Chapter 6: The first threat

Elena's pov

Questions ran through my mind. I opened my mouth to speak but the caller hung up.

I stood in the middle of the dining room with the phone still pressed to my ear, listening to nothing. The silence stretched for a long minute. The silence in the room felt like the bomb had gone off and no one was sure if it was safe to breathe yet.

For three years, three good years, I had believed my father was dead. I had mourned him, married while grieving for him and endured everything while Marcus and his mother and his sister turned my grief into a stone in my chest.

And now a thin, broken voice just said my name on the phone and then disappeared.

“Elena?” Damien’s voice cut through the silence.

I lowered the phone slowly, my hand shaking visibly.

“Who was that?” Adrian asked. He was watching me too closely, the way he always did, like he was trying to read a contract written in a language only he understood.

I looked at the three men standing in my dining room. Damien, Adrian, Roman. The men who had walked into my house at six in the morning with lawyers and a contract and handed me back my company. The same men I saved seven years ago. The ones who just made Marcus crawl on the floor and beg at my feet.

“It was my dad,” I said quietly.

Silence fell on the house once again.

Even Marcus, who was still on his knees in his wine stained suit, made an uncomfortable sound in the back of his throat. It was half a choke, half a sob. Mrs. Sterling, who had collapsed onto the stairs, went rigid. Clara, who had been screaming, stopped mid breath.

I did not look at any of them. I was looking at the phone in my hand like it might ring again if I stared hard enough.

Damien stepped forward. “Elena, that is not possible.”

I shot him a hot look, visibly irritated. I had spent three years being told what was and was not possible. I had spent three years being told to sit down, to be quiet, to let Marcus handle it, to not ask questions about the business that bore my name. I was done with that.

“Security,” I said, my voice sharp and clear. “Get him out. Get them all out of my house.”

I was looking at Marcus in annoyance.

Marcus scrambled backward. “Elena, please, please, I—”

Two security guards moved in from the hallway. They had been standing there since Damien arrived, waiting for an order. Marcus did not fight them. He let them pull him to his feet, still weeping as he reached for my hem and begged for a forgiveness I had no intention of giving.

“I want Clara and her mother out of my house as well.” I said to the security who returned after Marcus was safely out of my mansion.

Mrs Sterling scoffed and pulled her hands away from the guards.

“I can walk by myself.” She said walking in front of them. Clara followed as well, clearly defeated.

Damien watched this with a dark, satisfied expression for exactly three seconds, and then his attention snapped back to me. He stepped closer, his voice low and commanding that always made boardrooms go quiet.

“Elena, we need to talk about that call. You can't go.”

The tone hit the wrong nerve.

The annoyance I felt earlier came surging back. I had reclaimed my life back and no one, not even the CEO who saved me, could tell me what to do.

I turned to face him fully. My chin lifted and my eyes bright with a fury I had been swallowing for years.

“You can leave as well,” I said.

Damien blinked. “Elena—”

“Leave,” I said again, louder this time. “Saving my company does not give you the right to order me around.”

The words landed like a slap. Adrian went still. Roman, who had been silent by the window, finally turned to look at me.

Damien’s jaw tightened. “I am trying to protect you.”

“I did not ask you to protect me,” I said. “I asked you to leave.”

Roman stepped forward, his voice gentler than Damien’s, but still urgent. “Elena, going after that call alone is not a good idea. Whoever called you, they want you to come to them. Let us investigate it first. Give us the number and the details. Let us check if it is real.”

Adrian nodded. “He is right. If it is a trap—”

“Thank you,” I said, cutting him off. I said it politely, but my tone was final. The same tone I used seven years ago in that boardroom that had made my father go against powerful families to save three strangers’ companies. The tone of a woman who had made a decision and would not be moved. “Thank you for what you did this morning. But I need you to leave. Now.”

I turned to leave, expecting them to be gone by the time I returned from upstairs. I had a file to read and a company to catch up on. I needed to find that phone number to trace myself and I didn't need three billionaires hovering over me like I was a child who could not be trusted with my own life.

But Damien, being possessive, being Damien, grabbed my hand.

His fingers closed around my wrist, not hard enough to hurt, but firm enough that I could not pretend it did not happen. I stopped.

“Do you really want me to leave?” he asked.

For a moment, I felt a jolt of electricity run through my body from the place where his hand touched my skin straight up my arm and into my chest. The same way I felt last night when he walked into my home and held my hand like I was the only person in the room who mattered. It was terrifying and familiar but completely unwanted, and it took everything in me not to lean into it.

I looked down at his hand, then up at his face. His eyes were dark and furious laced with something else.

“Yes,” I said. “I want you to leave.”

It cost me more than I would ever admit to say it.

I expected him to shout but instead, he let go of my hand like it burned and stormed off in anger, his footsteps echoing down the hallway. The front door slammed so hard the crystal in the dining room rattled.

Adrian and Roman followed shortly afterwards. Adrian paused at the door and looked back at me, his expression unreadable. Roman did not look back at all.

In a few minutes I was all alone in the huge mansion.

I sat down at the dining table, slowly, like my legs had forgotten how to hold me up and released a deep breath I did not know I was holding.

Just last night, I could not ask questions about the business. Just last night, I had to stand silently at dinner while Clara mocked me and Mrs. Sterling treated me like a servant. Just last night, I was a wife who had no voice.

Now I had just sent the three men who returned my house and my company back to me away from my house.

I laughed, a small, broken sound that surprised me. I pressed my hands to my face.

“What have I just done?” I whispered into the thin air.