CHAPTER 003

LYRA

I stand in the dimly lit bedroom, staring at his back. He knows ten million dollars is an impossible sum, and he doesn't care. He is willing to abandon me while I take the fall for his mistakes.

If I stay in this room another minute, I might just finish what Dom started, and I don’t think orange would sit well with my skin tone.

I pull an oversized hoodie over my head, yank the drawstrings tight to cover my swollen, bruised cheek, and shove a baseball cap low over my eyes. I snatch my keys from my tossed bag and step out into the evening air.

The sun is dipping below the horizon, painting the sky in deep shades of orange and bruised purple. I walk briskly, my sneakers slapping against the pavement as my mind spirals out of control.

Ten million dollars.

It is a number so large it doesn't even feel real. My adoptive parents couldn't raise a fraction of that if they sold their house and everything in it.

My dad's voice echoes in my head from months ago, sharp and full of concern: That boy is going to drag you down with him, Lyra.

I sink onto a wooden park bench facing the small lake, pulling my knees to my chest, and watch a raft of ducks glide across the glassy water, completely ignorant of the nightmare burning through my life.

Seven days. In one week, those men in leather cuts will walk back through my door and end my life.

I wipe my face with the sleeve of my hoodie, pulling the cap lower. Cops mean immediate death. Running means they hunt me down. Staying means a bullet. There is no way out.

I push myself off the bench, forcing my heavy legs to carry me back toward the apartment. I barely make it fifty steps along the quiet, tree-lined street when the sharp screech of rubber against asphalt cuts through the silence.

A sleek, matte-black van swerves sharply across the lane, cutting off the sidewalk directly in front of me. My heart leaps into my throat, and I turn to run back toward the park, but the van's side door slides open, and two men step onto the pavement.

They are in tailored black suits that fit like armor. Their movements are fluid, silent, and terrifyingly precise. I don't even get a clear look at their faces before one of them moves with blinding speed and a thick, dark cloth drops over my head, plunging my world into absolute pitch-blackness.

"Hey…!"

A hand covers my mouth, suffocating my scream, and my feet leave the ground as I am hoisted into the air like a ragdoll. I kick wildly, my fist striking solid, unyielding muscle, but it doesn't even make him flinch.

I am thrown violently onto the hard floor of the vehicle, and the heavy side door slams shut with a deafening bang, locking me out of the world.

************************************************************

A deafening, low-frequency roar of industrial bass vibrates straight through the concrete floor, rattling the wooden frame of the chair and vibrating in my chest.

Above me, a blinding spotlight burns hot against my closed eyelids, searing white light straight through to my retinas. I try to lift my hand to shield my face, but my arm violently snaps taut.

Coarse hemp rope bites into my wrists, grinding against bone. I thrash against the wooden frame, but the restraints only pull tighter, digging into raw flesh until a hot, slick trickles down my palms. My ankles are pinned just as tight, locked flat against the chair legs.

The black van. The cloth over my head. The hands like steel...

"Help! Somebody... Heeelppp!!!!" My voice tears halfway through the scream, my vocal cords feeling like shredded paper. The sound comes out nothing more than a raspy scrape, swallowed by the wall of blaring noise.

I pull against the ropes again, twisting my hands until my skin splits, but the industrial knots don't yield a single inch.

They lied. Dom and his men didn't wait seven days. The second I stepped out of my apartment, they hunted me down like an animal.

"You said... you said seven days..." I choke out, but the words turn into a silent, breathless gasp as tears track down my cheeks, evaporating almost instantly under the suffocating heat of the lamp overhead.

Somewhere in the darkness beyond the light, a floorboard creaks and a low, muffled chuckle floats through the bass.

For hours, the room remains a pressure cooker of heat and sound. The bass hums through my skull until my teeth ache. The light scorches my skin. I pull at the ropes until my wrists are slick with my own blood, the metallic scent mixing with the stale, humid air. My throat turns to dust, and every attempt to call for help dies as an empty, rattling cough in my chest.

Eventually, my muscles give out, and my chin drops against my chest, my head pounding with a heavy, rhythmic throb. My mind drifts into a grey, hazy void, praying for the noise to stop, praying for the floor to open up and take me out of my misery.

