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SMOKE AND STEEL

Penulis: Lizzy
last update Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-08-01 22:07:24

Darkness swallowed the room like a breath held too long.

Aria backed away from the locked door, palms slick with sweat. The faint scent of smoke had thickened now—no longer a whisper, but a warning. It coiled into the corners of the old servant quarters like a snake hunting in silence.

She pressed her ear to the wood.

Nothing.

No footsteps. No voices. Just the eerie crackle of something burning far above.

“Luciano,” she whispered, though she knew he couldn’t hear her.

She looked around, wild-eyed. There had to be another way out.

There wasn’t.

The small room had been meant to hide servants, not save them. No windows. Stone walls. A single locked door. And now, the air felt tighter, as if the fire had reached its fingers down into the foundation.

Aria paced, her heart a metronome of panic.

Clara. Where was Clara?

Where was anyone?

She grabbed the kettle on the shelf and slammed it against the doorknob. Once. Twice. The clang echoed like a scream—but the door didn’t budge. Her arms shoo
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  • BOUGHT,TAMED AND TAKEN    QUIET BEFORE THE STORM

    The jet sliced through the clouds like a blade, silent except for the faint hum of engines and the occasional clink of ice settling in a glass. Aria sat by the window, arms wrapped around herself as the Alps rose beneath them—cold, sharp, merciless.Zurich lay not far now.Luciano hadn’t said a word in hours. He sat across from her, legs wide, hands clasped together as if holding something invisible in his grasp. His gun sat on the seat beside him, within reach but untouched.Aria broke the silence.“You haven’t told me what you’re going to say to him.”Luciano’s gaze remained locked on the clouds. “That depends on whether he walks into that room as my father… or as my enemy.”“Do you believe he’s really alive?”“I didn’t,” he said, finally turning to face her. “But now I do. And that changes everything.”A shadow passed across his features. Aria knew that look. The one he wore when he was calculating outcomes, loss, leverage. It wasn’t just a meeting. It was a battle with a man who’d

  • BOUGHT,TAMED AND TAKEN    THE WEIGHT OF TRUTH

    The silence in the room was deafening.Aria sat on the velvet couch, her knees drawn to her chest, the oversized robe Luciano had given her wrapped tight around her frame. Her hair was still damp from the cold shower she’d taken, as if she could wash away what she’d heard—what she’d seen. But nothing could rinse it off.Luciano’s father—Don Emilio Moretti—was alive.Luciano stood by the bar, his back to her. One hand clutched a crystal tumbler filled with dark scotch. He hadn’t taken a sip. Not since Isadora had left hours ago, her heels clicking against marble like war drums.“Say something,” Aria whispered, her voice hoarse.He didn’t turn. “What do you want me to say?”“That you’re not going to spiral again. That this time, you’ll let me in.”He exhaled—sharp, jagged. “My father was supposed to be dead. I buried what was left of him in a sealed casket. For years, I’ve lived like he was a ghost that haunted me.”“Luciano…”“Do you understand what this means?” He finally turned, eyes

  • BOUGHT,TAMED AND TAKEN    THE MEMORY THAT BLEEDS

    Aria sat stiffly at the war room table, her knuckles white where they gripped the edge. The entire estate buzzed with alarms now silenced, and the cold clarity of threat hung heavy in the air. Screens blinked with updated feeds. Guards were being repositioned. Blood was being mopped off the marble in some distant hallway.But nothing, not even the presence of safety, could quiet the noise in her head.Luciano stood beside her, one hand resting protectively on her shoulder. His other held the message they’d taken off the guard’s corpse—written in blood, on a torn page of an old book.The words scrawled across the page were unmistakable:She remembers what she was made for.“What does it mean?” Aria asked finally, her voice quieter than a whisper.No one in the room answered right away.Isadora shifted on her feet near the screens, arms crossed tightly. Mateo leaned against the back wall, eyes dark and unreadable.Luciano answered without looking at her. “I think he’s talking about your

  • BOUGHT,TAMED AND TAKEN    BENEATH THE SURFACE

    Aria’s heart slammed against her ribs, each beat echoing louder in the suffocating silence. The screen remained black, the faint mechanical hum of the vault’s systems eerily absent. But it was the voice—that low, gravel-slick whisper—that rooted her to the cold concrete floor.“You should’ve stayed mine.”She spun toward the corner where the sound had hissed from the ceiling speaker. “Show yourself,” she said, though her voice trembled more than she wanted.No response.Her fingers hovered near the emergency panel on the far wall. But it wasn’t lit. Disabled. Just like everything else.She grabbed a knife from one of the weapon racks, her fingers white-knuckled. She moved with her back to the wall, eyes darting across the room—corners, ceiling vents, behind shelves. There was nowhere to hide. The room was small, sterile, impenetrable.And yet someone—or something—was in here with her.The lights flickered once. Twice. Then shut off completely.Total darkness.Aria clamped a hand over

  • BOUGHT,TAMED AND TAKEN    WHAT THE DARKNESS HIDES

    The world slowed.Outside the window, beneath the moonlit shroud of trees, the shadow didn’t move—but Aria’s breath caught as if it had already stepped inside her bones. The glass pane between them suddenly felt too thin, too breakable.Luciano pulled her behind him in a blink, one arm tight around her waist as he turned toward Mateo. “Get eyes on that figure. Now.”Mateo was already speaking into his comms, barking orders. A flurry of guards rushed into motion, some storming out toward the north gate, others sweeping the hallways.Luciano turned back to the window just as the figure stepped back into the trees and vanished.He didn’t wait. He dragged Aria toward the hallway, tension thick in every movement. “We’re going underground.”She struggled to keep pace. “Where are we going?”“There’s a vault below the estate,” he said without looking back. “One of the few places only I can access. No signal. No sight lines. He won’t find you there.”“But—what about your people? Your sister? L

  • BOUGHT,TAMED AND TAKEN    THE VOICE OF A GHOST

    The pitch-black silence swallowed the room whole.No one moved. No one breathed.Antonio Moretti’s voice had slithered into their ears like poison—low, calm, measured… and real.Alive.Luciano’s hand instinctively went to Aria’s waist, pulling her close, shielding her with his body as the darkness pressed in around them.Aria could barely hear her own thoughts over the pounding of her heart.The voice from the speaker repeated, now softer—mocking.“You took everything from me once. And now you’ve brought it all back together. How poetic.”Then static.Then silence.The emergency backup lights flickered to life a few seconds later, casting the dining hall in a sickly red glow. Shadows crawled along the walls. The air smelled faintly of electricity and fear.Isadora stood calmly at the end of the table, her expression unreadable, like she’d known this moment was coming.Luciano turned to her slowly. “How long have you been in contact with him?”She didn’t answer.Instead, she smiled fai

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