Chapter 14

Chapter 14: When the Lights Came Back

The first thing I felt was the cold.

Not the soft cold of air-conditioning or night air. This was metal against my cheek. Hard. Unforgiving. My eyelids were heavy, my tongue thick, and every muscle in my body ached like I had been dropped from a height.

I forced my eyes open.

I was lying on a concrete floor in a small, windowless room lit by a single bare bulb. My wrists were bound in front of me with thick black zip ties. My ankles too. The dress I had worn to the lake house was still on, but my jacket and shoes were gone. The tiny tracking device Damien had sewn into the hem was missing. So was the earpiece.

Panic rose fast and sharp.

“Damien?” My voice came out cracked and useless.

No answer.

I pushed myself up to a sitting position, heart slamming against my ribs. The room contained nothing except a metal chair bolted to the floor, a camera in the upper corner with a blinking red light, and a door that looked thick enough to stop a truck.

I was alone.

The last clear memory hit me in fragments: Serena’s smile, the USB drive, the rear door exploding open, the sting in my neck, Damien’s voice roaring my name as everything went black.

They had taken me right out from under him.

A speaker somewhere in the ceiling crackled to life. Serena’s voice poured into the room, calm and almost affectionate.

“Good morning, little sister. Or evening. Time is hard to track down here, isn’t it?”

I stared up at the camera. “Where am I?”

“Somewhere Damien will never find you in time,” she answered. “You should know he is tearing the city apart right now. It’s almost sweet. He’s already frozen three of my accounts and put a private bounty on every man who was at the lake house. Unfortunately for him, the people I work with don’t scare easily.”

My stomach twisted. “What do you want?”

“The same thing I wanted last night. Your signature. Your silence. Your complete removal from his life. Only now the price of refusal is higher.”

A screen I hadn’t noticed on the far wall flickered on. The image that appeared made my blood run cold.

Damien.

Live footage from what looked like one of his own security cameras. He was in the penthouse, surrounded by men, barking orders, eyes wild in a way I had never seen. In his hand was my missing earpiece.

Serena continued softly, “Every hour you refuse to cooperate, I will send him another piece of you. A photo. A short video. Something to remind him that while he plays war, his wife is completely at my mercy. And if he gets too close…” She paused. “I’ll make sure the full motel recording reaches the board and every news outlet before he can stop it.”

I swallowed hard. “You’re bluffing.”

“Am I?”

The screen changed.

A still image appeared: me, unconscious, lying on this same concrete floor. A second image followed—closer, showing the zip ties, the bare bulb, the helpless angle of my body. Then a third: a hand that wasn’t mine holding a pair of scissors near the neckline of my dress.

I felt sick.

“Sign the papers, Lila,” Serena said. “Tell him it’s over. Or the next image he receives will be far more intimate. And the video after that will destroy any chance either of you has at a future.”

The screen went black.

The speaker clicked off.

Silence pressed in around me, heavy and absolute.

I stared at the camera, at the red blinking light that meant someone was watching, and felt the full weight of every choice that had led me here. The bribe. The wedding. The nights I had let Damien claim me while my family called me a whore and a traitor. The stubborn hope that somehow love could be stronger than blood.

My family still hated me.

My sister still owned the worst pieces of my past.

And the man who had promised to burn the world for me was currently being fed proof that he had already failed.

I closed my eyes and whispered the only words that still felt true.

“Find me.”

On the other side of the city, Damien Voss stared at the first photograph that had just appeared on his phone—Lila bound and unconscious on cold concrete—and felt something inside him snap clean in half.

He looked up at Marcus, voice so quiet it was almost gentle.

“Activate everything. Every asset. Every favor. Every shadow we have ever used.”

His eyes were no longer human.

“I’m done playing by rules.”