Chapter 10
Samuel
The workday had bled out into the hushed quiet that settled over the sixteenth floor after six PM.
Samuel packed his bag with deliberate care, his movements slow to avoid drawing any last-minute attention.
He’d perfected the art of the invisible exit over the past week, slipping out like a shadow when the coast was clear of one particular, looming presence.
The hallway was empty, the only light spilling from the exit signs. He pressed the call button once he reached the elevator. When the doors slid open, he took a half-step forward, his mind already on the subway ride home.
Then he saw him.
Wise stood in the center of the elevator, one hand in the pocket of his tailored overcoat. His head was up, his dark eyes already fixed on the opening doors, and by extension, on Samuel, who had frozen on the threshold.
Their gazes locked.
A jolt, sharp and cold, shot through Samuel’s system.
His heart stuttered, then began hammering a frantic, uneven rhythm against his ribs.
For one long second, his body went rigid with the instinct to retreat.
To let the doors close, to take the stairs, twenty flights be damned, to do anything but step into that steel box with him.
The memory of their last elevator encounter flashed behind his eyes. The skin at his nape prickled as if touched by that same ghost of warmth.
His luck, it seemed, was finally spent.
Gael didn’t move. Didn’t speak. He simply stood there, his eyes holding Samuel’s with an unnerving focus. The air in the corridor felt thin. Samuel could hear the faint buzz of the fluorescent light overhead, the distant whir of a printer in another suite.
He gulped. The sound was dry and loud in his own throat. His mind was a blank screen of panic. To turn and walk away now would be an admission. A confession of fear so profound it would be more telling than anything that could happen inside the elevator.
He gave a minute, almost imperceptible shake of his head and stepped fully into the elevator.
He turned his back immediately.
The doors slid shut.
Samuel held himself rigid, a statue in a cheap suit.
But his body was a live wire. His hearing strained, parsing every tiny sound.
The rustle of Gabriel’s coat as he shifted his weight, a small, dry sound of fabric.
A slow, controlled exhale that wasn’t his own.
The soft click of a phone screen going dark.
The fine hairs on his arms and the back of his neck rose, one by one, in helpless, primal attention.
Then, without warning, the world lurched.
The elevator gave a violent, shuddering jerk. The light overhead flickered, stuttered, then held steady at a dimmer, sickly yellow. The hum of descent cut off.
Samuel’s mind blanked.
A malfunction. A temporary glitch. It would correct itself. Any second.
The silence held. Two seconds. Three.
A cold knot formed in his stomach. His breath hitched, but this time it didn't release cleanly. It caught in his chest, then began sawing in and out in short, ragged gasps that did nothing to fill his tightening lungs. A cold, greasy sweat broke out across his forehead and snaked down his spine.
No. No, no, no.
His wide eyes darted over the panel. He lunged for it, his fingers clumsy and shaking so badly he missed the ‘ALERT’ button, his nail scraping the plastic. He tried again, slamming his palm against it.
A faint, tinny buzz sounded from the speaker grate then faded. He stared at it, waiting for a voice, for instructions. Nothing came.
His gaze flew to Gael, a reflexive search for… what?
Assurance? Shared alarm?
Gael had glanced up from his phone at the jolt. He looked mildly inconvenienced, like a man whose train had been delayed. Then his eyes returned back to the screen, the glow casting sharp planes across his face.
Samuel whirled back to face the doors, staring at the frozen digital panel. 11. They were stuck between floors.
Trapped.
The walls, which had merely felt close before, now seemed to be breathing inward, pressing on his temples.
Flashes, jagged and bright, cut through his vision: the heavy, locked door of a solitary confinement room at the Hills, the smell of mildew and his own fear, the complete, utter silence. A small, pathetic sound, almost a whimper, escaped his clamped lips.
He tried to swallow, but his throat wasn’t working.
Beads of sweat traced icy paths down his temples.
His breath was a ragged, audible thing now, harsh, and too fast in the silent box.
His vision began to blur at the edges, the sickly yellow light and bronze doors melting into a swirling grey haze, tunneling down to a single point of impending collapse.
Calm down. You need to fucking calm down.
The command in his head was a desperate, furious mantra.
You can't lose it. Not again.
Not here. Not in front of your fucking boss.
Not again.
But the panic was a riptide, cold and powerful, pulling him under. He was going to drown in this metal coffin. He would shatter into a thousand pieces of exposed nerve and humiliated flesh right here on the floor, and Gael Wise is going to witness it.
And then he felt it.
A touch. Against the damp, feverish skin at the back of his neck.
Cold.
The contrast was shocking.
Unmistakable.
It was his hand. There was no world in which it could be anyone else.
He froze. Utterly. Completely.
The violent tremors racking his muscles ceased all at once.
The harsh, gasping breaths cut off mid-inhale, leaving a silence so profound he could hear the soft shush of his own blood in his ears.
The shaking in his hands stopped. The only point of reality in the dissolving universe was suddenly the cool, solid weight of that hand.
It was large. It covered the entire nape of his neck.
He could feel the elegant fingers pressing with a firm, steady pressure into the frantic pulse point below his jaw.
The pad of a thumb settled on the other side, just below his hairline, on the sensitive junction of skull and spine. And then it began to move.
Slow. Deliberate. Gentle circles against his skin.
