The coast returned as a distant galaxy of cold white and yellow lights spanning the horizon. Las Lona flickers against the black bulk of the mountains. Elena stands at the railing, the wind cutting through her shirt. Her skin hums, a live wire of spent sensation and gathering dread.
Liam guides the Briar Rose into the harbor with ease. He doesn’t speak. His focus held on guiding the ship in the dark. When the hull kisses the dock, a large man waits at the dock, a solid shadow stepping forward to catch the lines. Liam kills the engine. The sudden quiet is a physical slap.
He turns to her. The firelight from the manor gates dances in his blue eyes, turning them opaque. “The debt is paid, Elena.” His voice is gravelly. “You may return to your room. I have business to attend to.”
The words left a sting as he said them. Her room? The thought was strange, returning now to a bed of her own?
She walks. The stone path to the manor is hard underfoot. Every step is a distance from the sea, from the place that had changed everything. The thought of his hand missing from her back, no touch longer there, as she headed inside.
Inside Thorn Manor, the study’s hearth throws a weak, dying glow. The smell of leather and old stone is a coffin after the salt air. Presley materializes, his nod professional, his eyes missing nothing. “Miss Rossi.” He leads with a bow. “Your room is as you left it,” he says to her, his tone flattening into mere information.
When she enters her room, it feels like a museum of a past life. Only a few days ago, she was here, and now, the silence of the room felt strange. No longer the sound of the waves, only the occasional rustle of the wind outside the window.
On the nightstand, her phone sits plugged into its charger, a tiny green light pulsing. She picks it up. The screen flares to life, blinding in the dark. Notifications swarm. Among them, a message from Lisa. Opening her phone, she pulls up the message.
Finally free! Coming to visit again soon. Assuming your scary benefactor is cool with it…
Her thumbs feel clumsy on the glass. She types, deletes. Types again. The blue light of the screen makes her skin look dead. That’s great! When? She sends it. The message reads like something a stranger would send.
Her phone buzzes in her hand—too loud, too sharp. Lisa’s reply is a rapid-fire burst of emojis and excitement. Next weekend! Friday night? I’ll bring wine, and we can have a proper girls’ night. We’ll have to talk about everything. So much has happened for me, I hope your life hasn’t been boring, and all work over there! Make sure you have a vacation too! Elena stares at the words. Everything. Her throat tightens. What part of this could she possibly tell? The drowning? The way his mouth felt on her throat? The exact sound he made when he came inside her?
Blushing at the thought, she sets the phone down on the nightstand. It lands with a soft tap. The green charge light pulses like a weak, distant heartbeat. She brings her hands to her face and presses her palms against her closed eyes. Colors bloom in the darkness. Behind them, she sees the deck of the Briar Rose. The cosyness of the beachouse. The magical view of the reef. The crushing weight of him as he remade her world.
**
The ache starts low, a hollow throb between her legs that has nothing to do with fatigue. It’s memory. It’s hunger. Elena lies on her back in the sterile quiet of her room, the covers pushed down to her waist. Her hand slides under the waistband of her underwear. Her own touch is clinical at first, a curiosity. Then her fingertips find the slick heat, and her breath hitches.
She closes her eyes. The darkness behind her lids is not empty. It’s the exact shade of the night sky over the Briar Rose. It’s the solid weight of him pinning her hips to the deck. The possessive rasp of his voice. You’re mine. Her fingers move, circling the swollen, desperate nerve. The friction is good. Sharp. Needed.
Her back arches off the mattress. A low whine escapes her throat. She imagines his hand replacing hers, his calloused palm, his knowing pressure. She imagines his mouth there, his tongue, the unbearable precision. Her hips lift, seeking. The coil inside her tightens, a spring wound to breaking. Heat floods her skin. She’s close. So close.
Her muscles clench. Her breath comes in ragged gasps. The peak is right there, a white edge she’s about to fall over. The pressure stuck on the edge before release.
She freezes.
Her fingers go still, buried in her own wetness. The orgasm that was seconds away evaporates. It doesn’t fade; it vanishes, like a door slamming shut in her face. A cold, sick frustration washes through her.
She tries again. Presses harder. Thinks of his cock, the thick stretch of him, the guttural sound he made when he came. Nothing. The sensation is just sensation now, a meaningless friction. The climax is a wall she cannot climb. It stands there, immovable, and she knows—with a certainty that turns her stomach—what’s on the other side.
Permission.
