I kept thinking about the phone.
About how it had left my hand in blind panic and almost smashed straight into Malakai 's face.
Even hours later, the memory wouldn't leave me alone. It sat at the back of my mind like a blade balanced on a thread, waiting to fall. In my old life, mistakes like that always came with consequences. Quick ones. Painful ones. Sometimes delayed just enough to make the waiting worse.
And with a man like Malakai, I could not tell which was more terrifying—his anger, or the way he seemed to bury it so deep that when it finally surfaced, it would be cold enough to kill.
So yes, I was still thinking about the phone.
I was thinking about it while Bridget dragged me through one of the most expensive malls I had ever seen in my life.
Apparently, she had decided we were shopping.
Or rather, she had decided she was shopping and that I was unfortunate enough to be taken with her because, according to her, I "looked like I'd been personally victimized by every clothing rack in existence."
I had told her I was fine. More than once.
I had even tried to say I didn't need anything, that I could manage with what I had, that she didn't have to bother.
But Bridget had this way of speaking—bright, sharp, impossible to refuse. She didn't ask so much as announce reality and expect the rest of the world to catch up. Saying no to her felt like trying to stop a moving train with your bare hands.
So somehow, I ended up beside her in a luxury mall where the floors gleamed like mirrors, where everything smelled faintly of perfume and polished glass, and where every store looked like it belonged in the life of someone who had never once worried about money.
Bridget moved through it all like she owned the place.
Maybe she did.
Every other minute, something caught her eye, and into the cart it went. A pair of heels. A jacket. A set of skin-care products in elegant bottles. Two dresses, then three more. A bag. Another bag because apparently one wasn't enough. She barely even glanced at the price tags.
I, on the other hand, was one quiet second away from a heart attack.
She turned to me at one point, one brow arched, several glossy bags hanging off one arm. "Are you going to get anything, or are you just here to haunt the mall?"
I blinked at her. "I'm not really good at shopping."
Bridget snorted. "Good thing you have a friend like me to help your sorry ass. Come on."
A friend. Something I have never gotten.
Before I could protest, she had already looped her arm through mine and started pulling me toward another boutique.
The next hour passed in a blur of soft fabrics, glittering lights, and Bridget holding things up to me with fierce concentration. She had an eye for clothes, I'd give her that. She picked dresses I would never have chosen for myself—cute, elegant things in colors I wasn't used to wearing. Long dresses that looked soft enough to melt beneath my fingers. Shorter ones with playful hems and fitted waists. Beautiful tops, hoodies, tailored trousers, loose baggy pants, fitted jeans, shirts in shades I didn't know would suit me until she forced them against my frame and nodded in approval like an artist evaluating a canvas.
She kept piling things up for me as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
And I just kept staring at them.
At first, it was disbelief.
Then confusion.
Then something almost painful.
No one had ever looked at me and thought, let me get her something nice.
No one had ever looked at me and thought I was worth adorning.
Bridget did it carelessly, casually, almost rudely—but there was kindness beneath it all. Loud kindness. Aggressive kindness. The sort that didn't ask permission before wrapping itself around you.
I was still trying to make sense of that when I caught sight of one of the tags.
My fingers froze.
I looked closer.
Ten thousand dollars.
For one dress.
The dress nearly slipped from my hand. I threw it down so fast it brushed the polished floor and Bridget turned sharply.
"What's wrong?"
I stared at her, then pointed at the tag like it had personally offended me. "It says ten thousand dollars."
She blinked. "...And?"
"And?" I repeated, aghast. "Bridget, this is way too expensive."
She stared at me for half a second and then let out the kind of sigh one might give a particularly slow child. "Girl, I'm done with turkey shopping. This is my brother's card. I have the liberty to do whatever the fuck I want without limits."
I blinked again.
"Your brother's card?"
"Yeah." She shrugged, already reaching for the dress and tossing it back into the pile. "He's the one who said we should go shopping."
I think my heart actually stuttered.
"Malakai said that?"
She looked at me like this was the least shocking thing she'd heard all day. "Yeah."
For a second, all I could do was stare.
The same Malakai who had walked into my room like a storm. The same Malachi whose voice could turn cold enough to freeze blood. The same man who had looked at me and said, I do not appreciate lies, as though the air itself should know better than to disappoint him.
That Malakai had sent us shopping?
Probably got annoyed by my jeans and top which are kinda dirty now. I even had to wear Bridget's clothes to leave the house.
Bridget, completely unaware of the chaos unfolding in my head, smirked. "Don't look like that. He's actually not a bad person. To some point. He's just an asshole."
