Elena's body trembled where she knelt in chains, her back split open, blood soaking her shredded shirt. Her breath came in shallow, broken gasps.She thought—hoped—that maybe it was over.But Dominic wasn't finished.He straightened to his full height, his shadow falling over her like a predator stretching its claws. With a flick of his hand, the gag was torn from the hostage's mouth.
The man gasped, spitting blood, voice hoarse from screaming into cloth. "Please… please, don't—"Dominic crouched beside him, calm as ice. His hand tilted the man's head up by the chin, almost gentle. "She had one task. One act to prove she belonged. She chose compassion.""His dark gaze slid back to Elena, pinning her like a blade.
"So now," Dominic whispered, "you'll learn the second lesson of Command K: compassion is a corpse."
Before Elena could move, before she could even plead—Dominic's hand snapped the man's neck with a sharp, brutal twist.
The crack echoed in the mirrored chamber.
The man's body slumped lifeless to the floor. His eyes—still open, still wet—stared blankly at Elena."She froze. Horror slammed into her chest, ice flooding her veins.That sound—the crack—would haunt her forever.
Dominic stood, wiping his bloodied hand against his suit jacket like it was nothing more than dirt. He looked down at her, his expression unreadable."You see?" His voice was calm, almost soft, but it struck harder than any lash. "Your refusal didn't save him. It only bought him pain. And bought you twenty lashes you'll never forget."Her lips trembled, the taste of copper thick on her tongue. "You… you killed him."Dominic crouched, close enough for her to see the flecks of blood on his skin. He smelled like smoke and iron, intoxicating, suffocating. His voice dipped lower, a razor's edge."No, Elena. You killed him. Your weakness killed him."The words gutted her more brutally than the whip had.He let the silence stretch, forcing her to stare at the corpse. Forcing her to own it.
"This is Command K," Dominic said finally. "Here, hesitation is death. Mercy is death. Your soft little morals?" His hand gripped her jaw again, digging into bruised flesh. "They will bury you. And if I have to bury you, I'll make sure it's slow."He shoved her back down, her face inches from the dead man's body. She could smell him already cooling, the sour mix of sweat, blood, and death.
Her stomach lurched. She gagged but couldn't turn away—Dominic's hand forced her to look."Breathe him in," Dominic ordered. "Memorize the stench. That's the perfume of weakness."Tears streamed down her face, mixing with blood.Only when she was choking back sobs did he release her, standing tall, commanding.
"Chain her in the lower hall," he barked to his men. "No food tonight. No water. She'll sleep in her blood."The masked men yanked her up by the chains, dragging her broken body toward the steel door.But before she was pulled out, Dominic's voice cut through the chamber one last time.
"Elena."
Her head lifted weakly, eyes glassy with pain.
His gaze burned straight through her."Next time I give you a knife," he said, voice like smoke and steel, "you'll use it. Or I'll carve the lesson into you until there's nothing left to carve."
The steel door groaned shut behind Elena, leaving only silence and the corpse cooling on the floor. Mark stepped forward from the shadows, his jaw tight, his voice low."Boss… that was too hard." He glanced at the bloodstained floor, then toward the door Elena had been dragged through. "She's new. You know we don't usually push recruits like that on their first night. Most of them wouldn't even survive half of what you just did."
Dominic didn't look at him at first. He stripped off his blood-spattered jacket, tossed it aside, and began rolling his sleeves back with surgical precision. Only when his cufflinks clicked against the table did he finally speak, his voice like ground glass.
"She isn't 'most recruits,' Mark."
Mark frowned. "Still. You break her too fast, you'll lose her. She's not ready for—"Dominic turned, his gaze slicing through the dim chamber, sharp and merciless.
"If she wants to stand beside me, she has to be harder than anyone I already have. She has to be better." His voice dropped lower, colder, but there was something beneath it—something almost protective. "I don't want a liability beside me. I won't carry dead weight. And I won't lose her to weakness."
Mark studied him for a moment, then exhaled through his nose. "So you're saying you're breaking her… for her own sake?"
Dominic's lips twitched into the ghost of a smile—dark, humorless.
"No, Mark," he said. "I'm remaking her. For mine."
Elena's pov
The room was silent. Too silent.
The kind of silence that made the walls lean in, the air heavy, pressing down on me. My body lay sprawled where they'd left me, curled around the ache in my ribs, every breath a jagged slice of glass. The mattress beneath me was rough, sheets scratchy, stained with my blood and sweat.I closed my eyes, but it wasn't darkness that came. It was him.
Dominic.
The way his voice had cut through the room when he gave the order, smooth and merciless at the same time. The sharp snap of his belt against my skin. The cold gleam in his eyes when I screamed.My body shuddered. The memory should have sickened me. It should have hollowed me out with fear. But instead, heat slithered through me, low and consuming. My skin burned where his hands had been, where his voice had shattered me.I laughed again. Quiet, broken, a sound that wasn't really mine. It was too soft, too sweet, like a child's giggle, but it belonged to something twisted blooming inside me."Harder than the rest," I whispered to the empty room. My throat was raw, every word dragging like sandpaper, but I couldn't stop. "He wants me harder than the rest."The thought wrapped around me like a blanket, warm, suffocating, safe. He wasn't cruel. He wasn't unfair. He was… preparing me. Shaping me.Because if I couldn't endure him—how could I deserve him?
The sweet part of me—the part that once dreamed of a quiet life, of laughter with friends, of Marcy's teasing at the reception desk—she whispered that this was madness. That I should run while I still could. That I should claw at the door until my nails broke.
But the darker part of me? The part that had tasted Dominic's kiss, that had drowned in his cologne and the smoke of his world? She laughed at the very idea of leaving.
She said, You're his now. You'll always be his. Isn't that what you wanted? I curled against the pain, hugging it like a secret. My lips stretched into a smile—bloody, trembling, but real.I thought of him walking away after the punishment, suit jacket draped over his broad shoulders, scent trailing behind him like a command only I could hear. That image rooted itself in me, deeper than fear, deeper than pain.I didn't just want him anymore. I wanted his world. I wanted his empire. I wanted to stand beside him when he burned the world to ash.Not as his weakness. Not as his plaything.But as the only one who could take his cruelty and call it devotion.