She needs to hear him say it. Come for me.
Her hand falls away. She stares at the ceiling, her chest heaving, her cunt aching and empty. Shame follows the frustration, hot and prickling. This is worse than the debt. The debt was a number. This is her own body, her own pleasure, held hostage by a man who dismissed her not long ago.
A soft knock at the door makes her flinch. She yanks her hand free, pulling the covers up to her chin. “Yes?”
The door opens. Presley stands behind the barely opened door, a silhouette shadow against the hall light. He does not enter. “Mr. Thorn requests your presence in the study, Miss Rossi.”
Her heart hammers against her ribs. “Now?”
“Immediately.” His tone offers no room, no reading. He steps back, waiting.
Elena throws the covers off. Her legs are unsteady. She’s still throbbing, a raw, unfinished ache. She pulls on a simple dress from the closet, her fingers fumbling with the buttons. The cold stone of the manor floor bites into her feet as she follows Presley’s silent lead.
She enters the study. Liam stands before the desk, one arm braced, his pointed finger curved across his lips. He’s changed back into his blue suit. It only makes the width of his shoulders more pronounced, the line of his back more rigid. The man from the dock stands there on the other side of his desk, a monolith of a figure holding an unlit cigar in his mouth.
Liam doesn’t turn. “Leave us, Victor.”
The man nods once and moves, his exit soundless. Presley has already melted away. The heavy study door clicks shut. Elena stands just inside the room, the dying fire painting her in flickering light.
“You summoned me,” she says. The words sound brittle.
Finally, he turns. His eyes scan her—the bare feet, the hastily donned dress, the way her arms are wrapped around herself. His gaze feels like a physical touch, inventorying her disarray. “You’re not composed.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re lying.” He takes a slow step toward her. His callout made a moment inside her start to bend.
She says nothing. Her pulse is a wild thing in her throat.
“You left something on the boat.” He pulls something out of the drawer. In his hand lies the conch shell from the reef, its pearled pink interior catching the firelight.
She stares at the shell. A warm feeling grew in her sore chest as she thought of the gift. “Thank you, Sir.” She quickly lets out. The final word slips out and feels all too natural.
“It’s yours.” He closes the distance. He holds it up for her to take, his eyes locked on hers.
Her fingertips brush his as she takes the shell. The contact is electric, a jolt that travels up her arm and settles low in her belly. The pink interior is warm from his hand. She cradles it against her chest, a fragile shield.
“We return to work tomorrow,” he says. His voice is all business, the baritone flat and final. “My office. Seven AM.” The thought of returning to business. To normal felt strange. Her hand tightened at the thought.
Elena nods, the shell now digging into her palm. The man who claimed her on the island was gone, replaced by the man in the suit. “And the rest of today?”
“Rest. You’ll need it.” His eyes don’t leave her face. He’s reading the tremor in her hands, the flush on her neck. “Is there something else?”
She then remembers the message from before. “My friend. Lisa. She wants to visit. Next weekend.”
Liam doesn’t react. He turns slightly, watching her. “And?”
“What’s the price?” There had to be one… There always was.
He rests his hands in front of him on the desk. His mind only takes a quick moment to work. “Have dinner with me. Here at home. Friday night.”
“That’s it?”
“You’ll wear the black dress.” His gaze drops to her body, a slow, assessing sweep that feels like she’s being stripped.
Elena nods. A silent dip of her chin. The black dress. Of course. For him.
Liam watches the acknowledgment settle into her bones. His expression doesn’t change, but something in the air between them thickens.
She should leave. Taking the shell in her hand, her body is still humming from the frustrated ache of his presence, from the memory of his hands on the boat, from the way he’s looking at her now.
“Thank you, Sir.” Her own voice surprises her. It doesn’t sound like hers. It sounds like someone pushing a bruise to see if it still hurts.
“That is all. I have work to catch up on today, so I’ll be busy.” He said, giving her one final look.
With that, Elena took the invite to step out of the room. Being near him is overwhelming. Something had changed.
And she didn’t know if it had been him… or her.
“Presley,” he says, his voice carrying in the quiet. Liam sat in his desk chair, addressing him.
“Sir.” He responded as she stood in the study. Sure enough, the man wore his usual black tailcoat suit. White soft gloves over the hands, and perfect and unwrinkled pants. The black shoes have their perfect shine. He always held a level of perfection that Liam admired. That he worked to learn from.