Then, as if insulting her brother was a sacred family tradition, she added, "A deeply annoying, arrogant, emotionally constipated asshole."
I didn't know what to say to that, so I just looked back down at the dress in my hands.
Nothing about Malakai made sense.
And that made him more frightening, not less.
By the time Bridget was done, I was exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with walking. She had persisted past every soft refusal I made, every hesitant "I don't need that," every awkward attempt to tell her she had already picked enough. According to Bridget, I had "the survival instincts of a wilted flower" and should therefore stop speaking while she did the work of rebuilding my wardrobe.
Eventually, she dragged me toward the jewelry section.
I almost laughed.
I wasn't a jewelry person. Not because I disliked it, but because life had never given me much reason to think of such things. Jewelry belonged to girls who had birthdays celebrated properly, girls whose mothers brushed their hair and told them they were beautiful, girls who had not learned too early that lovely things could be broken just as easily as ugly ones.
Still, as we walked past the displays, something caught my eye.
I slowed.
Then stopped.
In the center of a velvet-lined case sat a necklace unlike anything I had ever seen. It was a rose—dark, elegant, almost haunting—crafted in black diamonds so carefully set they looked like petals dipped in midnight. The stem curved in silver-black metal, delicate and wicked all at once. It was beautiful in a way that didn't feel soft. It felt dangerous. Like something meant to be worn by a girl standing at the edge of a cliff with a storm behind her.
I stepped closer without meaning to.
For a moment, I forgot where I was.
Forgot the mall. Forgot Bridget. Forgot Malachi and fear and debt and the strange house I was now sleeping in.
I just looked.
"That one suits you."
I startled and turned to find Bridget approaching, several shopping bags hanging from both arms. Her gaze flicked to the necklace, then to me, and her grin widened.
I shook my head quickly. "No."
She ignored me and bent slightly to read the description card. I made the mistake of doing the same.
One hundred thousand dollars.
My soul nearly left my body.
"I can't get that," I said immediately.
"Why not?"
"Because it is a hundred thousand dollars, Bridget!"
"So?"
"So?" I whispered, horrified.
She gave me a look full of theatrical suffering. "You really have to stop reacting like this. It's giving peasant."
I nearly choked.
She signaled to the attendant before I could stop her. "We're taking it."
"Bridget—"
"Nope. Don't start."
"It's too expensive."
She took the necklace case and dropped it into the cart with the sort of confidence only rich people and lunatics possessed. "And yet it's still coming with us."
When we were finally done and heading toward the car, I caught a glimpse of the receipt.
I wished I hadn't.
Two million dollars.
The bloody he'll.
For a few things.
Just for some things.
I stared at it so hard the numbers began to blur.
"Wouldn't your brother be mad?" I asked weakly.
Bridget laughed. "This? Please. I've spent way more."
I looked at her like she had just confessed to setting churches on fire for entertainment.
She only grinned and kept walking.
By the time we got home, evening had settled over the estate. The sky was bleeding out into dusky violet and bruised gold, and the lights around the house had begun to glow warm against the darkening stone.
As soon as we pulled up, I noticed another car already there.
Black. Sleek. Familiar.
My stomach tightened.
Malakai was back.
Bridget either didn't notice or didn't care. She got out, stretched, and started ordering the staff to bring in the bags while I followed more quietly, my hands clasped together to stop myself from fidgeting.
The moment we stepped into the living room, I saw him.
Malakai sat on one of the dark leather sofas, one arm resting along the back, phone in hand, suit jacket gone but everything else about him still severe. Even in silence, he seemed to alter the room around him. Like the shadows leaned toward him. Like the air bent itself into something sharper.
Beside him sat another man.
He was the opposite of Malakai in almost every visible way.
He had thick wavy hair, the kind that looked soft even from a distance, and a warmth to his face that made him seem immediately easier to breathe around. He was tall, broad-shouldered, handsome in a careless sort of way. Where Malakai looked like winter sharpened into a weapon, this one looked like sunlight trapped in human skin.
Bridget lit up a little. "Hi, Raphael."
She rolled her eyes toward Malachi. "Hey, asshole."
Malakai did not even look up.
Raphael, however, pressed a hand dramatically to his chest. "Aw. Who is this sweet little sister abusing her brother with affection?"
"I told you to stop calling me that," Bridget snapped.
Raphael grinned. "Malakai is like my brother, so that makes you my younger sister by force. It's simple math."
Bridget looked like she wanted to throw something at him.
