The silence in the dining hall wasn’t quiet—it was heavy, pressing in until Liam’s ears rang with it. The scent of old leather, the chill of stone, the fire’s low hiss—distant, irrelevant. Everything narrowed to a single point. The name Elena had just spoken.
He doesn’t answer immediately.
The name hangs between them, and something old and buried shifts in his chest.
Smoke — Not from the fire in the hearth—but thicker. Blacker. The kind that chokes the air out of your lungs.
A hand slipping from his, going slack.
Liam blinks, the memory snapping shut like a trap. His jaw tightens, teeth grinding hard enough to ache.
He exhales once. Controlled. Measured.
Then—
“Xander Stern,” Liam said.
There was no way he’d heard that correctly. The wine in his mouth turned to iron filings. He set his glass down. The crystal touched the mahogany with a tap that felt way too loud. He watched his own hand, the careful, deliberate motion, barely holding its steady composure.
He made himself look at her. She sat perfectly still across the long table, her green eyes fixed on him in the light. No fear. No hesitation. Just a demand. His mind fractured, processing on two levels. The surface: maintain control. The depths: a screaming, red-alert chaos. How. How did she know that name?
“That’s not a topic for discussion,” he said. His voice was flat, a sheet of ice over a chasm. A deflection. Automatic. Professional. The only tool he had left.
Elena didn’t blink. “My second question.”
The words were a gut punch. He actually felt the air leave his lungs. She was invoking the deal. The three questions. She was spending one of her precious, hard-won tokens on this.
“Who,” she repeated, each syllable a hammer strike, “is Xander Stern?”
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! His thoughts were a stampede. Where would she have heard his name? A leak in his organisation? Impossible. Victor was clean. Presley vetted the staff. No. A threat inside his home, right now, whispering to her? Had they gotten to her in the city when he passed out? In her goddamn sleep? Every moment he hadn’t been physically on top of her scrolled through his head, each one a potential breach, a failure. He’d brought the enemy into his bed. The thought was a white-hot brand against his skull.
“How,” he heard himself say, the word scraping raw from his throat, “do you know that name?”
“Answer the question first.”
Her voice was determined, something he hadn’t seen from her since that first day in her apartment office. She had him. He saw the trap, perfect and inescapable. The rules were his own. He’d carved them into stone himself. A question demanded an answer. Truth. He was backed into a corner of a cage of his own design, the walls closing in, the air thinning.
She just waited, her gaze unyielding.
Liam leaned back in his chair. The movement felt slow, underwater. He steepled his fingers, a gesture of contemplation that hid the tremor wanting to start in his hands. The fire cast its shadow, huge and wavering, against the book-lined wall. He was buying seconds. Measuring the cost.
To tell her was to pull her deeper into the rot of the underworld. To make her a true target, not just a pawn. It was to give voice to the thing that had shaped his every breath since he was a boy. It was to break the seal on a crypt.
Not telling her was a breach of contract. It was a weakness. It was an admission that this thing, this name, had power over him. And she would know. She already knew.
The calculation was brutal and instantaneous. The loss of control now, by his own choice, was preferable to the loss of control later, by force. He had to answer.
He let his hands fall to the arms of the chair. The leather was cool under his palms. He looked past her, at the dark windows reflecting the room like a black mirror. He didn’t see the room. He saw a different fire. A woman with laughter like music.
“Xander Stern,” Liam said. The name was ash in his mouth. “Is the man who ordered my Aunt’s death, and I’m certain he was behind my parents’ so-called accident.”
The words don’t land all at once.
They sink—slow, heavy—like stones dropped into dark water.
The words didn’t land all at once—Ordered. Death—each one sinking slowly, dragging weight behind it.
Elena’s fingers tighten against the edge of the table, the polished wood suddenly too cold beneath her skin. A chill crawls up her arms, settling at the base of her spine.
This wasn’t business. This wasn’t power or control or contracts. This was blood. Her gaze flicks back to Liam, searching his face—really seeing it now. Not just dangerous. Not just controlling. Something forged in violence. Something that had survived it.
And for the first time—
She isn’t sure if he is the worst thing in this room.
He forced his eyes back to Elena. He watched the information land, saw the slight parting of her lips in surprise. He needed to see her reaction. He needed to know if she understood the gravity of the poison she’d just asked to taste.