“Send Victor in. I am ready to meet with him. And have someone tend to the fire.” He quickly orders.
“As you wish, sir.”
Liam doesn’t turn. He listens to the butler’s retreating footsteps, the soft click of the door. Presley is efficiency itself. A perfect fixture. A man who had always ensured the well-being of his family. A man he admired almost as much as his father.
The fire is rebuilt into a roaring blaze by a silent housemaid by the time Victor Ward re-enters. The large man closes the door and stands at parade rest, an unlit cigar now tucked into the breast pocket of his jacket. He says nothing, waiting.
Liam finally turns from the window. The whiskey glass is cool in his hand. “Report.”
“Eros is moving,” Victor says, his voice a gravelly bass. “Three more girls are missing last night. Downtown precincts. Same pattern. No witnesses, no cameras. They’ve vanished.”
“Police?”
“In Stern’s pocket. Reports will call them runaways. If they file them at all.”
Liam’s jaw tightens. Xander Stern’s empire is a rot spreading through the city’s underbelly—prostitution, protection, now trafficking. And he’s getting bold. “He’s cleaning house. Or stocking new inventory. Either way, he’s confident.”
“He shouldn’t be,” Victor says, a flicker of protective ferocity in his eyes. “Not with what we know he’s got hidden.”
The file. It’s the specter haunting every strategy session. A compendium of Stern’s sins—names, dates, accounts, payoffs. The identities of the women, living and dead. A file that would hold the key to ensuring Stern’s empire came down.
“Knowing it exists and having it are two different things,” Liam says, his voice flat. “We need the physical drive.”
“The source is constantly on the move. Our best options to get in through her.”
“Tell our scouts their payment for finding who has the information will be doubled when found. Tripled. I don’t care. I need a location. A person. Anything.” Liam sets his glass down on the desk with a sharp click. “This ends before more women disappear into his black sites.”
Victor gives a single, firm nod. “Understood.” He pulls the cigar from his pocket, placing it unlit in his mouth.
Silence stretches, filled only by the fire’s roar. Liam can feel Victor’s gaze on him, the man’s loyalty a tangible, heavy thing. Victor was his mother’s sister’s fiancé. He always worked to show Liam how to be wary in life, taught him to throw a punch, and stood guard at his parents’ funeral. He was one of the only people Liam still trusts.
“What about this girl?” Victor says, not a question.
Liam’s eyes snap to his. “What about her?”
“She’s a variable. Stern knows you have her. He knows she’s connected to this whole thing. Is our plan to still use her?”
“No—” The words come out sharper than he intended. He sees it instantly—Elena walking out of a gallery, a black sedan sliding to a curb, a hand over her mouth. The whiskey turns acidic in his stomach. “She stays on the grounds. Presley and you handle her security detail. No exceptions.”
“And her… compliance?” Victor asks, tactfully vague.
A dark, humorless smile touches Liam’s mouth. “Her compliance is my concern.” He thinks of the black dress, of Friday’s dinner. Of the way her body fits to him, even when her mind rails against it. “She’s adapting.”
“Adapting isn’t the same as being safe,” Victor states, the soldier in him prioritizing threat assessment over psychology.
Liam picks up a bell and gives it a ring. Shortly later, Presley returns. “Please tell Ms. Rossi I need her here as soon as possible to discuss the business plans for the rest of the week.”
“Yes, Sir.” He says as he steps right back out.
“She’s safest when she’s mine,” Liam says, returning his attention to Victor, and the truth of it lands in the room like a stone. Possession is a form of protection. A brutal one, but the only kind that works in this world. He claimed her on the island. The debt is paid, but the claim remains. It’s the one piece of this tangled mess that feels irrevocable.
Victor accepts this with another nod. He knows better than to push. “I’ll have the perimeter checks increased. Discreetly.”
“Do it.” Liam picks up his glass again and swirls the amber liquid. “And Victor? The next time Stern makes a move, I don’t want a report. I want an address.”
A grim satisfaction passes over Victor’s face. “Yes, sir.”
Elena arrived, and he had to focus his thoughts away from the distraction she brought. “Leave us, Victor.” The man nods as he moves to exit the room.
The discussion was an attempt at distraction. Anything to keep his mind away. Mentioning the conch shell she left on the boat. Discussing work going forward.
Then she mentioned that Lisa wanted to return. He thought of the moment where the two girls were locked in a heated throw, limbs together around each other. How they were drugged in his home. Her safety was vital, not only for his reputation but for the effect it would have on Elena and his plan.
