CHAPTER NINE: THE ELEVATOR THAT SHOULD HAVE NEVER MOVED

The second Daniel’s voice broke through the speaker, something inside me snapped awake, sharp and cold and trembling so hard it felt like my bones were vibrating. I didn’t even have time to think. My breath caught in my chest like a fist squeezing it shut. Damon was already moving. Fast. Too fast. His body shifted toward the door with a speed that felt dangerous.

“Stay behind me,” he said.

I nodded even though I wasn’t sure my legs would obey. The room felt tilted, like the floor had dipped under me. My fingertips tingled. I could hear the elevator chime faintly in the distance, muffled through glass and walls. I didn’t know if it was coming up or going down or if it was just my heartbeat pretending to be a sound.

Damon opened the office door and I followed, every step feeling too loud even though I barely made a sound. My lungs shook every time I drew in breath. I hated that he was seeing me like this. Fragile. Shaking. But I also hated how much worse it would feel to be alone right now.

The hallway outside was too bright. Too white. Too open. I felt exposed the second we stepped out. Damon reached for the elevator call button but stopped, jaw tightening, eyes narrowing as he listened. Something faint. A rattling sound. Muffled voices rising from the lower floors.

He turned to me. “Do not speak unless you have to.”

My heart slammed. “What if he comes up?”

“He will not reach you.”

His voice wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. It was quiet and lethal and terrifyingly certain.

We waited. Seconds stretched. I heard another elevator chime. This one closer. Sharp. Too sharp.

My breath hitched. “Damon.”

He raised a hand slightly, signaling me not to move. Not even an inch.

The light above the elevator flashed. Level seventeen. Level eighteen. Level nineteen. Coming up.

My whole body turned cold.

He’s coming up. He is coming up. He is really doing it. Caleb is actually coming up here because he thinks he still owns the right to talk to me. He thinks he can corner me. He thinks I am still that girl who would shrink into silence when he raised his voice.

The number blinked again.

Twenty.

Damon stepped closer to the elevator door, shoulders squared, posture shifting into something I had never seen on any man before. A controlled stillness that hummed with warning.

The elevator clicked.

My breath stopped.

The doors slid open.

I flinched.

It wasn’t Caleb.

Two of Damon’s security men stepped out first. Professional. Expressionless. One of them gave Damon a short nod, signaling something that made Damon’s shoulders ease half an inch but not more.

“He pushed past us on the lower floor,” the taller guard said. “We contained him before he reached the landing.”

My knees almost buckled with relief, but I stayed upright. Barely.

Damon’s jaw tightened. “Where is he now.”

“In holding. Daniel tried to deescalate but he got shoved.”

My chest tightened. “Is Daniel okay.”

“He’s fine, Miss Hale,” the guard said. “Just shaken.”

I exhaled shakily. I wanted to sit. I wanted to run. I wanted to scream. Instead, I stayed where I was, glued to the floor like fear had poured concrete around my ankles.

Damon turned to me. His eyes softened for the briefest moment before something harder slid over them again. “You are not meeting him.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to. I can’t.”

He stepped closer. “Good. Because I do.”

Those words hit deep in my stomach. Heavy. Final.

“Damon,” I whispered. “Please don’t start something with him. He’ll twist it. He’ll make it look like I caused it. He always does that. He’ll make me look crazy. Or dramatic. Or childish. Or—”

“He put hands on my staff,” Damon said quietly, cutting me off with a voice that was too calm for the fury simmering underneath it. “And he tried to force his way to you.”

I swallowed hard. “He used to get like that when he was angry. He never listened.”

Damon’s eyes darkened in a way that made my stomach flutter with something sharp and unfamiliar. “I am not him.”

My throat tightened. I nodded because there was nothing else to do. Snow was falling somewhere inside me, melting and freezing over and over.

He motioned toward his office. “Go back inside. Do not open the door for anyone other than me. Sit where I can see you from the security feed.”

Every instinct screamed to grab his sleeve and beg him not to leave me. But I didn’t. I walked back into the office on shaking legs and sat at the corner of the couch facing the cameras, just like he said.

He stood in the doorway a moment longer, eyes never leaving me.

“I’ll handle him,” he said.

I believed him.

He turned and walked away with the guards flanking him, disappearing down the hall and leaving me alone with my own racing pulse.

The silence was unbearable. Too big. Too thick. Every little sound felt amplified. A hum from the air vent. The faint click of cooling machinery. The distant murmur of voices on another floor. I stared at the camera light across the room, a tiny red glow watching me like a heartbeat.

Minutes passed. Maybe five. Maybe fifteen. I had no sense of time. My hands wouldn’t stop trembling. I curled them into the sleeves of my blouse just to hide it from myself.

Then something flickered on the office’s security monitor on Damon’s wall. A hallway camera. Two guards restraining Caleb. Damon standing dangerously still in front of him.

Caleb looked furious. His eyes wild. His shirt rumpled from where he’d been grabbed. He was shouting something I couldn’t hear, but the shape of my name on his mouth made my stomach twist in panic.

Then Damon stepped closer to him.

And Caleb stopped shouting.

He stopped moving entirely.

The tension in the image felt so thick I could almost feel it radiate through the screen. Damon was saying something. Low. Controlled. Deadly serious. Caleb’s face slackened for a moment, like the words had knocked the wind out of him.

Then the monitor glitched.

Just a flicker.

Just half a second of static before the image returned.

Except…

Except now there was something else on the screen.

Another camera feed.

The lobby.

And someone new had entered the building.

A woman.

Long hair.

Slim.

Dressed in dark clothes.

Her face partially shadowed.

The guard at the reception desk stepped toward her.

She lifted her head.

And the blood inside my veins froze.

Because she looked like me. Not exactly. Not perfectly. A little older. A little colder. But eerily, unmistakably similar.

My heart stumbled.

My breath vanished.

My skin prickled in terror.

The guard gestured for her name.

She parted her lips.

And the monitor picked up the audio just clearly enough for me to hear one word.

“Liana.”