Blood Bought Safety

Elena doesn’t hear him coming.

The estate is quiet in that corpse-like way, every sound smothered, every breath stolen before it can escape. Gravel bites into the soles of her shoes as she crosses the inner courtyard, clutching her thin sweater like it could shield her from the night itself. The air reeks of night-blooming jasmine rotting on the vine and the damp rot of centuries-old stone. Peaceful. A lie.

She almost convinces herself she’s alone.

The hand that seizes her wrist is iron wrapped in leather, yanking her back so violently her shoulder cracks against the pillar. Bone grinds against stone. Pain detonates white-hot down her arm. Before the scream can claw out, a gloved palm slams over her mouth hard enough to bruise her lips, fingers digging into her cheeks like he’s already imagining crushing her windpipe if she makes a sound.

The knife appears next.

Thin. Surgical. Moonlight slides along the edge like liquid silver, promising precision. Her pulse hammers so viciously she tastes blood in her throat.

“Quiet,” the voice rasps against her ear. Not Dominic’s.

A stranger’s breath, hot and sour.

Terror rips through her like black fire.

“No,” she whispers, barely a breath, already broken.

He twists her wrist harder. Cartilage pops. Her knees buckle, the world slewing sideways—and then the night explodes.

A gunshot cracks the silence open like a skull.

The man convulses. The knife clatters uselessly to stone as Dominic slams into him from the shadows, driving him face-first into the pillar with a wet crunch of cartilage and teeth. No words. No warning. Just animal fury.

Elena reels backward, legs liquid, watching Dominic become something monstrous.

He’s terrifyingly efficient.

The attacker scrabbles for a hidden gun. Dominic wrenches the arm back until the joint gives with a sick, wet snap, bone splintering like dry wood. The scream is short, choked off when Dominic presses the muzzle to the base of the skull and fires.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Four.

Overkill. Deliberate. Each shot was a punctuation mark in blood.

The body slumps, skull blooming dark and glistening across pale stone. Blood pools fast, thick, arterial, spreading in obscene fingers toward her feet. The smell hits like copper and shit and charred meat.

Elena’s legs fold. She would’ve kissed the bloody ground if Dominic hadn’t caught her hands, bruising her upper arms, yanking her upright with a force that feels like ownership.

His chest heaves. Every muscle is steel-wound violence, trembling with the aftershocks of slaughter. His pupils are blown wide, black swallowing the irises.

“Did he touch you?” The question is gravel and razor wire.

She can’t speak. Throat locked in terror and something darker, something that coils low in her belly at the sight of him drenched in someone else’s death for her.

Dominic’s fingers dig deeper. Nails bite skin through fabric.

“Did. He. Touch. You.”

She jerks her head no, no, no, frantic, twice, three times.

“No,” she croaks, voice shredded.

Relief flickers across his face, raw, fierce, then drowns in something blacker. He exhales like a man surfacing from drowning, then seizes her chin. Hard. Tilting her face up until their eyes lock.

His thumb drags across her lower lip slowly, deliberately smearing a streak of the dead man’s blood he hadn’t bothered to wipe away. Warm. Sticky. Claiming.

“This,” he says, voice low and ruined, gesturing at the mangled corpse without breaking eye contact, “is what your life costs now.”

His grip flexes, testing the fragility of her jaw, like he’s reminding himself how easily he could snap it.

Then he releases her like she’s burning him.

“Inside.” A command carved from bone. He turns, already walking away, blood dripping from his sleeve in fat, dark drops.

She stumbles after him on numb legs. The corridor warps marble streaked with crimson reflections, walls closing like a throat. When the doors slam shut, the silence screams louder than the gun ever did.

Dominic stops at the sink. Stares at his hands.

Knuckles split open. Blood cakes under nails, smears up forearms, soaks cuffs black. He looks like he bathed in it.

He twists the faucet. Scrubs with violent, mechanical fury, soap foaming pink, then scarlet, then finally clear. The water can’t wash away the tremor in his shoulders, the way his jaw locks so tight she hears teeth grind.

“You weren’t supposed to be alone,” he says finally. Quiet. Deadly.

Not blame. Confession.

“I needed air,” she whispers. Her voice belongs to someone else, small, cracked. “I didn’.t”

“I don’t give a fuck what you needed.” He kills the water. Turns. Eyes like gunmetal. “In my world, you don’t need. You obey. You breathe when I allow it. You live because I haven’t decided to stop letting you.”

The words land like blows.

She straightens anyway. Spine steel despite the shaking.

“And I’m still breathing. Because you came.”

Something lethal sparks in his gaze: hunger, madness, possession.

“That isn’t protection,” he says, stepping into her space until her back hits the wall. No touch. Just presence suffocating, electric. “That’s me not being able to stand the thought of anyone else’s hands on what’s mine.”

He leans closer. Breath against her throat.

“They were watching. Waiting. Testing how far they could push before I painted the walls with them.” His voice drops to a murmur. “They found out.”

“Because of you,” she breathes accusation, surrender, truth.

Silence crashes down.

He studies her like prey. Like treasure. Like something he’ll kill to keep and kill again if it tries to leave.

“Yes,” he says softly. “Because every second you exist near me, you become more of a target. And every time someone tries to take you,” His hand lifts, fingers ghosting her throat light enough to tease, heavy enough to promise. “I’ll make the last one look merciful.”

He steps back abruptly.

“Guards. Constant. Two minimum. Even when you sleep. Even when you shower. Even when you think you’re alone in your own skin.”

A shiver crawls down her spine, not fear. Something worse. Something that pools hot and shameful between her thighs.

“And if I refuse?” she asks, voice barely there.

He laughs low, jagged, devoid of humor.

“You don’t refuse me, Elena. You survive me.”

She should hate him.

She does hate him.

But deeper beneath terror, beneath revulsion, a darker thing unfurls. Because when she looks at him now, still breathing violence, blood drying on his skin, eyes promising more death if anyone comes near her, she understands the truth she’s been running from.

Dominic doesn’t protect her out of duty.

He protects her because losing her would unmake him.

And he’d burn the world to ash before he let that happen.

He pauses at the door, hand braced on the frame. Knuckles are still red and weeping.

“You should be dead already,” he says without turning. “Any other man in my place would’ve put a bullet between your eyes the moment you became a weakness.”

Her heart stutters.

“But you didn’t.”

“No.” The word is quiet. Final.

“And that’s going to destroy us both.”

He leaves.

Elena collapses onto the bed’s edge. Adrenaline crashes, leaving her hollow and buzzing. She stares at her clean hands, unmarked, untouched, while the scent of copper lingers in her hair, on her skin, in her lungs.

Safety bought in gore.

Protection that tastes like possession.

And somewhere in the wreckage of her soul, a sick, secret part of her whispers:

She’s already his.

And she’s starting to want to stay that way.