Chapter 8 — You Dont Owe Me Trust
POV: Gabriel
Elena's bedroom door wasn't locked.
I knew this with the same visceral certainty that told me the sun would rise in the east or that Richard Hale would embezzle funds at the first unsupervised opportunity.
It was a physical certainty, a gravitational weight pulling my body through the dark hallway of Blackwood Ridge at three in the morning.
I stopped in front of the solid wood.
The silence of the house was absolute, an acoustic box designed to amplify my own insanity. I could hear the faint hum of electricity in the walls, and if I concentrated hard enough—and God knows I was concentrating—I could swear I heard her breathing on the other side.
My hand hovered over the cold brushed steel handle.
She had said she was afraid I would stop. She had confessed, with that brutal, reckless honesty that was becoming her trademark, that my darkness didn't frighten her—it attracted her.
It was an invitation. More than that, it was permission.
If I turned that handle now, if I entered that room and slipped beneath the sheets where she was sleeping—wearing my clothes, smelling of my soap—there would be no resistance.
There would only be heat, and skin, and the consummation of the fever that had been cooking my brain since the moment I saw her photo in the dossier.
My fingers grazed the metal. Desire surged up my spine like a high-voltage discharge, tightening my lungs, hardening my body, demanding I act like the animal she'd accused me of being in the elevator.
Open it.
The voice in my head was primitive, stripped of legal logic.
Open it. Claim her. Mark the rest of her skin until there isn't an inch left that hasn't been touched by you.
I closed my eyes, resting my forehead against the cold wood of the door. The mental image of Elena—disheveled, sleepy, willing—was so vivid it ached in my chest.
But then the other voice emerged. The cold, analytical voice of the lawyer who never lost a case.
If you go in there, Richard Hale wins.
Because if I entered, if I crossed that final line, Elena would stop being an asset. She would stop being a protected witness and become an exploitable weakness. I would lose the ability to send her into the line of fire when necessary. And it would be necessary. Very soon.
Sex creates attachment. Attachment creates hesitation. Hesitation, in my world, creates corpses.
I took a deep breath, inhaling the smell of wood and wax, trying to purge the imaginary scent of her lavender.
I pulled my hand away from the handle as if the metal were burning.
It was the hardest thing I'd done in ten years. Harder than defending murderers, harder than burying my father, harder than building an empire from moral wreckage.
Turning my back on that unlocked door required a willpower that left me trembling and sweating in the cold hallway.
I walked back to my room, each step feeling like a defeat.
I didn't go in. I maintained control.
But as I lay in the empty, cold bed, staring at the concrete ceiling in the darkness, I knew it wasn't a victory. It was just a postponement. And the bill for that postponement would come with compound interest I wasn't sure I could pay.
Morning brought the rain back, a thin, miserable drizzle that transformed the forest into a blurred watercolor of gray and dark green.
I was already in the kitchen when Elena appeared.
She was no longer wearing my sweater. The armor had returned. She wore gray tailored pants and a black turtleneck, her hair pulled back in a severe ponytail that pulled her features taut, giving her a sharp, untouchable look.
But there were deep shadows under her eyes. She hadn't slept well. Maybe she'd lain awake, staring at the door, waiting for it to open.
The disappointment on her face when she saw me—dressed in a full suit, tie perfectly knotted, the mask of “Gabriel Moretti, Senior Partner” firmly in place—was subtle but cutting.
“The car is ready,” I announced, without a “good morning,” without questions about how she'd slept. “We'll grab coffee on the road. We need to get to the office before Richard.”
Elena walked to the coffee maker, poured herself a black coffee, and took a long sip before turning to me.
“You have a plan?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse, professional.
“I do.”
“And where do I fit into it?”
“You're the bait.”
She stopped with the cup halfway to her mouth. Her eyes narrowed.
“Explain.”
“Richard knows there was a translator. He knows someone saw the original documents before they were 'sanitized.
' What he doesn't know is how much you saw, or whether you understood the magnitude of what you were reading.” I checked my watch, adjusting my onyx cufflink.
“We're going to make him believe you're the weak link.
That you're scared, confused, and looking for a deal.”
“You want me to expose myself to him?”
