All Chapters of THE SONGBIRDS CAGE: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

95 Chapters

Chapter 21: No

Wren’s POVThe car remains outside for eleven seconds.Eleven.I count every one.Then it pulls away, its taillights disappearing down the street.Dario doesn’t move.Not until the car is completely gone.His hand remains braced against the wall beside the window, his breathing controlled.Too controlled.“Probably nothing,” he says.But he doesn’t sound convinced.“A neighbor’s guest. Maybe a lost driver.”“But you don’t believe that.”He looks at me.“No.”I lower myself into the nearest chair, my hip throbbing from the strain of the night.“This is exactly why I can’t accept your protection.”He doesn’t answer.“Protection from you means living inside your world,” I continue. “Cars outside my window. Men knowing things about me they have no right to know. People are watching me.”I shake my head.“I spent six years building a life so I wouldn’t have to be afraid like this.”“And now you’re afraid again.”His voice is quiet.The worst part is that he’s right.“Whether you accept my

Last Updated : 2026-08-26

Chapter 22: THE ATTACK

Wren’s POVI don’t sleep.I spend most of the night sitting upright with the lights on, staring at the message from the unknown number. I read the same seventeen words until they stop looking like a threat and start looking like meaningless shapes on a screen.By morning, I’ve convinced myself it’s a bluff.That’s what people do when the truth is too frightening. They choose the explanation that lets them breathe.Vas is trying to scare me. That’s all.So that evening, I go to The Blue Note.Staying home feels like surrendering. I spent six years building a quiet life for myself, and I’m not going to let one terrifying night tear it apart.Marek takes one look at my face and doesn’t ask questions. He simply pours me a glass of water, places it beside the piano, and leaves me alone.For two hours, I play.And for those two hours, everything feels normal.Almost.It’s close to midnight when I finally leave.The walk home takes twenty-six minutes. My hip complains with every step, but I

Last Updated : 2026-08-26

Chapter 23: SOMEONE’S WATCHING

Wren’s POVTalia arrives before the police finish taking my statement.She’s wearing pyjamas beneath a coat, her hair a mess, and the second she sees me, she wraps me in a hug so tight my cane nearly slips from my hand.“I came as fast as I could,” she says. “You said someone attacked you. Wren, are you okay?”“I’m fine.”It’s mostly true.My palms are scraped, my hip is throbbing, and I’m exhausted, but I’m alive.Someone saved me.I don’t tell her who.“Did you see his face?”“No.”That’s not exactly a lie.I didn’t see him clearly.But I know his name.And somehow, saying it aloud feels dangerous.The police take my statement and eventually tell me the attacker escaped before they arrived. Apparently, he was conscious enough to get away.That bothers me.It bothers me even more when I remember the smile on his face.Talia stays the night.We sit together long after the police leave, and sometime after three in the morning, I finally tell her about the flower.The note.The gala.Ki

Last Updated : 2026-08-26

Chapter 24: SHARED ASSET

Vas’s POVThe Don doesn’t offer me a drink.That tells me everything I need to know.He gestures toward the chair opposite his desk, and I sit.The study is quiet except for the faint ticking of the antique clock on the wall. I’ve been in this room enough times to know what the silence usually means. The Don is thinking. Measuring. Deciding whether the man sitting across from him is useful or dangerous.Today, I suspect I’m being measured for both.“I heard about the incident on Delancy Street,” he says.“I assumed you had.”“My son tells me you’re the one who brought the girl to my gala.”“I am.”“And two nights later, someone attacks her on my territory.”His eyes narrow.“Explain.”I’ve rehearsed this conversation since the moment I heard about the attack. Every possible question. Every accusation. Every way he could interpret my involvement.None of it makes sitting under his stare any easier.“The attack proves my suspicions were correct.”“Which suspicions?”“She’s valuable.”Th

Last Updated : 2026-08-26

Chapter 25: THE DON’S WORD

The Don's POV:I have built this house on a single principle my own father taught me before he died with a knife between his ribs, delivered by a man he trusted more than any of his own sons: control the variables before they control you. I was twenty-two when I watched them carry his body out of this same study, and I remember thinking, with a coldness that frightened me even then, that his death was less a tragedy than a lesson trust extended too generously is simply a debt collected early by someone patient enough to wait for it.I have spent thirty years making certain no one collects early on me.Vas's proposal is, in its bones, a good one irritatingly good, good enough that I resent slightly having to admit a lieutenant thought of it before I did. A shared asset arrangement solves the immediate optics problem of an attack occurring on my territory, buys another year of fragile peace with the Voss family, and gives me a legitimate, deniable reason to keep close watch on a woman w

