The sting was a bright, electric thing. It shot up from Elena’s broken wrist, wrapped tight in a black elastic bandage, as the edge of the doorframe caught it on her way through. She hissed, a sharp intake of breath. The bouquet in her good hand—a riot of sunflowers and blue delphiniums, Lisa’s favorites—swayed dangerously, a few petals drifting to the polished linoleum.
Liam’s hand was on the small of her back before the pain had fully crested. Not a caress. A point of contact, an anchor. His touch was firm, warm through the soft green fabric of her dress. “Steady,” he said, his voice that low baritone that didn’t ask, just was. He didn’t look at her wrist. He was already looking down the long, sterile hallway, his blue eyes missing nothing: the orderly pushing a cart, the nurse at a distant station, the exit signs glowing.
Elena looked down at the dress. It was simple, sleeveless, the color of new leaves. Lisa would have called it ‘hopeful.’ Lisa would have said it brought out her eyes. Elena had stood in her closet at the manor for an hour, touching fabrics, rejecting them, until her injured hand ached. She hoped that Lisa would love it. The flowers were becoming heavy. Their stems were damp in her grip, water seeping through the paper wrap onto her fingers. She turned her head toward Liam. He stood beside her, a pillar of navy wool and controlled stillness. His fingers brushed lightly behind her ear—careful of the lingering sensitivity.
Taking a deep breath, she turns and faces Liam. “I’m ready,” she said. Her voice sounded thin.
He just gave a single, slight nod. His hand on her back applied a gentle, forward pressure as they moved into the room.
The door to the private room was large, wood-grained laminate. Liam pushed it open without knocking. The world inside was quieter, the hum of machinery taking the place of hallway echoes.
Victor sat in the visitor’s chair along the far wall, his head bowed down in his hands held up against his knees. He wasn’t in his own hospital bed, which sat pristine and empty just inside the room. He wore the general hospital gown, his enormous frame making the gown look almost too small. She could see white bandages wrapped around his broad torso, visible at the sides and collar of his gown. One thick forearm rested on his knee; the other hand held a plastic cup of water. He didn’t look up as they entered.
“You should be lying down,” Liam said. His voice was quiet but carried an edge of unmistakable command. “Resting.”
Victor finally turned his head. His face was drawn, stubble grey against his jaw, dark circles like bruises under his eyes. He looked older. He lifted a finger to his lips. “Hush,” he rumbled, the sound gravelly with fatigue. “She’s sleeping.”
Elena’s heart clenched. She followed Victor’s gaze to the curtain. Behind it, a soft, rhythmic beep punctuated the silence. The sound of a heart. Living.
Liam’s hand left her back. He moved past Victor, his steps silent on the floor. He took the edge of the curtain and drew it back slowly, the rings whispering on the rod.
Lisa lay in the raised bed, swallowed by white sheets and a thin hospital gown. Tubes ran from her arm to bags of clear fluid. A clip glowed red on her finger. More wires snaked from under her gown to a monitor that painted her vital signs in lazy green waves. Her black hair, usually streaked with color, was dark and fanned across the pillow, limp. Her skin was pale, almost translucent against the stark white. But her chest slowly rose and fell.
Elena’s own breath caught. She became aware of the weight of the flowers again, the dampness on her hand, the throbbing in her wrist. She walked forward, each step careful, as if the floor might crack. A vase, empty, sat on the bedside table. She set the bouquet down, her fingers fumbling with the paper. She couldn’t manage the knot with one hand. The stems slipped.
A large, scarred hand reached past her. Victor. He took the bouquet from her, his movements slow and deliberate. He peeled the wet paper away, dropped it in a bin, and placed the sunflowers in the vase. He didn’t look at Elena. His eyes were on Lisa’s sleeping face.
“She’s recovering,” Victor said, his voice low. “The surgery went… as well as it could. She’s just tired. The drugs, the blood loss.” He adjusted a sunflower so it faced the bed. “She wakes up sometimes. Asking for you. Then fades out again.”