“I want you to let him get close. Richard is a predator, Elena. If he senses fear, he attacks. And when he attacks, trying to buy you off or threaten you, he’ll make the mistake we need. He’ll expose himself.”
She set the cup in the sink with a loud clink of ceramic against metal.
“You’re throwing me into the lion’s den.”
“I am.” I walked over to her, stopping at a safe distance, resisting the magnetic pull to touch her neck, which I knew was marked beneath the turtleneck. “But I’ll be the tamer with the gun pointed at the lion’s head. I won’t let him touch you.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because if he touches you, I’ll kill him.”
The words came out calm, factual, without a hint of dramatic threat. Simply a statement of future intent.
Elena stared at me, searching for some sign of hesitation. She found none.
“Let’s go,” she said, grabbing her purse. “The sooner we finish this, the sooner I get my life back.”
We left the house without looking back. Blackwood Ridge became just glass and concrete again, an empty mausoleum where we almost made the mistake of being human.
The drive back to Ashford was silent. The radio was off. The only sound was the hum of tires on wet asphalt and the steady rhythm of the windshield wipers.
Elena looked out the window, watching the rural landscape give way to industrial suburbs and, finally, to the city’s steel skyline. She seemed tense, her hands clenched in her lap.
“Why didn’t you?” she asked suddenly, without turning her head.
I didn’t need to ask what she was talking about.
“Because I’m your lawyer, Elena. Not your lover.”
“That line got blurred when you pinned me against the elevator wall. It got blurred when you marked me like cattle.” She turned her head, and the fury in her eyes was magnificent. “Don’t use professional ethics as a shield now, Gabriel. Not after everything.”
I gripped the steering wheel, feeling the leather creak under my driving gloves.
“You want the truth?”
“I think I deserve at least that.”
“The truth is I didn’t because I knew you wanted me to.
” I glanced at her briefly, catching the shock on her face.
“And giving you what you want, right now, is dangerous. You’re seeking relief, Elena.
You want me to fuck you so the tension disappears, so the fear of what’s going to happen to your brother gets replaced by something else, anything else. ”
“That’s arrogance.”
“It’s behavioral analysis. You’re using desire as an escape mechanism.
And I…” A pause. I swallowed the bile of honesty.
“I’m not anyone’s escape. I’m the final destination.
If I go to your bed, it won’t be to comfort you.
It’ll be to destroy you and rebuild you in my image.
And you don’t have the emotional structure to withstand that right now.
Not with the prosecutor’s office breathing down your neck. ”
Elena was silent for a long time, processing the brutality of what I’d just said.
“You talk like you’re a god,” she murmured, turning back to the road. “Deciding what I can or can’t withstand.”
“I’m not a god. I’m just someone who knows the cost of things.”
We entered the tunnel leading to the financial district. The artificial yellow light from the sodium lamps bathed the car’s interior, casting long shadows across our faces.
“My mother died waiting for someone to save her,” I said. The words came out before I could stop them. I never talked about her. Never.
Elena turned completely in her seat, surprise evident in her posture.
“What?”
“You know about my father. The corrupt judge. The man who sold sentences.” I kept my eyes on the road, on the fixed point where the lights met.
“But no one talks about his wife. The woman who knew everything and did nothing because she believed that, deep down, he was a good man who was just ‘doing what was necessary.’”
I felt Elena’s gaze on me, heavy, curious.
“She got sick when I was twenty. Cancer. Treatable, if caught early. But she didn’t go to the doctor.
She waited. She waited for my father to notice, for him to take care of her.
She believed her devotion would be rewarded with care.
” I let out a short, bitter laugh. “She died in a public hospital room because my father had frozen her accounts to pay off a gambling debt to the local mafia.”
The silence in the car changed. It was no longer hostile but dense, laden with an old sadness.
“I’m sorry,” Elena whispered.
“Don’t be.” I looked at her, taking advantage of the red light.
“The lesson I took from it wasn’t about grief.
It was about debt. My mother believed that love created a debt of gratitude.
That if she loved enough, he owed her salvation.
She was wrong. Love doesn’t create debts, Elena. Power does. Money does. Fear does.”
The light turned green. I hit the gas.