Whoever is out there must have heard me because, suddenly, the music cuts, and the silence that follows presses against my eardrums like a heavy physical weight.

The white spotlight dies as well, replaced by a single, sickly yellow bulb dangling from an exposed wire high above.

I twitch my fingers, and a sharp flare of agony shoots up my forearms. The blood on my wrists has dried, gluing my skin to the rough fibers of the rope. I force my head up, my neck muscles screaming under the strain as my vision slowly adjusts to the dim gloom.

I am sitting in the center of a vast, windowless room. The air is thick with the heavy stench of damp mold, wet iron, and decay, and it hangs in the back of my throat like ash.

Clink. A sound cuts through the quiet.

My stomach drops into a bottomless pit, cold sweat breaks out along my spine, and the fine hairs on my arms stand straight up as a wave of pure paranoia washes over me.

"Is... anyone there?"

No response.

Twenty feet ahead, deep in the shadows where the yellow light fails to reach, something moves.

Blood roars in my ears, forcing me to strain against the ropes, my knuckles turning pale as I clutch the arms of the wooden seat.

"Please," I choke out, staring blindly into the dark. "You said seven days... I'm trying... just let me go..."

Nothing. Just the slow, steady rhythm of breathing from the dark.

"Give me a week... please..."

"Enough with the pleading." A voice cuts through the room like a steel blade. It’s low, gravelly, and icy smooth, delivered with a quiet, absolute authority that makes my jaw lock shut.

"If I have to listen to your voice rasp for one more second, I will tear that tongue out of your mouth." A boot heel clicks softly against the concrete, and he steps out of the shadows and into the dim light.

Ice floods my chest, freezing the breath right in my throat.

He doesn't look like Dom, Jax, or any other man I've laid eyes on on this planet. He isn’t wearing any leather, skull rings, or a bandana on his head. He looks like a creature carved from dark, expensive art, impossibly, unnaturally lethal.

He is broad-shouldered and lean, dressed in a bespoke charcoal suit that fits his frame like armor. His black leather boots are polished to a spotless mirror shine, stepping effortlessly over the filthy, dust-covered floorboards.

One hand rests casually in his pocket. In the other, he holds a heavy crystal tumbler filled with clear liquid that coats the sides like thin syrup. It carries the faint, crisp scent of winter air and ethanol, which cuts straight through the smell of rot in the room.

Dark, intricate ink creeps out from the cuffs of his white dress shirt, trailing over his knuckles and snaking up the thick column of his throat, disappearing beneath a jawline sharp enough to slice glass.

My gaze travels up to his face, and my breath catches in a painful hitch.

Tanned skin. A dark, immaculately trimmed beard framing full, firm lips that curve into a faint, merciless line. But it's his eyes that send a jolt of pure terror straight down my spine.

They are a pale, striking ice-blue, completely devoid of warmth, empathy, or humanity. Looking into them is like staring into a frozen abyss.

He stands over me, towering like an executioner, holding his glass with a calm, casual indifference that makes my skin crawl. He doesn't look angry. He looks bored. And that boredom is the most terrifying thing I have ever seen.

My lips part, but the memory of his threat seals my throat shut.

He slowly lowers his gaze, scanning me from head to toe. His eyes linger on the blood matting my hair, the torn fabric of my hoodie, the raw, bleeding skin around my bound wrists, and finally my bare, dirt-smudged feet resting on the concrete.

He takes a slow, unhurried sip of his drink, the ice clinking softly against his teeth before he lowers the glass.

"You're a remarkably good actor," he says softly, leaning down, his blue eyes narrowing into dangerous slits. "I'll give you that. For a second, I almost believed this pathetic little innocent act."

I shake my head, my raw throat straining as I force out a raspy, desperate whisper. "I'm not acting... You have to believe me. I swore I’d pay the money back in seven days... Your people agreed..."

His dark brows draw together, and a tiny, almost imperceptible flicker of calculation passes behind those icy eyes before it is instantly replaced by that same cold, impenetrable stone.

“What people? And what is this you keep saying you’ll pay back?”

Wait, am I not here for Declan’s debt? Is he not the boss of the people who were at the house? Because if he is not... then why the hell am I here? Why have I been captured?