The elevator ride down to the 50th floor felt like a descent into the earth's crust. There were no glass walls here to show the glittering lights of Lucentia. There were only brushed steel panels and the heavy, mechanical hum of the lift. When the doors finally hissed open, Eliana was met not with the sprawling luxury of the penthouse, but with a narrow, sterile hallway lit by flickering recessed lights.
"This way," Silas said. He didn't look at her. He didn't have the stomach to meet the eyes of a woman he had helped kidnap twice in twenty-four hours.
He stopped in front of a heavy door with a digital biometric scanner. He pressed his thumb to the glass, and the lock disengaged with a sound like a gunshot.
The suite was beautiful in a way that felt aggressive. It was decorated in shades of bone and slate, with high-end furniture that felt as hard as the man who owned it. But as Eliana stepped inside, her breath hitched. There were no windows. In their place were large, high-definition screens displaying a live feed of the city, a cruel digital mockery of the freedom she had just lost.
"Mr. Luther has ordered that the screens remain on the 'Daylight' setting," Silas muttered, adjusting his tie. "You'll have three meals delivered a day through the service slot. If you need anything"
"I need my life back, Silas," Eliana snapped, turning to face him. The emerald silk of her dress was torn, and her curls were matted, but her eyes still held the fire of a woman who had won impossible cases. "Does Ethan really think a windowless room is going to make me forget he's a criminal? Does he think I'll just start loving him because I have nowhere else to look?"
Silas looked at the floor. "He doesn't want your love, Miss Eliana. He wants your silence. And down here, no one can hear you speak."
The door clicked shut, the heavy thud echoing through the silent suite. Eliana stood in the center of the room, staring at the digital "sky" on the wall. It was a bright, perfect blue, completely unlike the stormy, gray reality of Lucentia.
She began to pace. One, two, three steps to the velvet sofa. One, two, three steps to the marble kitchenette that had no knives. One, two, three steps to the king-sized bed that felt like a tomb.
She was a lawyer. Her entire career was built on finding the cracks in walls that seemed solid. She knelt by the floorboards, looking for a vent. She checked the bathroom mirror to see if it was two-way glass. She even tore the pillows apart, searching for a wire or a way to signal the outside world.
But Ethan was thorough. Every inch of the room had been scrubbed of hope.
Upstairs, the "extra cold" version of Ethan Luther was back in full force. He sat in his office, the North District Ledger open on his desk. This was the prize he had killed for at the auction, a list of every politician, judge, and police officer the Greeks had in their pocket. It was the key to owning Lucentia.
But he couldn't focus. His eyes kept drifting to the security monitor on the corner of his desk. It showed a black-and-white feed of the 50th floor. He watched Eliana pacing. He watched her collapse onto the bed and bury her face in her hands. He watched her shoulders shake with sobs she thought no one could hear.
A knock at the door broke his trance.
"Enter," Ethan barked.
A woman walked in. She was tall, with sleek dark hair and eyes that held the same predatory glint as Ethan's. This was Isabella, a woman from his past who understood the blood and the business. She wasn't an innocent advocate like Eliana; she was a shark.
"I heard you caught a butterfly, Ethan," Isabella said, her voice a sultry purr. She leaned against his desk, her red dress a stark contrast to the cold gray of the office. "And here I thought you'd learned your lesson about 'pure' things after Vanessa."
Ethan didn't look up from the ledger. "Eliana is a contract, Isabella. Nothing more. She is a tool to clean up the Luther name."
"Is that why you've moved her to the isolation suite? Because she's just a 'tool'?" Isabella laughed, reaching out to trace the line of his jaw. Ethan didn't flinch, but he didn't lean in either. He was a statue of caramel-skinned indifference. "You're obsessed, Ethan. You're trying to keep the light in a basement so the darkness doesn't feel so heavy."
"Go home, Isabella."
"Not yet," she whispered. "I hear you have a press gala in two days to 'celebrate' your engagement. If you want the Greeks to think you've really gone cold, you'll let me show up. Let the world see that the future Mrs. Luther isn't the only woman in your orbit. It'll break her spirit faster than that windowless room ever will."
Ethan finally looked at her. He thought about Eliana's defiance. He thought about the way she had looked at him in the hallway—with a hatred so pure it almost felt like a connection.
"Do whatever you want," Ethan said, his voice dropping to that icy, melodic rasp. "Just stay out of the 50th floor. That territory is mine."
Back in the "Gilded Shackle," Eliana had stopped crying. She was sitting on the floor, her back against the cold steel of the door. Her legal mind was finally starting to override her fear.
She remembered something from her third year of law school, a case about "Constructive Trust" and "Contractual Duress." But more importantly, she remembered a detail about Luther Tower. During the press conference, she had seen the architectural plans on a digital display in the lobby.
The tower was built on an old foundation. The 50th floor wasn't originally meant for residential suites; it was a mechanical transition floor. And every mechanical floor had to have a secondary fire suppression access point.
She stood up and walked into the walk-in closet. She tore through the silk dresses and cashmere coats Ethan had bought for her, throwing them onto the floor until she reached the back wall.
She pressed her ear to the paneling.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It wasn't solid. Behind the expensive wood was a hollow space.
"You're a genius, Ethan," she whispered, a ghost of her dimple appearing for the first time in days. "But you forgot that I'm a lawyer. And I never sign a contract without looking for the exit."
She grabbed a heavy metal shoe-tree from one of the designer heels and began to pry at the corner of the wood. It was slow, agonizing work. Her fingers bled, and the "daylight" screens on the walls mocked her with their fake sunshine.
But she didn't stop. For every inch of wood she peeled back, she felt a sliver of herself returning.
She didn't know that Luke was currently sitting in a basement across town, bleeding from a gunshot wound and looking at the same architectural plans. She didn't know that Isabella was planning to humiliate her in front of the world.
All she knew was that she was Eliana, and she wasn't anyone's collateral.