Chapter 3 – Elara
The car smells of leather and gun oil. I sit rigid, wrists bound with a zip tie, my coat pulled tight around me.
Outside the window, New York unspools in neon and wet pavement, faces and headlights blurring into smears of color.
The man beside me is all controlled violence; his hazel eyes catch every flicker of the city and return it cool and unreadable.
I want to scream. I want to demand answers. But instinct tells me this is not a man who responds to weakness. So I say nothing.
Still, I watch him. Not because he’s handsome—though he is, impossibly so—but because a shape of recognition nudges at the edge of my memory.
I’m bad with faces; I never remember details.
But there’s a familiarity to the way he moves, and the features on his face.
My skin prickles. Could he be one of my father’s men?
Is he taking me back to the townhouse to finish whatever transaction they planned for me? The thought makes my chest tighten.
Earlier, he said I was in deep shit. The words weren’t a threat so much as a verdict, delivered as if he were stating the weather.
The violence in his gaze is practical rather than theatrical; it doesn’t scream menace so much as normalcy.
It terrifies me in a new way—like being catalogued for a fate someone else has already priced.
And still my traitor brain notices him: the suit cut to a devastating width across his shoulders, the way his shirt collar sits like armor against his neck, the faint scar that bisects his left knuckle.
His skin is olive and flawless under the car light; his mouth is full in a way that makes my jaw clench.
I tell myself I’ll stab him the moment he turns his back.
I rehearse the movement in my head, the snap of a wrist, the press of a heel.
It soothes me—imagining control where there is none.
The car slows. He doesn’t speak, but his hand finds a small earpiece at his collar and taps once.
Through the glass, I see the dark line of a gate rise.
My throat is dry. I try to imagine what comes next: an interrogation, a bargain, a salvageable escape.
Every scenario tastes bitter. But at least this isn’t the Chang’s townhouse.
He finally turns his head and looks at me, and in that look, there’s nothing soft. “You think too loudly,” he says, the accent cutting his consonants like glass. It’s Russian. “Save the plans for later.”
My mouth wants to snarl something fierce, clever, defiant.
Instead, I tuck my chin and breathe, because whatever I do right now has to be measured.
There are better ways to burn the board than with a reckless, useless fire.
If I’m going to survive this night and everything that follows, I have to be patient. And ruthless.
With a shudder, I picture my father still at the huge dinner table, smiling over crystal, a bowl of laughter around him, completely oblivious that his daughter has been taken from under his nose.
Would he even care? A bitter laugh threatens my throat.
Of course he wouldn’t. To David Chang, I’m currency, not kin.
My gaze slides back to the man beside me. He’s nothing like the men at my father’s table. In a way, he’s harder. Colder. Scarred in ways the eye can’t always name. His suit can’t hide the ink that curls up his neck, or another pale ridge of scar tissue at his collarbone. Military, I think.
He carries himself with the precision of someone who has been trained to measure danger by the beat of a pulse. His eyes are pure predator. Calm. Appraising. Already calculating. I look away, for good this time.
I tuck my knees tighter to my chest, trying to make myself small, invisible—an old reflex meant to protect a child from a father’s temper. It doesn’t work. He watches me like I’m a subject under glass, like I’m an experiment he hasn’t yet decided the outcome of.
I hate this gaze on me. It’s like he’s already planning my judgment, and I don’t even know what it is.
When the car finally stops, I’m half-frozen with questions I can’t ask. We pull up to a gated compound, iron gates yawning open to swallow us whole. The tires crunch over gravel, headlights slicing briefly through the dark before the night swallows us again.
The door swings open, and cold air hits me like a slap.
A hand grabs my arm and drags me out. My shoes click against the stone driveway as we move toward the building rising out of the dark like something alive.
Every window is black except one—a faint golden glow at the top floor, like an eye that’s been watching for me.
Inside, the world changes. Warmth replaces the cold, but it’s not comforting.
The air smells faintly of smoke and cologne, sharp and masculine, the kind of scent that clings to men who make violence a habit.
We walk across a marble foyer, my footsteps echoing in the silence.
The place is immaculate—polished, quiet, too perfect.
It feels like a trap disguised as elegance.
He pushes me through a door at the end of the hallway and steps in after me. The lock clicks behind us, heavy and deliberate.
I stand there, breathing hard, surrounded by leather, glass, and shadows. A decanter of amber liquid gleams under the low light, and smoke curls lazily from an ashtray on the table. Everything here feels calculated, controlled, just like him.
And as the silence stretches, a chill runs through me.
I’m in a predator’s den.
The man turns to me, finally speaking.
“Elara Chang.”
My heart stutters. He knows my name. How? A chill snakes down my spine, and I force myself not to step back.
“You’ve been busy tonight,” he says, voice low, rough, accusing. “Switching manifests. Covering tracks. Helping your father. Sabotaging.”
My breath catches. “I’m not sabotaging for him,” I snap before I can stop myself.
The corner of his mouth lifts into something that isn’t quite a smile; it’s colder, sharper. It’s the kind of expression that makes you realize he’s already ten steps ahead of you.