The motion was hypnotic. Each slow pass of the thumb was a message decoded directly by Samuel’s primal hindbrain: Be still.
His eyes slammed shut. A profound calm swept through him, a surrender so deep it felt like his bones were turning to water, his muscles to liquid wax. His head dipped forward a fraction, offering more of his neck to that steady, circling thumb.
A voice, quiet but firm, cut through the static in his head.
“Look at me.”
His eyes snapped open.
Gael was right there. In front of him. He had moved without a sound.
He stood a few inches away, his body angled towards Samuel’s. For one insane, hysterical second, he felt a bubble of wild, unhinged laughter rise in his throat. He didn’t let it out.
Thank fuck.
“You are having a panic attack.”
Gael stated it as a fact. His face was so close Samuel could see the faint, darker striations in his irises, the precise cut of each eyelash, the faint shadow of stubble along a jawline that looked carved from stone.
He could feel the warmth of Gael’s breath ghosting over his own slightly parted lips as he spoke. It sent a violent shiver through Samuel’s body, a shiver that had nothing to do with fear.
“Take a deep breath.”
Samuel’s lungs, which had been locked in spasm, expanded obediently. He dragged in a deep, shuddering pull of air, then held it, his eyes locked on Gael’s, trapped in that dark, unwavering gaze. He let it out in a slow, controlled stream, the sound of it too loud.
The thumb never stopped its circuit. A slow pass.
Another. With each rotation, a little more of Samuel’s grip on the crumbling edge of reality loosened.
The terror didn't vanish, but it was transformed, pushed back, and contained by that touch, that gaze.
The panic became a distant storm; here, in the eye, there was only the thumb, the eyes, the breath.
“That’s it.” Gael’s voice was lower now, a rumble that vibrated in the scant, charged space between them. His dark eyes held Samuel’s, unwavering, as Samuel breathed in and out again.
Then, a whisper. So soft it was almost a thought. “Good boy.”
The sound that escaped Samuel was raw. A tiny, broken, desperate thing, torn from a place deeper than shame or fear. In the silent, enclosed space, it echoed, a pathetic confession of a need he’d spent a lifetime burying.
He knew, in some distant corner of his mind, that he should be embarrassed.
But he felt nothing of the sort. He felt nothing but the weight of that hand and the echo of those words.
He weighed nothing. He was nothing but a vessel, hollowed out and waiting to be filled by that praise, held together only by the points of contact.
He was quite sure that the only reason he hadn’t dissolved into atoms, the only tether keeping him in the plane of the living, was the steady, relentless pressure of that fucking hand.
The low groan of machinery engaging shattered the fragile silence. A deep vibration shuddered through the floor, and with a lurch, the elevator began to descend again. The frozen 11 on the panel blinked and changed to 10, then 9.
But they didn’t move.
Samuel couldn’t have moved if the floor had given way. The descent was just noise. The truth was the dark eyes holding his, the thumbprint warmth lingering on his skin.
Gael’s voice cut through the hum, low and resonant.
“Once we reach the ground floor, you are going to exit the elevator.” A simple, inarguable directive. “You will go straight home.” Samuel’s mind, still floating in a formless haze, tried to grasp the concept of ‘home’. It seemed like a place from a story about someone else.
“You will make yourself a warm bath. Then, you will put on your pajamas and go to bed. You will not work. You will not think about anything. You will sleep.”
“Do you understand me, Samuel?”
Samuel blinked. The words reached his ears, clear and sharp, but they seemed to slide off the surface of his mind, failing to penetrate the dense, woolly static that had replaced his thoughts. He stared, blank, into Gael’s expectant face.
The hand moved.
The fingers, still resting at the base of his skull, tightened. The grip firmed, the elegant fingers pressing into the tendons of his neck.
“I asked you a question.”
The tone was harsher, a blade’s edge honed fine. The pressure of the fingers increased incrementally, a silent ‘pay attention.’
The combination pierced the static. The fog in his brain burned away in an instant, leaving only crystalline, terrified clarity.
“Yes, Sir. I am sorry, Sir.” The words fell from his lips, a breathless, broken echo.
The corner of Gael’s mouth creased. A subtle, fleeting tightening, a small crack in the marble composure. His dark eyes, fixed on Samuel’s, seemed to gleam in the dim light.
The sight of it sent a violent, shocking thrill straight down Samuel’s spine.
“Good boy.” Gael said again.
The thrill that followed was stronger, so potent it pooled low in Samuel’s gut, a liquid heat that made his knees threaten to buckle. He almost closed his eyes. A soft, desperate sound almost broke free from his chest. He locked his jaw against it. He didn’t voice it. But God, he wanted to.
Ping.
The doors slid open onto the vast, mostly empty lobby. The hand vanished from his neck. Samuel felt weightless, unmoored.
Gael still didn’t move. He remained squarely in Samuel’s space, his posture relaxed, as if they hadn’t just shared something that had fractured Samuel’s understanding of himself. He gave a single, slight nod.
“Good night, Mr. Ruiz.”
Samuel managed a nod in return, a stiff, jerky motion. His voice, when it found its way out, was a quiet, thin thread of sound. “Good night.”
He stepped around Gael’s imposing form and walked out into the cool air of the lobby. He moved on legs that didn’t quite feel like his own, the ghost of a grip on his neck and the echo of a low voice in his ear the only real things in the world.