4. The Threat & The Interrogation

Elena’s POV

I didn’t sleep.

The room Gideon led me to was bigger than the bedroom I had shared with Mark, and colder. A bed made with crisp gray sheets. A narrow window sealed behind iron bars disguised as decoration. A bathroom with a lock on the inside, which I found almost more frightening than a lock on the outside. It meant they didn’t care whether I locked myself in. There was nowhere for me to go.

I sat on the edge of the mattress all night with my coat still on, listening to the house breathe. Footsteps. A low voice through the wall. Once, laughter, rough and male, that made my whole body go rigid until it faded.

Broken goods. Trash.

The words had followed me down the corridor and settled behind my ribs like the bruise. What stupid thing was wrong with me, that of everything that had happened, that was the part I couldn’t stop turning over? A man had been about to use me, and I had shaken like a leaf, and then he had looked at me and decided I wasn’t worth the trouble. And some pathetic, starved part of me was hurt.

I pressed my fist against my mouth until the feeling passed.

At dawn, a tray was left for me on the small table. Toast. Eggs. Coffee in a heavy white mug. I stared at it for a long time. Mark had always said food was a privilege, that I could eat when I’d earned it. I didn’t touch a crumb.

The door opened at eight.

I was on my feet before I knew I’d moved, back pressed against the wall, hands clasped in front of me, eyes on the floor. Five years had built that posture into my bones.

Jax stepped in and shut the door behind him. He wore a dark shirt, open at the collar, sleeves rolled. No coat. No weapon that I could see, which somehow made it worse. He didn’t need one.

His eyes went to the untouched tray. Something flickered across his face, too fast to name.

“You didn’t eat.”

“I wasn’t hungry.”

“That wasn’t a question.” He pulled out the chair at the small desk and sat, one ankle across his knee, entirely at ease, as if the room were his, which it was. As if I were. “Sit.”

I sat on the edge of the bed, as far from him as the room allowed.

“How far did you go in school?”

It was so far from what I had braced for that I stared at him. “What?”

“Education, Elena. Where did you stop?”

“I… two years of college. Business. Then I worked.” My voice was a thread. “At a freight company. In the office. Before.”

“Before Mark.”

“Yes.”

“And you left that for him.” He said it flatly, but I felt the weight of it settle. “Five years. Why didn’t you leave him?”

The question hit me in the chest. Nobody had ever asked it. Not once. My mother had told me to try harder. My friends had faded away before they could ask. I opened my mouth and the truth came out in a whisper.

“I tried. Once.” I stared at my knees. “The second year. I took a bus to my mother’s. I was there four days.” My throat tightened. “Mark came with flowers. He cried. He told her I’d been unwell. That I’d been making things up. She believed him. She thanked him.” A wet laugh escaped me. “He drove me home. He didn’t say anything the whole way. And then we got inside.”

I couldn’t finish. I didn’t have to.

He kept my passport, my birth certificate, everything, in the safe in his study. I had no money. No friends left who would take my call. No one who would believe me. After that day I learned that the door was never locked, because I had stopped looking for it.

Silence stretched. I made myself look up.

Jax was watching me with no expression at all, but his hand on his knee had curled into a fist.

“A man like that doesn’t need a lock,” he said quietly. “He just breaks you until you stop reaching for the door.”

The words went through me like a blade, and I didn’t know why they hurt so much. Because they were true. Because he was the first person in five years to say it out loud, and he had said it in the same voice he used for everything else, like it was nothing, like it was simply a fact.

Tears burned my eyes. I blinked them back furiously. Don’t. Not in front of him.

He stood. “Gideon brought your husband’s laptop and his papers this morning. They’re in my office.” He said it as if announcing the weather. “Mark hid money somewhere. Men like him always do. You lived with him five years. You will find it.”

The room tilted. “I don’t… I don’t know anything. He never let me see—”

“Then you’ll learn.”

Something broke loose in my chest. Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Maybe it was the fear that had been pressing on me for twelve hours, finally finding a crack. The words came out before I could stop them.

“Why?”

His eyebrows lifted slightly.

“Why do I have to pay for this?” My voice shook, climbing. “I didn’t borrow your money. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t know. I’ve never done anything except what he told me to, and now I’m here and I’m… I’m supposed to…” I couldn’t breathe. “And if I can’t find it? If I can’t do what you want, what then? Are you going to give me to your men? Is that what happens? I’ll be… I’ll be…”

I couldn’t say it. I pressed both hands over my mouth, shaking so hard the bed creaked.

Jax went completely still.

When he spoke, his voice had dropped into something low and terrible, and I realized I had made a mistake. Not the kind Mark punished. A different kind.

“Say that again.”

I cringed away, and he crossed the room in three strides. I squeezed my eyes shut. The blow didn’t come. He stopped in front of me, close enough that I felt the heat of his anger like a physical thing.

“Look at me.”

I looked.

His eyes were black with something I had never seen in a man’s face before. It wasn’t hunger. It was offense, cold and total.

“I run an empire,” he said, very softly. “I don’t run a whorehouse. If you think the men in this house would be given a woman to pass around like a bottle, you’ve confused me with Mark.” His jaw flexed. “I don’t share what’s mine.”

What’s mine. The words rolled through me and I couldn’t tell if they were a threat or a promise. Maybe in his world they were the same thing.

“Understand this, Elena, because I’ll say it once.” He leaned down until his face was level with mine. “No one under this roof will ever lay a finger on you. Not my men. Not my guests. Not anyone. If one of them looks at you wrong, I will know before you do. You answer to me. Only me.”

“Why?” I whispered. It was barely a sound.

“Because you belong to me now,” he said. “Not to Mark. Not to them.”

There was nothing gentle in it. No kindness. It was a statement of ownership, flat and absolute. And yet something inside me, some cracked, exhausted thing, unclenched for the first time in twelve hours.

I hated that, too.

He straightened, turned, and walked to the door. His hand on the handle, he paused without looking back.

“The laptop is on my desk. Find where Mark hid his money. You have until midnight.”

“And if I don’t?”

Now he looked at me, and the black eyes were dead calm.

“Then we’ll discuss the alternative.”

The door closed behind him. I sat frozen in the silence, my heart hammering, my hands shaking in my lap.

Midnight.

I had fourteen hours. And no idea where to even begin.