Elena reached out. Her good hand hovered over Lisa’s, which lay palm-up on the sheet. She didn’t touch. She was afraid her touch would be cold, or sharp, or somehow break the fragile rhythm of the beeping monitor. “She asked for me?”
“Mmm.” Victor finally looked at her. His gaze was exhausted, but clear. “Before they took her in. And after, when the pain meds were high. Kept saying your name.” He glanced past her to his own undisturbed bed. “Someone had to be here to tell her you were coming.”
Elena could see it then—the empty coffee cups on the windowsill, the rumpled blanket on the chair, the way Victor’s shoulders held a permanent slump of vigilance. He hadn’t rested. He’d been standing watch. Guarding this one, fragile life because he couldn’t save it on the warehouse floor.
Liam stood at the foot of the bed, a silent overseer. His hands were in his pockets, his suit jacket unbuttoned. He watched the monitor, then Lisa, then Victor, then Elena. His assessment was a physical thing in the room. “You’re no good to her, exhausted, Victor,” he stated, but the edge was gone. It was just a fact.
“I’m exactly what she needs,” Victor replied, not moving from his post by the vase. “Me being here has helped her stay calm when she suddenly wakes.”
A soft sound came from the bed. A sigh. Lisa’s eyelids fluttered.
Elena froze. Victor leaned in slightly. Liam went perfectly still.
Lisa’s eyes opened. They were glassy, unfocused, roaming the ceiling before they drifted to the flowers. A faint, confused smile touched her lips. Then her gaze landed on Elena. It sharpened, just a fraction. Recognition.
“Hey,” Lisa breathed, the word a dry scrape of sound.
The sound unlocked Elena’s lungs. She sank into the chair Victor had vacated, her legs giving out. “Hey,” she whispered back. Her voice cracked.
Lisa’s eyes moved slowly, taking in Victor, then Liam at the foot of the bed. Her smile didn’t fade, but it changed. It became weary. Knowing. “Party in my room?” Her voice was a thread.
Victor let out a sound that was almost a laugh, a low exhale of relief. “Just the welcome committee.”
“You look like hell, Vic,” Lisa murmured, her eyes already starting to droop again.
“You’re one to talk,” he said, but his posture had softened.
Lisa’s hand twitched on the sheet. Elena, after a heartbeat, reached out and covered it with her own. Lisa’s skin was warm. Alive. Her fingers were limp, but they curled weakly around Elena’s. “You’re wearing green,” Lisa said, her gaze drifting over Elena’s dress. “S’pretty. Not your color.”
A choked laugh-sob escaped Elena. She squeezed Lisa’s hand. “You love green.”
“I do,” Lisa agreed, her eyes closing. “But the dress is pretty on you.” She was fading, the drugs pulling her back under. Her grip loosened. “Don’t… go far, okay?”
“I’m right here,” Elena said, leaning forward. “I’m not going anywhere.”
But Lisa was already asleep again, her breathing deepening, the monitor beeping its steady, reassuring rhythm.
Elena didn’t let go of her hand. She sat there, holding on, listening to the proof of life in the beeps and the breaths. The guilt was still there, a cold, heavy stone in her gut, but for now, it was submerged under this one, fragile reality: Lisa was here. Lisa was alive.
Victor settled back into his chair, a sigh of leather and fatigue. He watched Lisa’s face, his own a mask of grim relief.
Liam moved. He came to stand beside Elena’s chair. He didn’t touch her. He simply stood there, a presence at her shoulder. His gaze was on Lisa, but Elena could feel his attention on her—the weight of it, the calculation. After a long moment, he spoke, his voice so quiet only she could hear it over the machines. “She’s strong.”
It wasn’t comfort. It was an observation. A reassessment of an asset. But in that sterile room, with Lisa’s hand in hers and the scent of sunflowers cutting through the antiseptic, Elena heard something else. Permission, perhaps. To feel this relief. To anchor herself to this one good thing.