Then Raphael noticed me.
His expression shifted instantly into bright curiosity. "And who's this?"
All at once, I became painfully aware of myself standing there, still half-stiff, half-unsure, with shopping bags at my feet and no idea where to put my hands.
"Hi," I said.
Raphael's smile softened. "Aw. Well, aren't you a cute one? Are you Bridget's friend from class?"
I shook my head.
"You work here?"
I shook my head
"Came to get something?"
I shook my head feeling the tension build.
He tilted his head. "Then how are you here?"
Malakai finally spoke, voice flat and cool. "Raphael. I thought we were watching TV."
It was a warning. Small, but unmistakable.
Raphael caught it immediately.
His brows lifted, and then, because apparently he had no self-preservation instinct at all, he turned back to me with exaggerated realization. "Oh, I see. You're Malakai's girlfriend."
Malakai looked at him.
Just looked.
And somehow the room got colder.
"Ewwwwwwwwwww.....God, no," Bridget said at once, recoiling. "Don't say that about her."
I nearly died on the spot.
Raphael burst out laughing at the expression on Malakai 's face. "I'm kidding. Relax. All of you are so tense. We all know this fucker isn't able to love."
"Facts..Come on, Kiera," Bridget said quickly, rescuing me before I could dissolve from sheer discomfort. "Let's go unpack everything."
As we turned to leave, she tossed the black card toward her brother. "Thanks for the card today."
Malakai caught it without effort. "No problem."
He didn't look at me.
That should have been a relief.
For some reason, it wasn't.
Bridget's room was the first room I had entered in that house that didn't feel heavy.
Not empty, not formal, not too polished to touch.
Lived in.
It was beautiful in a way that was very clearly her—a red-and-black aesthetic softened by textures and warmth, by carefully arranged things that somehow still looked effortless. The room smelled like cinnamon and spice, rich and sweet and unmistakable. It felt like stepping into the center of a fire after spending too long in the cold.
"Come in," she said, dropping bags everywhere without care.
I stepped inside more slowly, taking it all in.
The bed was massive, piled with soft blankets and pillows. Her shelves were lined with books, perfume, random trinkets, and a few framed photos. The lighting was warm and low. Luxurious, yes—but not in the intimidating way the rest of the house was. Bridget's room felt alive.
We dropped onto the bed almost at the same time.
She groaned dramatically. "I'm exhausted."
I laughed a little despite myself. "Yeah."
For a few quiet seconds, we just lay there breathing, surrounded by shopping bags and the aftermath of her chaos.
Then Bridget turned her head toward me. "Honestly, I still don't know how you're connected to us."
I hesitated.
It would have been easier to lie. To soften it. To say something vague.
But there was something about Bridget that made dishonesty feel pointless.
So I told her.
Not everything. Not every wound. But enough.
I told her that Malakai had taken me because my father couldn't pay a debt. That I had been brought there because of something I had never done, never chosen. That I still didn't fully understand why I was in that house or what exactly it meant for me.
Bridget pushed herself upright, eyes widening. "Wait. He brought you here because of a debt?"
I nodded.
"And he didn't..." She trailed off.
I looked down at my hands. "Didn't what?"
She stared at me for a moment, then leaned back with a strange expression. "Dont worry about it. Well, you should count yourself lucky."
That made something cold stir in my stomach. "What do you mean?"
Bridget was quiet for a second, almost as though deciding how much to say.
"My brother," she said slowly, "is not usually this nice."
Nice.
I nearly laughed at the word.
She must have seen something in my face, because she huffed. "Okay, maybe nice isn't the word. But this?" She gestured vaguely, meaning the room, the house, my presence in it. "He hates peoplemore than anything. Especiallypeopletied up in his web the wrong way."
I stayed silent.
She looked at me, more serious now. "You've noticed what he's like by now, haven't you? He's cold. Distant. Ruthless. That man downstairs?" She jerked her chin in the direction of the living room. "Raphael is his only friend. That should tell you enough."
A strange unease settled over me.
Bridget continued, voice lower now. "Usually, when people owe him. Or when they become collateral or stuff, they don't end up here. They get sent to the dugeons. Or to one of his other places."
"Other places?"
She gave me a grim smile. "Let's just say I call them torture chambers for a reason."
I went still.
Not because I didn't believe her.
Because I did.
And suddenly the question rose in me, dark and sharp:
Why not me?
Why had he brought me into his house?
Why into a room with soft sheets and warm meals and shopping trips and a sister who talked too much and a woman named Nana Rose who looked at me like I was something fragile instead of something expendable?