“He is the head of the Stern family and the Sterns Corp. My family’s business enemy for twenty-four years.” His voice was low, a gravelly recitation of facts.
He leaned forward now, elbows on the table, his gaze pinning her in place. The professional detachment was gone, burned away by the embers of something older and far more dangerous. “Now. How do you know that name?”
“He came up to me once,” Elena says. Her voice is calm and clear, but he can see a hesitation that holds her back from saying more.
Liam stares. The words don’t compute. That was impossible. Came up to her? Once. His mind snags on the preposition. Up. To. As if it were casual. As if it were a simple chat.
“When.” It isn’t a question. It’s a demand for coordinates. His mind is already racing, a frantic timeline overlaying the last weeks. The city? When he passed out in her apartment? No, he’d been with her, Victor outside. The boutique? She was never alone. The staff vetted, the car sealed. His home? Impossible. The perimeter is a fortress. Every moment scrolls by, a surveillance reel searching for the ghost of a breach.
Then it hits him. A cold, slick certainty that floods his gut. Dinner. The formal, distant dinner weeks ago. He’d stepped away when Victor called. The update he had on the missing Eros shipment had him away for only six, maybe seven minutes. He’d left her at the table.
“The dinner.” The word is a whisper, a realisation that tastes like bile as they leave his lips.
Elena doesn’t confirm it. She doesn’t have to. He sees it in the unflinching set of her jaw. The anger arrives not as a wave, but as a silent, systemic shock. It starts in his clenched fists, a tremble of pure rage he forces into the bones of his hands. It travels up his arms, tightening the muscles of his shoulders, locking his spine rigid. His vision tunnels, the edges darkening until all he sees is her face, and behind it, the phantom smirk of Xander Stern, ready to strike and take yet another precious thing away from him.
He stands. The chair legs scrape against the stone floor, a shriek in the quiet. He doesn’t remember deciding to move. His body is just… up. He turns from the table, his back to her, needing a wall, needing not to look at the living proof of his failure.
Stern knew where he was. Knew who he was with. Knew the exact, fleeting window when his guard would be down.
“What did he say to you?” Liam’s voice is gravel, ground from some deep, wounded place inside his chest.
“He warned me of you.”
Something tightens in Liam’s chest. Not sharp—worse. Slow. Crushing. His jaw locks. A pulse starts in his temple, steady and violent.
Stern was in his circle. Speaking to her.
His hand curls into a fist before he realises it, nails biting into his palm hard enough to ground him—barely.
The anger doesn’t rise.
It builds.
Pressure.
Waiting to rupture.
“He told me you set my brother up,” Elena says, her voice cutting through. “That Marco’s debt wasn’t an accident. That you targeted him to get to me. That this is all just another one of your games.”
Liam’s control snaps. His anger detonates. “THAT SON OF A BITCH!” The roar wasn’t directed at her; it’s aimed at the ghost of Stern in the room, at the walls, at the twenty-four years of blood and vengeance. “That manipulative, murdering piece of shit dares to lecture me on games?” He slams a fist down on the table. The crystal glasses jump, a sharp chime ringing in the air. “I am in this damn game because of him! Every move I make is because he put me here!”
He’s leaning over the table, his vision going red. “He butchers my family and then has the gall to paint me as the villain to you? To warn you?”
Elena flinches back. The raw, violent fury is a physical force. She has seen him cold, she’s seen him commanding, she’s even seen him vulnerable. She has never seen this—a man coming completely, terrifyingly undone.
“You don’t get to lose control and scare me for something he did,” she whispers, the words swallowed by the pounding of her own heart.
“Lose control?” He laughs again, the sound jagged and broken. “He was in my home. He spoke to you. He planted his poison in your head weeks ago, and you’ve been carrying it. Carrying it while I…” He trails off, the implication hanging between them—while I loved you, while I trusted you, while I let you in.
The betrayal in his gaze isn’t aimed at her. It’s aimed at himself. It’s too much. The monstrous shadow, the unleashed rage, the history of murder. And then he sees her—. Sitting there, no longer strong and firm, but small and fragile. Water in her eye. Her chair scrapes back as she stands, her body moving before he can process.
She turns and runs for the door.