“Then who are you sabotaging for, printsessa?” he murmurs, the foreign word rolling off his tongue like smoke.
My pulse jumps. I can guess what it means, and it sounds dangerous, intimate in a way that makes me feel exposed.
My lips part, but no answer comes. Because I don’t even know. For myself, maybe. For freedom. For dignity.
He smiles then—slow, dangerous, deliberate. “Doesn’t matter,” he says, voice dropping to a murmur that still slices through me. “You belong to me now.”
The words hit like a blade to the gut. Sharp. Final.
And just like that, I know the nightmare has only begun.
I turn to him, voice trembling despite myself. “Who are you?”
He meets my gaze without hesitation. “Roman Rusnak.”
My breath stutters. For a moment, I think I misheard him. But no, his tone is steady, absolute.
Rusnak.
The name slams into me like a physical thing. My eyes widen before I can hide the reaction. Oh.
I know the Rusnaks. Everyone in our world does. I know Lev and Sasha; they’re my friends. My only friends in the Rusnak line, really. If I had my phone, I could call them. They’d fix this. They’d make this go away.
But my phone is gone. My hands are bound. And I’m sitting across from a Rusnak I’ve never met, one whose eyes look like war.
Is that why his face seemed so familiar?
“Can you take these off?” I lift my bound wrists toward him, the plastic biting into my skin. “The zip ties. They hurt.”
He glances at me, expression unreadable. “What makes you think you’re in a position to make demands?”
I glare at him. “What makes you think you can keep me here?”
He turns as if to leave, utterly unbothered. Panic edges my voice before I can stop it. “My father will come after you, you know. He’ll tear this place apart.”
That gets him to pause. Slowly, he looks back, lips curling in something dark, almost amused. “Good,” he says. “I’m looking forward to it.”
I swallow, throat dry. “What do you want from me?”
“Nothing complicated.” He stops walking, and I can feel the weight of his presence, the heat rolling off him. “I just want to ask you a few questions.”
“Then ask,” I snap.
His head tilts, hazel eyes glinting. “Will you answer honestly?”
I nod, defiant. “Yes.”
A faint smirk ghosts across his lips. “Good girl.”
The words hit like a shock, and before I can even react, he turns and walks out, leaving me alone with the echo of his voice—and the uneasy flutter in my chest.
There’s a single chair in the room, but I don’t sit. I can’t. My body is too wired, my mind too loud. I pace instead, back and forth, the sound of my shoes muffled by the thick rug. I keep glancing at the locked door, half expecting Roman to return, half hoping he doesn’t.
He’s been calm so far, but that doesn’t fool me. Men like him are never calm; they just wait for the right moment to strike.
After what feels like an hour, the lock clicks. My breath stalls.
The door swings open, and another man steps in. I recognize him immediately—he was with Roman back at the museum, the one who tied my hands.
He’s broad-shouldered and ruggedly handsome, in a brutal kind of way. Short-cropped dark hair, steel-gray eyes that miss nothing, and rough tattoos crawling up his neck like smoke. A gun rests casually at his hip, gleaming beneath the hem of his leather jacket.
But what throws me off is his smile. It’s faint, almost kind, when he reaches for my arm.
“Boss wants me to bring you.”
My stomach twists. “To where?” I ask, voice tight.
“You’ll see,” he says simply, and before I can press further, he’s already pulling me out of the room.
Today has to be the unluckiest day of my life.
The man leads me up a flight of stairs, his grip firm but not cruel. I could fight him, maybe, but something tells me it would be useless. He moves like someone who’s seen too many fights to ever lose one.
“What’s your name?” I ask, mostly to distract myself.
“Luka,” he says without looking at me.
I nod, swallowing whatever smart remark I might have had. Silence feels safer.
We stop in front of a heavy door. Luka pushes it open and gently ushers me inside.
It’s an office—Roman’s office.
He’s at the head of a long oak table, the glow from a massive screen painting his face in blue light. His attention is fixed on whatever’s on the screen, fingers tapping absently against the desk in a rhythm that somehow still feels commanding.
The room itself feels like him—dark and efficient. Black walls, steel accents, glass shelves lined with neatly arranged weapons instead of art. Everything has purpose; nothing has warmth.
The kind of space that doesn’t invite conversation—only control.
Luka presses me down into the chair, the edge biting into the back of my thighs. I hiss out a curse under my breath.
“Can someone please take off these zip ties?” I snap, jerking my bound wrists toward them. “It’s not like I can run.”
Neither of them looks at me.
Roman doesn’t even flinch, just keeps his eyes on the screen, scrolling through data like I’m background noise. Luka stands beside the door, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
The silence stretches, thick and humiliating. My pulse thrums in my wrists where the plastic digs into skin, and every second of being ignored makes me want to scream.
I take a slow, shaky breath and force myself to calm down. Losing it won’t help me, not with men like this. If they want to stay silent, fine. I can play that game too.
So I sit back in the chair, spine straight, chin up, and match their silence with my own. My wrists burn against the zip ties, but I don’t flinch. I just watch Roman from across the desk, the glow of the screen painting his face in cold light.
If he wants a reaction, he’s not going to get one.