If men like Malakai did not do anything without a reason, then what was mine?
The rest of the conversation drifted after that. Bridget told me about school, about teachers she hated, girls she found unbearable, assignments she intended to bully someone else into helping her with. She made nasty comments about people who had treated me badly without even knowing them, and somehow it made me laugh more than once.
It had been a long time since I had laughed without checking who might hear.
Eventually, the hour grew late, and exhaustion settled over both of us.
She had school in the morning, and I could see the tiredness in the way her eyes kept blinking slower.
So I stood.
"Goodnight," I said.
Bridget yawned. "Night. And Kiera?"
I paused at the door.
"If my brother says anything weird or rude, just ignore him. He came out of the womb angry. Total narcissist. "
I smiled despite myself. "Okay."
Then I left.
The hallway outside was quieter than before, dimly lit by wall sconces that cast long bands of gold over dark wood and polished floors. My steps were soft as I walked back toward my room, my head still full of too many things—Bridget's laughter, the glitter of black diamonds, the price tag on a necklace I could never in my life have imagined touching, the weight of Malachi's silence in the living room.
Then a door opened.
I turned.
Malakai stepped out of his room.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
His gaze swept the hallway first, like he had expected to see someone else, then settled on me. He looked different in the quieter light. Less like a man in motion, more like a carved thing left in shadow. He no longer had his phone in hand. His sleeves were rolled just slightly, exposing the strong line of his forearms.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
The words were simple, but his tone made them sound like an accusation.
I swallowed. "No. I was just... going back to my room. I was with Bridget."
He folded his arms across his chest and said nothing.
Just looked at me.
Then, with the slightest tilt of his head, he said, "Go."
I turned to obey.
I made it three steps before stopping.
Then I turned back.
"I'm sorry," I said quietly. "Can I ask you something?"
His face did not change. "What?"
The coldness in that single word nearly made me withdraw. But Bridget's words had sunk their claws into me, and curiosity had always been one of my worst weaknesses.
I clasped my hands tighter. "I was talking to your sister. She said... people like me, people brought as collateral... you don't usually bring them home."
He didn't answer.
So I forced myself to continue.
"She said you take them to dungeons. Or torture chambers. Or worse." My voice dropped. "I know it's only been two days, but... you didn't send me?"
His eyes stayed on mine.
No flicker. No softness. No surprise.
Just that unnerving stillness of his, the kind that made me feel like he could see far more than I was showing.
Then his gaze moved over me slowly, from head to toe and back again, not in a way that felt improper, but in a way that felt assessing. Measuring. Reading.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low enough that it seemed to settle into my skin.
"Living with your family was punishment enough."
I stared at him.
For a second, I forgot how to breathe.
He went on, quieter now. "I can recognize someone born into darkness just by looking at them. But dont take this as a means of you defying rules or people. Know your place, keep to yourself or your gone. Understood?"
Something inside me shifted.
Not relief. Not quite.
But recognition and fear.
Like a lock had turned half an inch.
Because I understood what he meant.
Not fully. Not yet. But enough.
Enough to know he had seen me.
Enough to know that was somehow more dangerous than if he hadn't.
I nodded slowly.
"Okay," I said, though I wasn't sure what I was agreeing to. "Goodnight."
He did not respond.
I turned and walked away, but I could feel it—his gaze on my back, steady and unreadable, all the way until I reached my door.
I stepped inside and shut it quickly behind me.
A few seconds later, somewhere out in the hallway, another door closed.
His, maybe. Or his office.
Either way, he was gone.
I stood in the middle of my room for a long moment, still holding one of the smaller bags from the mall. My eyes dropped to it. Inside, folded neatly in tissue paper, were pieces of a life I did not understand. Dresses. Soft sweaters. Things chosen for me. Given to me.
I set the bag down on the bed and sat beside it.
The room was quiet.
Too quiet.
In the silence, Bridget's words came back to me with cruel clarity. He's ruthless, count yourself lucky
Nothing comes without a price Kiera.
I looked around the room again—the expensive curtains, the soft bed, the polished furniture, the safety that did not yet feel like safety at all.
Was this my new life now?
A gilded cage instead of a cruel house?
Comfort instead of hunger?
Silk instead of bruises?
I should have felt lucky.
Maybe some part of me did.
But luck had never once come to me without claws hidden behind it.
And the worst part was that I no longer knew what frightened me more—being sent back to the darkness I knew...
or staying here long enough to start believing this one might be kinder.