CHAPTER SEVEN: THE WOLF IN SILK

I couldn’t sleep.

Again.

This mansion, for all its polished edges and priceless silence, pulsed with secrets. The walls didn’t just hold echoes—they whispered them. Lucien’s footsteps. The maids who moved like shadows. The ever-present tension that hung in the air like a noose waiting to tighten.

I padded down the hallway barefoot, robe clutched around me, the chill of the marble floor seeping up into my bones. I was tired of being watched, tired of being handled like a business deal, and most of all—I was tired of pretending this marriage wasn’t swallowing me whole.

A sliver of light spilled from the study.

Of course he’d be awake.

Lucien Blackwood didn’t sleep. He prowled.

I stood at the edge of the door, just watching him. He sat at the sleek black desk, his jacket discarded, shirt sleeves rolled up. The lamplight turned his features to cut glass—sharp, almost inhuman. His tie hung loose around his neck, collar open.

He wasn’t typing. Just staring at the screen, lost in something I couldn’t see.

I should’ve walked away.

Instead, I knocked gently on the doorframe.

His eyes flicked up. Calm. Controlled. Too controlled.

“You’re awake,” he said.

“So are you.”

He leaned back, hands folded behind his head. “Insomnia. Occupational hazard.”

“Which occupation? CEO? Or devil-in-designer-suits?”

A faint smirk curved his lips. “Is this your version of flirting?”

I stepped inside, arms crossed. “No. This is my version of not losing my mind.”

He nodded toward the whiskey decanter. “Drink?”

I hesitated, then poured myself a glass. Not because I wanted to drink with him—but because I needed to remember I had a spine.

He watched as I sat across from him. “You don’t like silence, do you?”

“No,” I said. “Silence usually means something’s about to break.”

Lucien sipped his whiskey slowly, eyes never leaving mine. “You look like your mother.”

The words landed like a slap.

My mother. Dead thirteen years. The one person who’d ever seen me, really seen me, and he was using her face like a weapon.

“You didn’t know her,” I snapped.

“I read the Sinclair file. She was beautiful. Smart. Loyal.”

“You mean she was collateral,” I muttered.

Lucien leaned forward. “She died. Your father buried himself in work. And now he’s handed you to me like a pawn on a glass board.”

“And you think that makes you the king?”

“I think it makes me the only one telling you the truth.”

I stood. “You don’t get to psychoanalyze me, Lucien.”

His gaze hardened. “You’re angry because you know I’m right.”

“You’re wrong,” I hissed. “I’m angry because I’m trapped in a house with a man who thinks emotional cruelty is foreplay.”

Something cracked in his expression—barely. A flicker of something I couldn’t name.

He rose slowly, each movement deliberate. Predatory.

He crossed the space between us until I could feel the heat radiating off his skin.

“You think I’m cruel?” he whispered.

“You are.”

“Then why haven’t you run?”

Because I couldn’t. Because this marriage wasn’t just a prison, it was my father’s salvation. Because, despite everything, there was a part of me—dark, shameful—that wanted to know what he tasted like in the dark.

“I don’t run from monsters,” I whispered. “I study them.”

He tilted his head. “Then you should know not to get too close. Even wolves bite.”

My pulse thundered in my ears. “I’m not afraid of you.”

He moved closer, so close I could feel his breath against my mouth.

“You should be.”

Then he kissed me.

It wasn’t tender. It wasn’t sweet. It was raw, chaotic, hungry. Like the space between us had become too charged to survive untouched.

I melted into it, hands knotting in his shirt, desperate to feel something real—something that didn’t smell like lies and control. His fingers dug into my waist, pulling me against him like he was trying to drown in the heat between us.

And I let him.

When we finally broke apart, my breath caught in my throat.

“This changes nothing,” I said.

Lucien’s voice was low. “It changes everything.”

I stepped back. “Not to me.”

He let me go, but his eyes never left mine. “Then stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re hoping I’m better than I am.”

I turned to leave, but froze when his voice followed me.

“Don’t trust anyone, Ivy. Not even the staff.”

I blinked. “What?”

But he said nothing more. Just poured another drink and stared back at his laptop like the conversation never happened.

I left his study with my skin still burning from his touch and a question twisting in my gut like a blade.

Why would he warn me?

And what the hell was I really walking into?

As Ivy returned to her room, her fingers brushing the lock on her door, she noticed something strange.

A drawer slightly open.

She hadn’t left it that way.

Inside—resting atop her folded lingerie—was a folded note in handwriting she didn’t recognize.

You’re not safe here. Trust no one. Not even him.

Her blood ran cold.