CHAPTER 18

Jamie woke to cold stone.

Chills beneath his back. Draft in the air. The taste of salt and iron from the sea still clinging to his tongue. For a long moment he didn’t know where he was—only that his body hurt in places he didn’t remember injuring, that his head throbbed like the sea was still inside it.

Then memory crashed back in.

The cove.

Lucas sinking.

Enzo’s hands pulling him away.

Matteo’s face when he realized that he was tricked.

Jamie sucked in a sharp breath and immediately regretted it. Pain flared along his ribs, his shoulder, his thigh—scrapes from the rocks, bruises from being dragged through water and sand. Someone had cleaned him. Bandaged him. Changed his clothes.

But they hadn’t stayed.

The room was small and windowless, lit by a single warm bulb in the ceiling. Stone walls. A heavy wooden door reinforced with iron. No handle on his side.

A cell.

“Lucas,” Jamie croaked, voice hoarse. “Lucas—?”

Nothing.

Panic bloomed fast and ugly.

He pushed himself upright, muscles screaming, and staggered to the metal door. He pounded once, then again, harder.

“Please,” he called. “Is he okay? Just tell me if he’s okay.”

Silence answered him.

Matteo didn’t come that day.

Nor the next.

Servants appeared without words—setting down trays of food Jamie barely touched, replacing bandages with careful, professional hands that never met his eyes. They treated his injuries efficiently, clinically, as if he were an object that needed maintenance rather than a person who had nearly watched his best friend die.

Each time someone entered, Jamie asked the same question.

“How is Lucas?”

No one answered.

By the third day, his voice was raw from it.

Matteo watched through the cameras.

He hated that he did.

Jamie looked smaller in confinement, curled in on himself more often than not, freckles standing out starkly against skin still pale from shock. Every time Jamie asked about Lucas, something in Matteo’s chest twisted sharply—an emotion he refused to name.

He felt anger first.

Sharp. Violent. Personal.

He had let Jamie close. Let himself believe the softness, the fear, the warmth were real. Let himself want.

And Jamie had drugged him.

Humiliated him.

Endangered Lucas.

Matteo slammed his fist into the desk, a glass of whiskey rattling.

“You are stupid,” he muttered. Not sure if he meant Jamie or himself.

Enzo stood nearby, arms crossed. “You’re taking this personally.”

“I don’t take betrayal lightly.”

“Yes, but, ” Enzo agreed. “ Jamie doesn't owe you any loyalty.”

Matteo shot him a glare. “He nearly drowned Lucas.”

“And yet,” Enzo said coolly, “you’re the one keeping him alive.”

Matteo said nothing.

On the fourth day, Jamie stopped eating altogether.

He sat on the edge of the narrow bed, knees pulled to his chest, staring at the door like it might open if he looked hard enough.

His thoughts spiraled.

Lucas hates me.

Lucas is dead.

Lucas woke up and asked where I was.

Each possibility felt worse than the last.

That night, the door finally opened.

Jamie flinched so hard he nearly fell off the bed.

Matteo stepped inside.

No suit. No whiskey in hand.

Just anger held tight behind controlled stillness.

Jamie stood on shaking legs. “Is Lucas alive?”

Matteo’s jaw tightened.

“Yes.”

Jamie’s knees buckled. Relief hit him so hard he had to grab the bedpost to stay upright. Tears blurred his vision before he could stop them.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “Please—can I see him?”

“No.”

Jamie’s breath stuttered. “Why?”

“Because you are the reason he nearly died,” Matteo said, voice low and lethal. “And because I don’t trust you.”

Jamie swallowed. “You shouldn’t. I didn't ask for your trust.”

Matteo stepped closer. “Do you know what angers me most?”

Jamie shook his head.

“That I believed you wanted me that night,” Matteo said. “When what you really were… was calculating.”

Jamie looked up, eyes red. He yelled “I was terrified!”

“And yet,” Matteo growled, “you still chose to manipulate me.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Jamie said brokenly. “I just wanted to leave.”

Matteo laughed once, sharp and humorless. “Now you will never leave.”

He turned toward the door, then paused.

“For what it’s worth,” he added, not looking back, “Lucas keeps asking for you.”

Jamie’s heart clenched painfully. “What do you tell him?”

Matteo hesitated.

“That you’re resting.”

The door closed again.

The lock slid into place.

Jamie sank back onto the bed, curling in on himself, the weight of isolation finally crushing down completely.

He had tried to escape monsters.

And instead, he had proven to them exactly why he needed to be caged.