She looked up at him. His profile was sharp against the fluorescent light. He was looking at the monitor, at the steady pulse of Lisa’s heart. In his eyes, she saw the reflection of the green wave, rising and falling. A rhythm he could understand. A variable, controlled.
Elena turned back to Lisa, to the warmth of her hand. She didn’t let go. She held on, and for the first time since the warehouse, since the blood, since the unbearable silence, she let herself be still. The throb in her wrist was a distant echo. The only thing that was real was the beat, and the beat, and the beat.
Victor’s voice cut through the steady beep of the monitor, low and gravelly from disuse. “How’s your hearing?”
Elena didn’t look up from Lisa’s hand. The question felt like it came from far away. She focused on the warmth under her palm, the faint pulse she could feel in Lisa’s wrist. “The recovery sucked,” she said, her own voice quiet in the sterile room. “Had to stay in quiet places for a few days, the doctors wouldn’t let me leave. They said since I covered my ears, it did a lot less damage than it could have.”
She finally glanced at Victor. He was watching her, his expression unreadable. “Recovering Tinnitus’. No major damage to the eardrums.” She offered a weak smile that felt like cracked plaster on her face. “I keep hearing this faint ringing. Like a tea kettle that never quite boils.”
Victor gave a slow nod, his eyes drifting back to Lisa. “Good, I’m happy you’re ok. I’m happy you both are.”
Elena’s gaze traveled from his tired face down to the fresh bandages wrapping his torso, visible where his hospital gown gaped. “Your stitches,” she said. “You’ve reopened them. More than once.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s nothing. You should be resting. In a bed.” Her eyes flicked to his pristine, untouched bed across the room. “Not playing sentinel in a chair.”
Victor was silent for a long moment. The only sounds were the machinery and Lisa’s soft, drugged breaths. “You both saved me once,” he said, the words measured. “First time in town, and now she…” He nodded toward the bed. “She did it a second time. On the pier. Taking that bullet.” He shifted in the chair, a grimace tightening his features. “Being here for her when she wakes up confused, or in pain… It’s the least I can do.”
Liam spoke from his place beside Elena, his tone devoid of inflection. “If you don’t get the rest you need, you’ll render all that sacrifice pointless. More tears and bleeding or an infection would take you out of the fight entirely. Permanently.”
Victor’s jaw tightened. He didn’t look at Liam. “I know my limits.”
“Do you?” Liam’s question hung in the air, cold and sharp. “You’re no good to her dead, Victor. Or to me.”
The raw truth of it echoed in the quiet. Elena felt it hit Victor like a physical blow. His broad shoulders sagged a fraction more. He said nothing.
Elena looked down at her own bandaged wrist, the dull throb a constant companion. She understood the need to stand watch. The desperate, useless need to do something, anything, to atone. To guard. She was doing it right now, holding Lisa’s hand as if her grip alone could keep the life from seeping out.
“She’d tell you to get in the damn bed,” Elena whispered, her thumb stroking the back of Lisa’s hand. “She’d call you a stubborn bastard and probably threaten to hack your bank account if you didn’t.”
A breath that was almost a laugh escaped Victor. It was a tired, broken sound. “I’m sure she would.”
“So do it,” Elena said, looking at him again. “For an hour. She’s asleep. I’m here. Liam’s here. Give yourself and your body a few hours of rest.”
Victor’s resistance was a palpable force in the room. His every instinct screamed against leaving his post. But his body was betraying him—the pallor under his tan, the tremor in his hands where they rested on his knees. The pain he was suppressing with sheer will.
Slowly, painfully, he pushed himself up from the chair. The movement was stiff, agonizing. He didn’t make a sound, but Elena saw the sheen of sweat on his forehead. He took two shuffling steps toward the empty bed, then stopped, looking back at Lisa.
“At least one hour,” Liam stated, not a request. “That’s an order.”
Victor gave a single, curt nod. He lowered himself onto the edge of the other bed, the mattress creaking under his weight. He lay down on his side, still facing Lisa’s bed as if he could will himself to remain vigilant through posture alone, but quickly sleep followed and took him.
