Chapter four

Chapter 4

POV: Lumiere

The calendar on the damp brick wall of my cramped back office read December 14th, but time had stopped meaning anything to me ever since the world I thought I knew had shattered into a pool of crimson on my bakery floor.

Three painful days had passed since Mikael Koskivirta’s armored SUV had taken me into the freezing Helsinki night and carried me to his glass fortress in the Turku archipelago. But even surrounded by those cold, spotless walls overlooking the dark Baltic Sea, my mind kept dragging me back.

I wasn't looking at the grey waves crashing against the reinforced glass, I was remembering the ghosts.

I closed my eyes, my fingers tightening around the porcelain mug of bitter black coffee as my mind went back to a freezing Tuesday afternoon exactly ten years ago.

I was fourteen, starving, terrified, and wandering the slush-covered streets of Helsinki with barely fifty euros to my name. My parents' faces were still little more than blurred, half-burned memories in my mind, and the nightmares of that burning Italian villa were still fresh.

I had stumbled across a run-down, abandoned bakery with a peeling For Rent sign on the door in a quiet, historic part of the city.

The old landlord, a reclusive man named Arvi, looked at my trembling hands, my hollow cheeks, and my dyed raven-black hair before giving me a monthly rent that seemed almost too good to be true.

Four hundred euros a month for a three-story building with a commercial kitchen and a small living loft upstairs.

I had cried with relief right there on the dusty floorboards. For the first time, I thought maybe life had finally given me a chance.

I signed the lease with a borrowed pen, convinced I had somehow managed to escape the cruel odds stacked against me.

A sharp, rhythmic knock against the heavy oak door of my island suite pulled me out of the memory.

"Enter," I called, my voice rough from barely speaking.

The heavy wooden door opened silently, Mikael stepped inside. His tall frame immediately filled the doorway, blocking part of the pale daylight coming through the floor-to-ceiling windows. He wore a charcoal cashmere turtleneck that fit closely across his broad chest and shoulders. His silver-blonde hair was slightly messy from the coastal wind, but his ice-grey eyes were as sharp as ever.

He didn't say anything at first, he walked toward the minimalist white table where I sat, his leather boots making quiet sounds against the hardwood floor.

In his right hand was a thick, yellowed manila folder tied with a faded red ribbon.

It looked completely out of place in the modern, high-tech luxury of the fortress.

"You've barely touched your breakfast," Mikael said. "I'm not hungry," I snapped, lifting my chin. "And staring at me like I'm something behind glass isn't going to make me hungry, Mr. Koskivirta."

A faint, humorless smirk touched the corner of his mouth.

For seventy-two hours, we'd been trapped in this strange battle of wills. His control against my desperate need to have some control over my own life. Every conversation seemed to end with one of us refusing to give the other an inch.

He didn't sit.

Instead, he dropped the manila folder onto the table between us.

"Open it."

"I'm not taking orders from you unless I absolutely have to," I replied. His eyes remained fixed on mine.

"Open it, Lumiere." His voice was low this time.

My hands trembled as I reached for the folder. I untied the faded red ribbon and opened the folder.

The first document was a commercial property lease, the paper was old and yellowed with age. I recognized Arvi's signature immediately, but there was another signature beside it.

My eyes moved to the legal transfer deed underneath.

December 14, 2016.

The exact day I had signed the lease ten years ago, my breath caugh instantly. I read the document again.

The bakery hadn't simply been rented to me by a kind old landlord.

The property had been purchased outright three weeks before I moved in by an obscure shell company registered in the Åland Islands. And that company traced its primary funding directly to the Pohjola syndicate.

Slowly, I lifted my eyes, Mikael was watching me.

"You..." My voice caught in my throat. "You didn't just find me three days ago when Jarkko walked into the bakery."

I swallowed hard.

"You put me there." "I didn't put you in a cage," Mikael said, he stepped closer. His body heat seemed to reach me before he did.

His hand came down onto the table beside the deed,"I built you a sanctuary." 

"A sanctuary?"a short, bitter laugh escaped me. "You bought my life ten years ago."

"You watched me through cameras. Every loaf of bread I baked. Every customer I smiled at. Every place I went. Every single step I took." I stared at him, barely recognizing the man in front of me. It was all a lie? I was just a puppet in your little game?"

"You were a target." The words came out sharply, For the first time, the calm control in his voice cracked. He leaned closer, his face only inches from mine. His ice-grey eyes held mine with an intensity that made my heart pound despite everything I was feeling.

"A fourteen-year-old girl smuggled out of a burning Italian slaughterhouse with a price on her head doesn't survive on the streets of Helsinki by luck, Lumiere."

His voice dropped.

"She survives because someone makes sure the men who destroyed her family never find her."

The air rushed out of my lungs. The room tilted sideways.

Every memory of the life I had built came crashing down the flour on my hands, the smell of yeast, the early mornings in the bakery, the pride I felt whenever I paid my own rent, suddenly felt like something I'd never truly owned. I had never been safe, I was been protected.

"Why?" I whispered, a tear slipped down my cheek."Why did you do this? Why hunt me down now and force me into this nightmare?"

Mikael's expression changed, his thumb lifted and caught the tear before it reached my jaw.

"Because the firewalls just failed," he murmured, his gaze dropping briefly to my lips before locking back onto my terrified eyes. "The men who burned your home found the coordinates today. And the only way to keep you alive... was to bind you to my side forever.”

Before I could understand what he meant, a sharp, screaming alarm tore through the fortress.

Red lights flashed across the room.

Outside, the dark Baltic waves disappeared beneath the pulsing crimson glow.