This wasn’t my room.
The air felt wrong. Cooler. Quieter. Like the world outside didn’t exist. I was being paranoid.
I reached for the lamp.
Something smooth and foreign tugged at my wrist.
Silk.
The breath left my lungs in a single, sharp exhale.
I tugged again—slow, deliberate. My wrists met resistance, soft but firm. It didn’t hurt. Not exactly. But it held.
The darkness pressed in, thick and quiet. No streetlight slashed through the curtains. No TV glow. No hotel lamp casting its familiar golden wash over the room.
My heart began to thump.
I swallowed.
“Hello?” My voice cracked and I winced. I sounded weak.
The silence felt wrong. It wasn’t peaceful—it was expectant.
Then—something moved.
There, in the corner. A shift, the barest scrape of something on the carpet.
I bolted upright—or tried to.
My arms wouldn’t move the way they were supposed to. My shoulders strained, and the binds held firm. My head spun with the effort.
Think, Lucia.
Dinner.
Champagne.
God, how much had I drunk?
The memories skipped like a scratched disc.
His hand pouring. My hand holding the glass.
Toast. A joke I didn’t understand.
His eyes—dark, sharp. Watching me over the rim of his glass.
I shifted again, but I couldn't move my legs at all. My calves were bound to my thighs.
I lay frozen. The realisation that I was bound to this bed and unable to straighten my legs.
A shape moved.
The faintest gleam of something—buttons? A cufflink?
Then I heard him.
“You’re awake.”
