours claw at the room. The crown. The frantic line work. The face that isn’t a face.
It’s like looking at a mind in pieces.
I wonder what would happen if I screamed back at it.
I walk closer, hands behind my back like I’m in a museum and not a gilded cage.
I scan the room. Everything else is calm, and then there’s the painting, like a threat.
I turn and spot a thin, folded throw draped over the back of a chair. My brain makes a decision before my fear can veto it.
I grab the throw and hoist myself onto the side table that runs underneath it. I shake out the throw and put it over the painting, hiding it from view.
Relief hits me so suddenly I nearly laugh.
There.
Now the room looks like a place a human could exist in.
I climb down and stand back, hands on my hips.
“Better,” I say.
Then I freeze, because the word feels too familiar. Like I’m allowed to arrange anything in this house.
Like I belong here enough to change it.
I don’t.
I’m just in it.
A sound behind me makes me whip around.
Damien stands there, coffee mug in hand, watching me like I’m a curious animal he found in his garden.
His gaze goes to the blanketed painting. Then back to me.
For a moment, I wait for anger. For a lecture. For control, snapping tight.
Instead, his eyes flicker with something that might be amusement.
“You covered it,” he says.
“It was attacking me,” I answer, defensively.
“It’s art,” he says.
“It’s noise,” I shoot back. “It’s chaos for people who can afford chaos.”
His gaze holds mine. “And you can’t.”
“No,” I say sharply. “I can’t.”
Silence stretches.
He walks into the room, slow, not crowding me. He stops a few feet away, close enough that I can smell him, not so close that I feel cornered.
He looks up at the blanket like he’s considering the idea of leaving it there.
Then he looks back at me.
“What else do you want to change?” he asks.
The question is casual.
It shouldn’t be.
My throat tightens.
Because my answer is: everything. My life. The last twenty-four hours. The fact that I was sold, he paid, and now I’m eating his food, sleeping in his bed, and covering his paintings like I’m his wife.
I swallow.
“Nothing,” I say, too quickly.
Damien’s eyes narrow, like he can hear the lie.
I force myself to inhale. That silence is deadly. “I want to feel like I haven’t disappeared.”
His gaze doesn’t soften, exactly. But something in his posture shifts, like he heard the thing underneath my words.
“You haven’t,” he says.
I laugh. It comes out bitter. “Have I not. Because it feels like I’m a character in someone else’s story.”
“You are,” he says, simply. Then, after a beat: “So am I.”
I stare at him, thrown by the honesty.
It doesn’t comfort me. It makes everything feel bigger, like the board we’re on stretches beyond the walls of this house.
Damien glances at the covered painting again and moves forward. I expect him to whisk off the throw, but he doesn’t. He grabs the painting with both hands and removes it from the wall, still covered like it costs him nothing.
It costs me.
Because each small act makes the cage feel less like a cage.
And I don’t know which is more dangerous—being trapped, or getting used to it.
He turns to leave.
“Damien,” I say before I can stop myself.
He pauses, looking back.
“If I asked you to let me go,” I say, voice low, “would you?”
A long beat.
His eyes hold mine. No humour now. No softness. Only truth.
“No,” he says.
The word lands clean and heavy.
My chest tightens with panic and—worse—something like relief, because at least the ground is solid. At least I know where I stand.
He watches my face like he’s searching for the damage he just did.
Then he speaks again, and his voice is quieter.
“But I will keep you alive,” he says. “Even when you hate me for it.”
He leaves the room.
I stand there staring at where he disappeared for a long moment.
Then I sit on the sofa, wrap another throw around my shoulders, and try to decide what I am doing.
What am I becoming?
Outside, the house remains silent, secure, expensive.
Inside me, nothing is quiet.
Time passes in strange pieces.
I look out the window at a garden that might as well be a painting. It’s green, manicured, and contained. I drink water because Damien tells me to, and I hate that I do it.
At one point, I catch a glimpse of myself in a hallway mirror: clean clothes, hair neat, face composed.
If my old life saw me like this, it would think I’d levelled up.
It wouldn’t see the chain.
Somewhere in the house, Damien takes calls. His voice drifts occasionally through the corridors—calm, sharp, controlled.
Every time I hear it, my body reacts like it’s learned a new fact: he’s near, the danger is managed, the walls will hold.
I hate that too.
Near late morning, the air shifts.
Not physically. Something in me.
The waiting tightens, like a string being pulled.
Then the story will move again. This time, towards Alisha, towards whatever I was pulled into when I stepped into that auction hall and became a number on someone’s paddle.
I sit back and stare at the space where the painting was removed, listening for footsteps, pretending I can’t hear my own thoughts.
Pretending I don’t already know that when Kirill arrives, I will go.
Not because I want to.
But because I don’t see another choice. Some traitorous part of me wants to see Alisha’s face when the lie breaks.
I want answers. I want to be the one asking the questions for once.
I pull the blanket tighter and wait for the information that will change the day.