Last Updated : 2026-08-26

Chapter 26: MOVED

Wren's POV:They come for me two days after the attack, the same efficient woman in black who led me backstage at the gala, this time accompanied by two men carrying boxes I never packed, moving through my apartment with the brisk, apologetic competence of people accustomed to uprooting other people's lives on short notice."This is temporary," the woman tells me, not quite meeting my eyes, which tells me everything about how much she actually believes that. "For your safety. The arrangement's been finalised between the two houses."I don't have the strength left to fight it. Two nights without real sleep, a body still aching from a fall on Delancy Street, and the slow, sick understanding that whoever attacked me is still out there somewhere, unidentified, has worn down whatever resistance I might have mustered a week ago. I watch the men lift my few belongings into boxes with a careful indifference that somehow stings more than carelessness would have my mother's chipped mug, the fra

Last Updated : 2026-08-26

Chapter 27: FIRST REAL CONVERSATION

Wren's POV:I open the door already knowing, and the sight of him standing there in the hallway light still manages to steal the air out of my chest.He's changed out of the suit from the gala into something plainer, dark, unremarkable, the kind of clothing designed specifically not to be noticed, and somehow that makes him harder to look away from rather than easier. Up close, in proper light for the first time since Delancy Street, I can see the small details my fear didn't let me register that night a thin scar through one eyebrow, the particular watchfulness in his eyes that never fully switches off even standing still in a hallway that presumably belongs to people he trusts."I was told to check that your room was adequate," he says, and the flatness of his voice doesn't match the tension visible in the set of his shoulders."That's not why you're here."Something flickers across his face not quite a surprise, more like recognition of being caught. "No," he admits. "It isn't.""C

Last Updated : 2026-08-26

Chapter 28: FIRST REAL CONVERSATION PART TWO

Wren's POV:"Am I interrupting something," Dario says, and the words come out light, casual, but I've spent enough time around him now to hear the edge underneath the performance."Security briefing," Kiryan says, already moving toward the door with the flat efficiency of a man retreating from a conversation he isn't ready to have witnessed. He doesn't look at me again before he leaves."You two seem close," Dario says carefully, once we're alone."He saved my life two nights ago," I say, which is true, and easier than the rest of what's true. "I wanted to thank him properly.""I came to actually talk," he says. "Not the version of talking I did in your apartment, half-drunk and grabbing your wrist. A real conversation.""Okay," I say, curious despite everything currently churning in my chest."I grew up in a house where love is measured in territory," he says slowly. "My father taught me that affection is a currency you spend strategically, never freely." He glances at me, something

Last Updated : 2026-08-26

Chapter 29: DIGGING

Wren's POV:I wait three days before I let myself act on it, three days of careful observation, learning the rhythms of a house I have no real right to move freely through which hallways the staff use at which hours, which rooms sit empty during the long afternoon stretch when the Don takes his private meetings behind a door I've learned never to approach directly.The estate has a library on the second floor, west wing, a room I discovered by accident during one of my slow, deliberate walks meant partly for exercise and partly for reconnaissance I don't fully admit to myself I'm conducting. It's the kind of room built more for appearance than use leather-bound volumes nobody's cracked open in years, a heavy oak desk polished to a shine that suggests staff maintain it more carefully than anyone in the family actually visits it. I spend an entire afternoon there on my first pass, pulling books at random simply to have an excuse for being seen in the room, memorising the layout, the cre

Last Updated : 2026-08-26

Chapter 30: A NAME THAT SHOULDN’T BE THERE

Wren's POV:I turn, the ledger still clutched in my hand, to find one of the household staff standing in the doorway an older woman I recognise vaguely from the kitchens, her expression caught somewhere between suspicion and genuine alarm."I couldn't sleep," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel, six years of careful self-control finally paying for itself in this exact moment. "I was looking for something to read."Her eyes flick to the open cabinet, to the scattered boxes, and I watch her weigh, visibly, how much of this she intends to report and to whom. "That cabinet's meant to stay locked," she says slowly."I'll put everything back exactly as I found it," I say, and something in my voice desperation, maybe, or the particular vulnerability of a woman who has clearly been crying without fully noticing it herself seems to soften whatever suspicion was hardening in her expression."See that you do," she says finally, and to my enormous relief, she turns and leaves witho

Last Updated : 2026-08-26

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