“What’s the price?” He heard Elena’s voice cut in to his thoughts. Price? She expected a price from him… He realized it was how things were now between them. A normalacy. Why let that standard fall?
Then his thoughts returned to her. Always drawn into her presence. Before he could think it through, he responded, “Have dinner with me. Here at home. Friday night.”
“That’s it?” She responded, clearly expecting more.
“You’ll wear the black dress.” He couldn’t help but look her over. Admiring and thought of how wonderful she would look in that dress for him.
After a brief moment of her taking the time to process, she said, “Thank you, Sir.” Clearly ready to escape his presence. Oh, how he hated to see her in such distress.
“That is all. I have work to catch up on today, so I’ll be busy.” He said, feeling like the rope that had her tied here had just been released from his grasp.
Liam watches the heavy study door swing shut behind her. The air in the room feels thin, scraped raw by her exit. He can still see the imprint of her bare feet on the Persian rug, the way the firelight had traced the vulnerable line of her throat when she cradled that damned shell. His hands flex at his sides. The low, persistent thrum in his blood hasn’t subsided; if anything, it’s louder now, a drumbeat synced to the memory of her whispered *Sir*. He turns his back to the door, braces his palms on the cold mahogany of his desk, and lets his head hang. Control is a suit he wears. Right now, it chafes.
She is a distraction he cannot afford. Not with Stern’s shadow stretching longer every day. He forces a breath into his lungs, holds it, releases. The phantom scent of her skin—salt and vanilla and fear—lingers in his nostrils. He grinds the heel of his hand against the desk, as if he could physically push the image of her away: Elena on her knees in the beachhouse, trembling. Elena lay under him on the bed, her green eyes wide with given surrender. Elena just now, looking at him with a dependency that felt more dangerous than any defiance.
“Fuck,” he breathes, the word a blunt scrape in the silent room.
He straightens. The blue suit is his reminder. His control. He adjusts his cuffs, a deliberate, measured motion. The clock on the mantel ticks. He focuses on that sound, on the crackle of the dying fire, on the solid reality of the ledger open on his desk. Numbers. Debts. Power. These are the things that matter in the underworld. These are the things that keep people alive.
The thought of her alive is what undoes him.
He sees it again—the panicked flail of her limbs under the water, the terrifying stillness of her body on the sand, the blue tinge to her lips. His own heartbeat thunders in his ears, a delayed echo of that terror. He had almost lost her. The memory returns a cold knife twisting in his ribs. He had brought her to the island to escape from the structure of it all. He hadn’t accounted for the crack it would leave in his own foundation.
He needs to get his head clear and back into the game.
He walks to the fireplace, stares into the flames until his eyes sting. The conch shell is gone, taken with her. A sentimental token. He had given it to her in that depth to see what she would think of it. He never expected her to almost die for it.
The purely physical reaction is instantaneous, a raw feedback loop to the thought of her. His cock stirs, thick and heavy, against the constraint of his tailored trousers. He grits his teeth, forces the image away. He has work to do. The kind that requires a cold mind.
He returns to his desk, sinks into his chair, and pulls a secure laptop from a locked drawer. The screen lights up, and he spends the next few hours reviewing a cascade of encrypted messages, financial trails, blurred surveillance stills, and more. All the details he had for Thorn’s Industries, and the details he had on the Stern’s underworld empire.
The whiskey glass sits empty beside the laptop. Liam works. The software hums, lines of business details, financial trails weaving through shell companies and offshore accounts. He follows the money. It always leads back to the same black hole: Xander Stern. His eyes burn from the screen’s blue light, his neck stiff from hours of stationary focus. The fire has burned down to embers, leaving the study in a chilled quiet.
A soft knock fractures the silence. “Enter.”
Presley slips inside, a picture of subdued efficiency. He carries a silver tray. “Sir. You missed supper in the dining room. I took the liberty.”
Liam doesn’t look up. “Set it there.” He gestures to the corner of the desk not covered in maps and tablets. The smell of seared steak and rosemary reaches him, but his stomach is a knot of tension. Food is fuel, not pleasure.
“Will there be anything else, sir?”
“Miss Rossi,” Liam’s fingers pause over the keyboard. “How has she spent the day?”
