Chapter 1 — You’re Not Here by Accident #2
The floor seemed to drop out from under me. If Moretti he was offering me a leash.
I looked at the folder. At Thomas’s photo. He was an idiot, but he was my brother. He was the only one who’d held my hand at our mother’s funeral. I couldn’t let him rot in a federal prison.
But looking at Gabriel… there was something more there. The way he looked at me wasn’t just a lawyer coercing a witness. There was a tension, a dark electricity running beneath the surface of that cold negotiation. He wasn’t just buying my silence. He was buying my time, my presence, my autonomy.
“And if I refuse?” I challenged, needing to hear him say it.
The smile that curved Gabriel’s lips didn’t reach his eyes. It was a cruel smile, sharp as a razor blade.
He picked up the desk phone and lifted the receiver, holding it in the air.
“If you walk out that door without saying yes, I call the district attorney right now. Thomas sleeps in jail tonight. And you know what happens to boys like him in Ashford State Prison.”
The image of Thomas, weak and impressionable, in an overcrowded cell hit me like a physical blow.
Gabriel knew exactly where to strike.
I clenched my hands in my lap until my knuckles turned white. I had no choice. He’d stolen my choice the moment he gathered that evidence.
“How long?” I asked, my voice cold, accepting defeat.
“As long as necessary,” he replied, setting the phone back on the hook with a soft, final click. “But the contract has clauses, Elena. Clauses about behavior. About availability. About obedience.”
He opened a drawer and pulled out a second document. This one was thinner, bound in black. He slid it across the desk.
“Read. Sign. And know that from the moment the ink touches the paper, you are mine.”
I took the pen he offered. It was heavy, expensive, still warm from his touch.
As I signed my name on the dotted line, sealing my fate, I felt Gabriel's eyes fixed on me, burning into my skin. It wasn't the way a boss looks at an employee. It was the look of a man who had just acquired something valuable and dangerous—and couldn't wait to test its limits.
I looked up and met his eyes.
“The deal is done,” I said, my voice dripping with hatred.
Gabriel leaned back, satisfaction darkening his gaze.
“Excellent,” he murmured, his husky voice sliding down my spine. “The first meeting is tonight. At my place. Don't be late, Elena. I hate having to punish someone on the first day.”
Leaving the building was a blur. The rain was still falling, but I no longer felt the cold. I only felt the phantom weight of that signature.
As I waited for the bus on the corner, shivering not from cold but from adrenaline, my phone vibrated in my pocket.
It was a message from an unknown number.
I unlocked the screen, shielding it from the rain with my hand.
Just one line of text.
Wear the black dress. The one with the open back. I know you still have it.
I looked up at the top of the Sterling Plaza skyscraper, at the glowing windows on the fourteenth floor that looked like eyes gleaming in the darkness.
Gabriel Moretti didn't just want a translator. He wanted the one thing I'd fought my whole life not to give anyone: total control.
And the worst part wasn't the fear that made my hands tremble.
The worst part was the traitorous, heavy beating of my heart, pounding out a response my mind refused to accept.
The game had begun. And I was already losing.