Elena turned her attention back to Lisa. The silence stretched, but it was different now. Less charged. The hum of the climate control was a white noise backdrop. The scent of sunflowers was slowly winning its war against the antiseptic.
Liam’s hand came to rest on the back of her chair. She felt the shift in the air his proximity caused, the subtle warmth. He was still assessing, always assessing—the green wave on the monitor reflected in his eyes.
Liam’s hand lifted from the back of her chair. The absence of its weight was a chill. He moved to stand before her, blocking her view of the monitor, his form a dark silhouette against the dim light. He looked down at her, his face unreadable in the shadows. “I haven’t seen you since I had to leave that night,” he said, his voice that low, controlled baritone. He glanced at Victor’s still back, then at Lisa’s sleeping form.
Elena kept her grip on Lisa’s hand. It was her anchor. She looked up at him, waiting.
“My work,” he began, the word careful, “pulled me away. There were… arrangements to make. Cleanup.” He paused, his gaze tracing the line of her bandaged wrist. “I am sorry, Elena. For all of it.”
The apology was unusually soft. It hung in the air between them. It wasn’t the low, controlled baritone he used for commands or explanations. This was thinner, worn at the edges. She felt the vibration of it in her own chest, a strange, hollow echo.
She watched his mouth shape the words, saw the slight, uncharacteristic hesitation in the line of his jaw. The hum of the medical equipment seemed to grow louder in the silence that followed, a sterile counterpoint to the raw thing he had just released into the room.
“The Eros,” he continued, his eyes locking with hers. “It’s being destroyed. Every vial, every formula. The production is terminated. I am diverting resources. I will do everything in my power to make things… better.” The word sounded foreign in his mouth.
“Also, your contract is void.”
He took a slow breath, his shoulders straightening. “I failed to keep you safe. That makes the contract meaningless. I am removing it. I am setting you free.”
The hum of the machines filled the space his words left. Free. The word echoed, hollow, in the room that smelled of flowers and medicine. Elena looked from his intent face to Lisa, pale but alive, to Victor, a broken sentinel on the edge of his bed. She felt the ghost of Lisa’s blood, sticky on her knees. She heard the phantom gunshot. She saw Liam’s hands, red and urgent, pressing on a wound that kept bleeding.
“No,” she said. The word was quiet, clear.
Liam’s brow furrowed, just a fraction. “Elena—”
“I’m refusing your offer.” She let go of Lisa’s hand, the warmth lingering on her palm. She stood, the green dress whispering around her legs. She was a foot shorter than him, but she didn’t feel small. “I’m staying.”
“That is not a logical choice.” His voice gained an edge, the one he used when a variable defied calculation. “The danger is still there. I failed to protect you, and you have no clue of the dangers that linger with my family. You have a path out from all of this. Take it.”
“I know about the Underworld,” she said, her voice still low, for him alone. “I know you play your part in it. “I know what you did. My brother wasn’t unlucky—you made sure he lost. You set all of it in motion. To bring him to the point where he would bet everything, and lose everything, so you could get to me, and in turn Lisa.”
“How?” A flicker crossed his face—a spasm of something pained, something raw. It was there and gone, smoothed back into impassive stone. But she saw it. The crack in the control.
“Overhearing things here and there, but I don’t want to get too into it right now.” She stepped closer. The scent of his cologne was clean and sharp. She raised her good hand. Her fingers, trembling only slightly, touched his jaw. The stubble there was rough against her skin. She felt the muscle tense under her touch.
“I don’t fully forgive you. Not yet,” she takes a breath, “Destroying Eros helps. But you don’t fix something like this alone. You need help. So let those around you help.” Her words were such a light whisper towards him as she finished.
He went utterly still. Not a breath escaped from him.
“I still have one question left, Sir,” she continued in the lightest voice, her thumb brushing the line of his cheekbone. She leaned in, her lips close to his ear, her green eyes holding his frozen blue gaze. The machines beeped. The room still, aside Victor’s breathing, deepened into the rhythm of exhausted sleep.
