CHAPTER 5

THE DARK

The guard's hand closes around Elian's arm before Salvatore finishes lowering his.

"No, wait." Elian twists back toward the table. "I didn't do anything, I don't know those men, please, just give me a minute to explain."

Salvatore doesn't look at him. He's already reaching for his phone, already somewhere else entirely.

"Take him." He says it without turning around. "I don't want to hear another word out of him tonight."

The guard hauls him out of the dining room and down a hall Elian hasn't seen before. Plainer walls. No staff lingering here.

"Please." Elian tries the guard instead, quieter now. "I swear I'm not one of them. If you'd just let me talk to him when he's calmed down…"

"Save your breath. Master's orders." The guard doesn't slow down.

They stop at a door set apart from the rest of the house. Heavy wood. No window. An iron bolt already fitted into the frame like it's been waiting for exactly this.

"Wait." Elian plants his feet. "Not in there, please, I'll do anything…"

The guard shoves the door open and pushes him through before he finishes the sentence.

Elian stumbles into the dark and catches himself on something cold and hard, a wall, a shelf, he can't tell.

"Wait, please!" He spins back toward the last thin edge of light around the guard's shape. "Don't, I'm begging you…"

The door shuts. The bolt slides home, final, and then there's nothing. No footsteps retreating. No voices. Just the dark, pressing in from every side, and Elian standing frozen in the middle of it with his heart slamming in his throat.

He's been afraid of the dark his whole life. He couldn't explain it if he tried. Twenty three years old, and he's never once let a room go fully black around him, always a lamp left on somewhere, a door cracked just enough to spill a thin line of light across the floor. He used to cry over it as a boy, hiding it from Matteo, from his mother, because being the fearful one in this family was its own kind of failure. He learned to hide it better. He never outgrew it.

"Hello?" His voice comes out small, swallowed instantly by the room. "Please, I need someone to open this door."

Nothing.

He puts a hand out and finds a wall, follows it until his fingers hit the seam of the door, and presses both palms flat against the wood.

"Please. Someone let me out. I don't know anything about the money, I'm not lying, please, just open the door."

Silence, and something in his chest tips straight over into panic.

He starts hitting the door.

"Let me out! Please, someone, anyone, I can't stay in here, let me out!"

His knuckles sting within minutes. He doesn't stop.

"Please!" His voice is cracking now, less words than raw sound. "I'm scared, someone let me out, please, please, please."

He doesn't know how long he keeps at it. Long enough that his voice goes hoarse and his hands ache all the way to his wrists, long enough that the room stops feeling like a room and starts feeling like something with no edges at all.

He slides down the door eventually, legs giving out, knees pulled to his chest, rocking slightly without meaning to. Tears come without permission. He presses the heel of his hand against his eyes.

"Please," he whispers now, to no one. "Please, someone, please."

Footsteps.

He goes rigid. Unhurried, coming down the hall toward him, and something close to hope claws up through his chest before he can stop it.

"Please." He's on his feet, palms flat against the door, cheek pressed close to the wood. "Please, is someone there? Whatever I did, I'm sorry, just let me out, please."

The footsteps slow. Stop.

Elian holds still, breath caught in his throat. Someone is standing right there, close enough that if the door weren't there he could reach out and touch them.

"Hello?" Careful now, almost afraid to hope too loud. "Please. I know you're there. Please just open the door."

On the other side of the wood, Salvatore doesn't move.

He tells himself he's only checking the bolt holds. That story doesn't survive the next thing he hears.

"I'm scared, someone let me out, please, please, please."

His jaw tightens. His uncle's voice rises up in the back of his skull, old and certain. Weakness is a door. Open it once, it never fully shuts again.

He should walk away.

The crying under Elian's words is raw, unguarded, nothing like the men Salvatore has put in that room before. None of them ever sounded like this.

His hand curls into a fist instead of reaching for the bolt.

He doesn't want this. He never wanted this. But if he opens that door tonight, Elian will spend the rest of this marriage believing there's always a door that opens if he cries hard enough, and Salvatore can't give him that, not with Dario's people circling, not with a house full of men watching to see if marriage has made him soft.

He steps back. Turns. Walks fast, so his own feet won't have time to argue with him.

"Wait." Elian's hands slap against the door, the sound chasing him down the hall. "Wait, please, don't go, please don't leave me in here!"

Salvatore doesn't stop. He doesn't let himself.

He doesn't stop walking at all until he reaches his study.

The decanter is already open before he's fully through the door. He pours two fingers and drinks it standing, doesn't bother with the chair, doesn't bother with anything but the burn going down. He pours a second before the first finishes settling.

He wasn't supposed to feel this. He built himself specifically not to feel this, brick by brick, for twenty years, and one night of crying through a locked door has cracked something he thought was finished being cracked.

He drinks the second glass slower than the first.

It doesn't help.

Behind him, down the hall, Elian is still alone with the dark, and the door, and the sound of his own breath breaking apart in his chest.