Liam stares at the space where she was, the echo of her flight a cold shock in his veins as he processes what happened. His loss of control. Then he moves to chase her and stop her.
A solid wall of muscle and dark fabric intercepts him in the doorway. Victor. The older man doesn’t shove, doesn’t speak. He simply plants himself, his broad frame filling the space, a silent, immovable barrier.
“Move,” Liam snarls, the word guttural, His instincts screaming to swing.
“No.” Victor’s voice is low, calm, and absolute. “You chase her now, you will just make things worse and make you the monster he’s claimed you are.”
Of course, he overheard them. Liam tries to step around him. Victor shifts, a subtle adjustment that blocks the path completely. He places his large hand gently on his shoulder. “Breathe, Liam. Or you will push her away for good.”
The truth of it hits him like a bucket of ice water. He stops, his chest heaving. He looks past Victor’s shoulder, down the dark, empty hall where she vanished. The rage doesn’t leave. It curdles, sinking from a boil into a deep, sickening chill in his gut. He took his eyes off her for seven minutes. And in those minutes, the war found her.
“Fine.” His voice comes out harsh. “I’ll go to my room.”
The roar rang in her ears as she ran down the hall, snapping at her heels. Elena didn’t stop running until the door of her room slammed behind her, the solid wood a frail barrier against the echo of his fury. She scrambled into the bed, pulling the heavy duvet over her head like a child, but the darkness beneath was just another space to hear it—the shattering crystal, the raw, guttural sound of his voice breaking.
She shook, a fine, uncontrollable tremor in her hands and jaw. It wasn’t fear of being hurt. It was the terror of seeing the foundation of a man crack open and spill twenty-four years of hell.
A sob slipped free before she could stop it. Then another. She pressed her face into the pillow, trying to muffle the sound, but it kept coming—quiet, uneven, pulled from somewhere deep in her chest. Her body curled in on itself, as if she could make herself smaller, contain what she’d just witnessed.
Slowly, the storm burned itself out.
Her breathing steadied in shallow pulls. The shaking eased, leaving her heavy, hollow. The house around her had gone still again, the earlier violence fading into something distant, unreal.
She lay there, staring into the dimness beneath the covers, the image of him still sharp behind her eyes. Just breathing and trying to relax again.
A soft knock at the door made her flinch.
"Miss Rossi?" Presley's voice, low and measured, filtered through the wood. "May I enter?"
She couldn't form words. She pushed the duvet down, her hair a wild tangle around her pale face. "Yes."
The door opened without a sound. Presley entered, a picture of calm in his tailcoat, carrying a small silver tray with a single porcelain cup. The scent of chamomile and honey cut through the cold adrenaline in the room. He approached the bed, his steps precise on the rug. "I thought you might require something to settle your nerves."
He offered the tray. Elena took the cup, her fingers brushing the warm porcelain. The heat felt soothing. She took a sip, the sweet, floral liquid a stark contrast to the metallic taste of fear still on her tongue. "Thank you."
Presley did not leave. He stood beside the bed, his hands clasped behind his back, gazing not at her but at the dark window. "It is a difficult thing," he said, his voice a quiet rumble, "to witness a storm you did not create."
Elena looked at him over the rim of her cup. The professional mask was there, but his eyes held a distant weight. "Do you have any family, Presley?"
A pause. A slight, almost imperceptible tightening of his jaw. "I did. A sister named Clara."
"Were you close?"
Presley’s gaze seemed to focus on something far away, like he was recalling a long-ago memory. “We were, in our way. She was… brighter than I. But fragile. Her health was never strong.”
He paused, a subtle shift in his posture. “She had a friend. Rosa, A young woman I distrusted immediately. She was reckless. Always trying to pull my sister into things she had no business doing.” A faint exhale. “So I followed. To keep her safe.”
His hands clasped tighter behind his back. “In time, I found I had misjudged her. Those… excursions became something more. Less about risk, more about living. It made my sister’s eyes light up in a way I'd never seen before.” His voice lowered slightly. “Eventually, my sister's health started to fail, and she couldn’t always join us on the adventures. “And somewhere along the way…”
He pauses, just briefly. “I found I was no longer following for my sister’s sake.”
Another quiet breath. “I had simply begun… looking forward to seeing her.” A beat. Elena could feel the pain in Presley's heart.
