Chapter 4: Before He Woke Up

(Keyla POV)

Voices.
That’s what pulled me out of sleep — low, somewhere in the corridor outside, two people talking in the muffled way hotel staff do when they’re trying not to wake guests. I was awake before I understood why I was panicking, and then I remembered, and the panic made complete sense.

I lay still for three seconds. Draxler was asleep on the other side of the bed, breathing slow, one hand loose near the edge of the mattress. His watch was on the nightstand. 5:04 a.m.

The voices outside got slightly closer, then stopped. A door somewhere down the corridor. Staff, probably. Maybe security.
Maybe someone looking for a missing bride.

I got up carefully, keeping my weight off the side of the mattress that might creak. The wedding dress was on the chair where I’d left it — there was no version of putting that back on quietly and quickly, so I didn’t try. Draxler’s robe was on the hook behind the bathroom door. I took it, pulled it over what I was wearing, and tied it fast.

The cufflink was still in my hand. I’d fallen asleep holding it, apparently, because there it was, pressed into my palm with a small red mark where the edge had cut in overnight. The engraved D caught the grey light coming through the gap in the curtains.

Draxler hadn’t stirred.

I knew I should leave it. It wasn’t mine, and keeping it made no logical sense and if anyone found it later it would only complicate things. I closed my fingers around it and put it in the robe pocket.

The veil was on the floor near the door — I’d need to take that. If it was found here the story would write itself and not in any version that ended well for me. I picked it up and something caught. The torn edge had snagged on the door hardware, a small decorative bracket near the hinge, and when I pulled it free a piece tore off and stayed behind, caught on the metal.

I looked at it. Reaching back meant crouching by the door, right where corridor light bled through the gap and those quiet voices still felt too close. The remaining scrap of veil was small enough that I could argue I hadn’t noticed it. Nobody could prove I had.

I left it.

The service corridor was the only option — the main hallway had cameras at both ends and I’d clocked them the night before without meaning to. I slipped out through the door at the back of the kitchen area attached to the suite, which opened into a narrow passage that smelled like industrial detergent and clean linen. A laundry cart sat against the wall. Somewhere further down, a radio crackled with static and someone’s voice reading off a room number.

My heel strap broke on the second step of the service stairwell. I pulled both shoes off and carried them, which meant cold concrete under my feet and the robe dragging slightly at the hem, but it was quieter and that mattered more.

Every step reminded me. The dull, sweet ache between my legs—deep and tender where he’d taken me so thoroughly. The faint bite mark on the inside of my thigh that throbbed when the robe brushed it. My nipples still hypersensitive under the thick terrycloth, rubbing with every movement. I could still smell him on my skin, that woody cologne mixed with sweat and sex, clinging to the collar of his own robe like a dirty secret.

God, I was still wet. Not just from him—some of it was still leaking down my thigh as I walked, slow and warm, a filthy reminder of how many times he’d come inside me. My body felt used in the best and worst way possible. Claimed. Marked. Like he’d rewritten something in me last night and I hadn’t asked for permission to erase it yet.

Shame burned hot up my neck, but so did something darker, something greedy that made my stomach clench remembering the way he’d pinned my wrist and growled my name like it belonged to him now. I hated how much I liked it. Hated how part of me wanted to turn around, crawl back into that bed, and let him do it all over again.

Sunrise was starting to come through a narrow window on the landing between floors — pale, grey, completely indifferent to the fact that my wedding was supposed to happen yesterday and didn’t. I stopped there for maybe four seconds, not for any sentimental reason, just because my legs needed it.

Then I kept going.

At the ground floor I found a service exit that opened onto a side street. Before I pushed through it I took my phone out, powered it down, and popped the SIM with the edge of my thumbnail. Dropped the SIM into the laundry cart I passed on the way out. The phone itself went into the robe pocket next to the cufflink.

The door opened. Cold morning air. A street that didn’t know anything about Churchill weddings or Floor 27 or any of it.

I walked.

Inside the suite, the door settled back into its frame.

Draxler’s hand moved first — not reaching, just shifting, the automatic adjustment of someone whose sleep had registered a change in the room. Then his eyes opened.

The other side of the bed was empty. He looked at it for a moment without moving.

Then he looked at the floor near the door.
A small piece of torn veil had caught on the door bracket, white lace against the dark wood, the kind of thing you’d miss if you weren’t looking for it. He was looking for it.

He sat up slowly. Reached for his watch. 5:09 a.m.

The whiskey glass was still on the side table, half full. The keycard she’d arrived with was gone. His robe was gone. One cufflink was on the nightstand where he’d left it. The other was not.

Draxler picked up the remaining cufflink and held it for a moment, then set it back down.

His phone stayed where it was. Calling the front desk would have been easy. So would walking out after her. He did neither.

He just sat there in the grey morning light, his attention fixed on the scrap of lace. The quiet pressed in, thick with the scent of her still on the sheets, on his skin, in his fucking lungs. A slow, ugly satisfaction curled low in his chest—mixed with something sharper, meaner. She ran. Of course she ran. But she took his cufflink. And left a piece of herself behind.

He smiled, small and dangerous in the half-dark. Let her run for now.