She paused, letting the silence stretch, letting the question form in the space between their shared guilt and this fragile, terrifying understanding. Her voice was a breath, a confession, a challenge.
“Do you love me?”
Liam’s expression fractured. The frozen control shattered, and for a single, suspended second, there was nothing but pure, unguarded surprise.
He opened his mouth, the pressure of words holding on his tongue—would it be a denial? a confession? Or a truth she didn’t want to hear…—trapped behind his clenched teeth.
“For God’s sake,” a weak, raspy voice croaked from the bed. “Just kiss her already.”
Lisa’s eyes were slits of exhausted amusement. Her head hadn’t moved on the pillow, but she was watching them, a ghost of her old smirk touching her pale lips. The monitor beeped a steady, stubborn rhythm behind her.
Liam’s gaze snapped to hers, then back to Elena. The surprise in his eyes hardened into something else—something hot and desperate and final. He didn’t speak. He moved.
When he moved, it was slower this time. Careful.
His hand lifted, brushing the side of her neck gently over the yellow spots from her being choked. Not a grip—just a quiet point of contact. Something steady. He leaned in, hesitating only a fraction before closing the distance.
The kiss was soft. Tentative at first, like he wasn’t sure how to do this without breaking the moment. His lips lingered against hers, asking instead of taking.
Elena’s breath caught, but she didn’t pull away. Her hand came to rest against his chest, feeling the warmth of him, the calm, steady beat beneath her palm.
He exhaled quietly, and something in him eased. The kiss deepened just slightly—not urgency, not hunger. Just presence.
When he pulled back, he didn’t go far. Their foreheads hovered close, his hand still resting at her neck.
“Yes,” he said, soft and certain.
“Good. Now let me hear a proper offer from you.” Elena said, keeping close to him.
“Then Elena Rossi. I will give you my Final offer.” He said firmly, never letting her go. “Help me restore the underworld. Help me eliminate what’s left of Eros. Help me clean up Las Lona and make it safe again. The structure. The order. The quiet that keeps the truly monstrous things at bay. Help me rebuild what was shattered. And in return… your contract is gone. Burned. You will owe me nothing.”
His hand slid from her hair, down her spine, coming to rest low on her back. A claim. A question. His breathing was still ragged, his heart still hammering against her palm through the starched cotton. The fear in his storm-dark eyes hadn’t vanished. It had just fused with a terrible, aching hope.
Elena didn’t move. The hum of the monitors was a distant ocean. Lisa’s slow breath. Victor’s deep, exhausted sleep. They were ghosts in this room now. The only real things were the heat of his hand through the thin silk of her dress, the rough scrape of his stubble against her forehead, the scent of him—cologne and clean sweat and something metallic, like resolve.
“Restore it,” she echoed, testing the weight of the word. She pictured the underworld and what it could become. Like a portrait of the world,
“It will be yours as much as mine,” he said, his voice gravel-rough. “Your mind. Your art. Your… ruthless compassion. I need it. I have always needed it. Not as a possession. As a partner.” He pulled back just enough to look at her. The raw vulnerability was gone, burned away in the furnace of his offer. What remained was stark, terrifying honesty. “Do you accept this offer, Elena Rossi?”
She looked at his mouth, remembering the softness of the kiss, the way it had gentled something wild in her chest. She thought of her brother’s terrified eyes, of the contract’s crisp print, of Lisa’s blood soaking into her knees. She thought of sunflowers in a sterile room. A path out, covered in glass. A path forward, paved in shadow.
Her good hand slid up his chest, over the pounding rhythm of his heart, to curl around the back of his neck. Her thumb found the tense cord of muscle there. She felt the shudder that went through him at her touch.
She rose onto her toes again, closing the last inch of space. Her lips brushed his, once, twice—a silent confirmation. A seal. When she spoke, her breath mingled with his.
“I do.”