Elena set her cup down on the nightstand. “Where are they now?”
“They are gone.” His tone flattened, precise and controlled. “My sister’s health failed her when she was 16; she had Cystic Fibrosis.”
“What about Rosa?”
I was told it was just a mugging. A random act of violence.” A pause. “No reason. No enemy. She was just… gone.”
She understood then. This was not just comfort. This was a confession. A warning. His loss was a clean, tragic wound. Liam's was a festering war. "I'm so sorry, Presley. You loved her, didn’t you?"
He finally looked at her, his eyes reflecting the dim light from the hall. "Some storms, Miss Rossi, have a name and face. And they do not stop coming." He gave a slight, formal bow, refusing to answer his question. "Sleep if you can. The tea will help." He turned and left, closing the door with a soft, familiar click.
Elena sat in the quiet, the cup cooling between her palms. Victor’s Iris, taken. Liam’s parents and aunt were murdered. Presley’s sister’s health. And his love, gone on a random street. The house was a museum of grief, every polished member carrying a headstone. She was living inside a monument to other people’s tragedies. What was her tragedy? A failed business. A brother’s debt. It felt petty and small.
What was she getting herself into? The question was a joke. She was already in it. Up to her neck. The water was cold, and it was pulling her down. She wasn’t a player. She was the stake. The prize. The thing was fought over. Liam wanted to possess her. Stern wanted to use her. And in the middle of it all, she was just trying to remember what her own skin felt like without someone else’s claim on it.
Elena lay in the dark long after Presley left, the warmth of the tea giving its comfort inside her. The house settled into a deep, watchful silence. She didn't cry again. She stared at the ornate ceiling until her eyes blurred, the image of Liam’s shattered control playing on a loop against the plaster roses. Eventually, the exhaustion of adrenaline and grief pulled her under into a thick, dreamless sleep.
Morning came and broke her from her sleep abruptly, a grey intrusion through the heavy curtains. She woke with a stiff neck and a hollow chest, the events of the previous night waiting for her like a cold weight on the blanket. She moved through the routine mechanically: shower, teeth, small white pill, the employee uniform adorned. her reminder of the role she was meant to play today.
Now she had to face him. Who would she see today? What part of him would he be? Loving and caring, cold businessman, or the beast she met last night…
She opened her door. The manor felt different this morning—the air was calm, too quiet, like the house itself was holding its breath. Her footsteps on the runner were the only sound she heard as she made her way toward the study, her mind already bracing for Liam’s cold professionalism, or for the beast of last night.
Presley must have been waiting at the junction of the hall to the study. All she saw was a still figure in his tailcoat simply materialised, with his hands clasped. He didn’t startle her this time. “Miss Rossi.”
She stopped. “Presley.”
“Mr. Thorn will not be requiring your assistance in the study today. He is occupied.” His tone was polished, neutral, giving nothing away. “He asked that I inform you to enjoy your day. And to prepare for your guest’s arrival this afternoon.”
The reprieve was so sudden it felt like a trap. She searched his face for a hint, a flicker of last night’s shared confession, but the butler’s mask was perfectly sealed. “Prepare how?”
“As you see fit. The staff will handle the luncheon. Your friend is expected at noon, correct?”
“Yes.”
He gave a slight, deferential nod in return. “The day is yours.”
Elena stood there for a long moment after he glided away. The hall was empty again. The directive echoed. Enjoy your day. The words were a mockery. She turned and walked back to her room, the click of the lock behind her sounding final.
She stripped off the uniform with sharp, angry movements, letting the ugly fabric pool on the floor. She went to the wardrobe, to the section of clothes that were hers—simple, soft things Liam had acquired for her. She had to decide what she wanted to do today…
Victor… Maybe she could find him and practice more.
She pulled on dark jeans and a cream-colored sweater, the normalcy of the texture a small, defiant comfort. She brushed out her long hair until it fell in a smooth wave down her back.
Stepping down the stairs into the garage, Elena felt the cold, dry air wash over her. Just as she expected, Victor was there, his broad back to her as he methodically worked on lifting weights, the curling of his muscles under the tension showing. She stopped at the edge of the mat they’d used before. “Victor.”
He didn’t turn. “Yes, Miss Rossi.”
“I want to train. More.”
