Elena
The moment the door clicked shut, I broke.
I curled into myself on the edge of the silk-draped bed, burying my face in my hands. The tears came fast, hot, uncontrollable—like a dam I'd been holding back since the alley shattered. I didn't bother to muffle the sobs. No one here cared. No one would come running.
My chest heaved with the weight of it. The terror, the shock, the sheer wrongness of all of this. I wasn't supposed to be here. I was supposed to be home, in my tiny apartment with its peeling paint and leaky pipes, falling asleep to the hum of traffic outside my window. Tomorrow I was supposed to wake up, drag myself to my part-time job, plaster on a tired smile, and pray my boss didn't find another excuse to fire me.
Now… tomorrow might not even exist for me.
I pressed a trembling hand against my mouth, trying to steady my breathing, but it only made the tears flow harder. My boss's sharp, dismissive voice echoed in my head:
"You're lucky I'm keeping you here, Elena. A hundred others could do your job better. Don't give me a reason to replace you."
He'd been threatening me for months. Always reminding me how disposable I was. I could already picture him tomorrow morning, glancing at the empty spot where I should've been, smirking as he finally cut me loose.
My only source of income—gone.
The thought twisted like a knife in my gut.
Life hadn't been easy. Not since… not since before I could even remember clearly. My parents were shadows, memories blurred at the edges. I'd been raised in foster homes that changed too often, by adults who barely remembered my name. Love was something I'd read about in books, not something I ever felt wrapped around me.
By the time I was eighteen, I was on my own. Orphan. Alone.
And I'd fought—God, I'd fought—for every dollar, every roof over my head, every scrap of stability. I'd worked nights at diners, folded clothes in suffocating laundromats, smiled at rude customers in convenience stores, just to keep surviving. Just to keep existing in a world that didn't notice whether I was here or not.
And now, one wrong turn down an alley, and all of it was slipping away.
I dug my nails into the sheets, silk tearing slightly beneath my grip. The fabric was too soft, too perfect, mocking me. This room was bigger than anything I'd ever known. The bed could have swallowed my whole apartment. The fireplace flickered warmth I had never been able to afford.
And none of it mattered. None of it was mine.
I was a prisoner.
My sobs quieted into shaky breaths, but the ache in my chest stayed. I lifted my head, staring at the tall windows, the velvet curtains blocking the night. Somewhere out there, the city kept moving, uncaring. My life was unraveling, and the world wouldn't even blink.
I thought of the people at work—coworkers who barely remembered my name, customers who never looked me in the eye. No one would wonder where I'd gone. No one would ask.
No one would miss me.
The loneliness hit harder than the fear.
I hugged my knees, pressing my forehead against them, rocking slightly. My throat burned from the crying, but it didn't matter. There was no one to comfort me, no one to hold me.
Except…
His face intruded, unbidden. Damian.
Those eyes—dark, merciless, and yet, when they'd locked onto mine, I'd felt something shift inside me. Like he had seen straight through me. Like he had noticed me in a way no one else ever had.
I hated that thought. I hated that even now, trembling in his gilded prison, some part of me was haunted by him. By the cut of his jaw, the commanding way he moved, the gravity he carried like the world bent around him.
He terrified me.
And yet… there had been something in his gaze. Something that stopped him from pulling the trigger when he should have.
Why? Why me?
I buried my face in my arms again, trying to chase the thought away. None of this mattered. Not the room, not the wealth, not the man whose world I had fallen into. What mattered was survival.
But how do you survive when you have no one?
The silence of the mansion pressed in on me. No traffic. No neighbors through thin walls. Just emptiness. The kind of silence that makes you realize how small you are.
For the first time in years, I whispered into the emptiness, my voice breaking:
"I don't want to die."
The words sounded weak. Childish. Pathetic.
But they were true.
I didn't want to die here, alone in a cage dressed in gold.
And if Damian Moretti was the one holding the key… God help me, I didn't know what that meant for me.