“Miss Rossi took her lunch in her room. She spent the majority of the afternoon in the library. She retrieved her own dinner from the kitchens just an hour ago. She has since returned to her quarters.” Presley’s report is toneless and factual. A perfect butler’s recitation.
Liam absorbs this. The library. her returning to a normal routine that he had seen from her since her first arrival. “Good. Dismissed.”
Presley gives a slight bow. “Very good, sir.” He turns, his footsteps silent on the rug. The door clicks shut with finality.
Alone again, Liam pulls the tray in front of him. He eats mechanically, barely taking time to taste the food’s flavors as he continues his work. The meat is perfect, the vegetables crisp. It doesn’t matter. His mind was locked away, working through problems, and inside it, one problem orbits another: Stern’s network. The hits on his sites. This all demanded his absolute focus.
How was Stern getting Eros distributed on the streets? What is his new method? He had worked hard to keep the distribution locked. To keep the street clean of drugs, to try and limit them to safe and reliable distributors that kept it close in with clubs and special events, where he knew it could be used properly.
Then a thought sparked across his mind.
He clears the desk with a sweep of his arm, making space. From a locked cabinet beneath the window, he pulls out a large, rolled canvas. He spreads it across the polished wood, using the empty whiskey glass and his laptop to weigh the corners.
It’s a map of Las Lona and its outlying districts. Across it, he pulls out two long, clear sheets. Using dry-erase markers, he gets to work, annotating, layering the clear plastic over the map.
One overlay he draws out precinct boundaries in red. Laying out each region of distribution.
Another, in blue, charts the movements of known Eros associates—clubs, warehouses, dockside offices.
Pulling out a third clear sheet, in a sickly yellow, marks the last known locations of the missing women. The clusters are tight, downtown, bleeding into the industrial riverfront.
Liam picks up a fine-tip marker, black. His hand is steady. He begins drawing lines. Connecting dots. A club near the docks here. A shipping container yard is there. A shell corporation office there. The lines form a spiderweb, converging on a single, unknown business in the old meatpacking district—It had to be Stern’s.
He works for another hour, cross-referencing the map with data on his screen. He adds small, precise ‘X’s over three of the yellow marks. These are the most recent. The ones Victor reported. The ink is stark, accusatory.
From a manila folder, he slides out a single photograph. It’s a grainy telephoto shot, taken from a distance. Ale'Xander Stern is exiting a black town car, his head turned slightly toward the camera. He’s a man of average height, dressed in an expensive, understated grey suit. His hair is golden blond, perfectly styled. He looks too clean. Only the eyes, even in the poor resolution, give him away—flat, shark-like, devoid of anything resembling warmth or mercy.
Liam places the photograph at the edge of the map, just below the meatpacking district. He stares at it. This is the face of the rot. This is the man who would see more women vanish into a black sedan, who would turn them into another yellow mark on a map.
A sudden, violent tremor runs through his hands as the thought connects. He clenches them into fists, presses his knuckles into the hardwood of the desk until the bones ache. The image is too clear: Elena, her green eyes wide with terror, a hand clamped over her mouth. His breath comes short at the thought of the nightmare.
He shoves back from the desk, standing abruptly. The room tilts. A wave of dizziness hits him, a combination of exhaustion, adrenaline crash, and the lingering whiskey. He braces himself on the chair. He hasn’t slept properly in days. The island, the boat, the constant planning—it’s a grinding toll. His body, trained to ignore weakness, is finally presenting the bill.
He should go to bed. The rational part of his brain commands it. But the map taunts him. Stern’s photo taunts him. Going to his empty bedroom feels like surrender. Here, in the study, he is still at war.
He sinks back into the chair, the leather sighing under his weight. He rubs his eyes, the grit of fatigue scraping against his lids. He forces himself to look at the map again, to trace the lines, to memorize the intersections. The yellow marks blur. The red and blue lines swim together. He blinks, hard.
His head nods forward. He jerks it back up. The fire is dead now. The only light is the desk lamp, casting a tight pool of gold over the map and his hands. The rest of the room is swallowed by shadow.
He gives in. Just for a moment. He’ll close his eyes, reset the pressure behind them. Then he’ll continue. He rests his forehead in his palm, elbow planted on the desk beside Stern’s photograph. The silence is absolute, a heavy blanket.
Sleep doesn’t come gently. It ambushes him. One second, he is tracing the route from the docks to the compound, the next, he is gone.
His dreams are not dreams. They are collisions. Fractured images slammed together with the subtlety of the last few days’ events.