This time, he paused, setting the dumbbell down. He turned, his gaze assessing. He took in her clothes, the determined set of her jaw, the faint tremor in her hands she couldn’t hide. He gave a single, slow nod. “The escape from a rear bear hug. You learned the theory. Now you learn the feel.” He walked onto the mat, his movements economical. “Come at me. Don’t think. Just move.”
She did. It was clumsy, a rush of motion fueled by the coiled tension in her gut. He caught her easily, his arms like steel bands locking around her torso, pinning her arms to her sides. The air left her lungs in a rush. His chest was a solid wall against her back.
“Now,” his voice was a rumble against her spine. “Drop your weight. You’re a deadfall.” She went limp, her knees buckling, but he held her up, her feet dangling. “Not like that. You’re not fainting. You want to become like lead, heavy. Force me to carry all of you.” She forced her muscles to loosen, to become a sack of grain, and she felt the subtle strain in his hold.
“Good. Now, the pivot. Use my grip as your anchor. Drive your elbow back into my solar plexus. Imagine your bone is a hammer.” She twisted, drove her elbow back. It connected with a soft thud against the hard muscle of his abdomen. His grip loosened a fraction.
“Again. Harder. You’re not tapping me. You’re trying to break my ribs.” She did it again, putting her shoulder into it, a grunt escaping her lips. This time, his arms fell away. She stumbled forward, gasping, her side aching where she’d struck him. The victory was small, but felt wonderful. She turned, chest heaving. Victor hadn’t moved. His expression was unreadable. “Again,” he said.
They drilled it for twenty minutes. Her sweater grew damp with sweat. Her ribs were tender. Her breath sawed in and out. Each successful escape was a tiny spark in the void inside her. Each failure, where he effortlessly contained her, was a reminder of the sheer scale of the forces she could imagine were arrayed against her. She was learning to slip a hold, not win a war.
He let her up. The cold air of the garage hit her sweat-damp skin, raising goosebumps. Her ribs ached where she’d struck him, a dull, deep throb. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, tasting salt and frustration.
“Again,” Victor said, his voice devoid of encouragement. It was a fact, like the concrete floor.
Elena came at him, aiming for the deadfall. She dropped her weight, pivoted, and drove her elbow. He absorbed the blow, his body unmoving, and caught her wrist before she could stumble free. His fingers were iron. Failure, cold and complete. She pictured Liam’s face at dinner, the shattered glass of his composure. Failure there meant a different kind of hold. One she couldn’t slip.
Elena could imagine Stern’s face. Imagine the family lost. She couldn’t let herself be helpless. She had to be able to defend herself. She pushes hard again, trying to find any way to get an edge on this hulking man. Almost twice her size.
She tried again. And again. Each attempt was a variation on the same defeat. Her breath came in ragged gasps that clouded in the chill. The cream sweater is becoming damp and heavier. Her hair stuck to her neck.
“You’re anticipating,” Victor stated, not even winded. “You telegraph the pivot in your shoulders. I see it a full second before you move.”
Elena straightened, her hands on her knees. The frustration was a live wire in her chest, sizzling and hot. It blurred her vision. Every failed move was a rehearsal for a moment when it wouldn’t be Victor on the other side. It would be a man with blue eyes and a voice that could strip her bare without touching her. Failure then wouldn’t mean getting up from a mat. It would mean staying down.
Victor let her come at him again, and this time her frustration made her sloppy. She didn't drop her weight, didn't pivot— he wanted her to break a rib, so she would break a rib however she could. She threw herself forward, like a human battering ram, aiming for his ribs. He caught her wrists, used her own momentum to spin her, and drove her down onto the mat straight on her back, facing up at a garage light. The impact punched the air from her lungs. Before she could react and move, he came down over her, one knee between her thighs, his hands pinning her wrists to the cold rubber on either side of her head. Her chest heaved against his, the cream sweater damp and sticking to her skin. She struggled, a futile twist of her hips, but his weight was absolute, immobilising.
"You stopped thinking," he growled, his face inches from hers. His eyes were flat and assessing, with a focus of anger in them. "Your anger is making you stupid. Stupidity gets you killed.” He says, keeping her pinned.
"Well", a bright and all-too-familiar voice cut through the garage's silence. “This is not the boyfriend I pictured you would find.”