“From the moment you left your room.” He sheathes the knife at his belt with practiced ease. “You disabled the hallway camera at 9:47. Then you slipped out the service entrance at 10:03. Made it to the tree line in thirty-five seconds, which is faster than I expected given the terrain.”
He tracked every move. Let me think I was escaping while orchestrating the entire thing.
Fury floods through the terror, hot enough to override the shaking in my hands. “You let me think I was going to die.”
“I let you see what death looks like.” He extends a hand toward me, offering help I don’t want. “There are men positioned outside this estate waiting for you to make one mistake. Sartore has people watching the perimeter, tracking patterns, calculating when you’ll try exactly what you attempted tonight. If I hadn’t been following you, if someone else had been in this clearing, you’d be dead.”
I don’t take his hand. I push myself upright on trembling legs, branches and dirt clinging to the oversized coat. “So this was a lesson.”
“This was reality.” He lowers his hand but doesn’t step back. “You think you’re a prisoner inside the estate. Those walls are the only thing keeping you alive. The moment you cross the property line, you become prey.”
“I’m already prey.” The words come out sharper than intended. “You’re just a different predator.”
Something flickers in his expression—acknowledgment, maybe, or agreement. “The difference is I don’t want you dead.”
“You just want me caged.”
“I want you alive and breathing.” His voice drops lower, edged with something that sounds almost like frustration. “Which apparently requires demonstrating what happens when you try to leave.”
My legs give out. I sink back onto my knees in the dirt and wet leaves, adrenaline crashing hard enough that my vision blurs at the edges. The knife was real. The threat was real. For thirty seconds I believed I was dying, and he stood there watching me fall apart with the same controlled precision he brings to everything.
Felix crouches in front of me, close enough that I could hit him if my hands would cooperate. “Can you walk?”
“I don’t know.”
He doesn’t wait for certainty. He pulls me upright by the arm and keeps a steadying hand at my waist when I sway. “We’re going back.”
The walk to the estate takes twice as long as my panicked run into the woods. Felix sets the pace, his grip on my arm firm but not painful, guiding me around obstacles I can barely see in the darkness.
Guards materialize from the tree line as we approach the lawn—three of them, armed, expressions neutral as they fall into formation around us.
They knew. All of them knew this was happening and let it play out.
Inside the main house, Felix releases me at the base of the stairs. “Your room. Now.”
I don’t have the energy to argue. I climb the steps on legs that threaten to buckle, aware that he’s watching me go but too exhausted to care what conclusions he’s drawing.
The bedroom looks exactly as I left it—curtains open, bed unmade, Ethan’s notebook sitting on the nightstand. Nothing has changed except my understanding of how thoroughly controlled this captivity is.
I strip off the muddy coat and collapse onto the bed fully clothed, staring at the ceiling until exhaustion drags me under.
***
Morning arrives too bright and wrong. Sunlight streams through the windows I forgot to cover, illuminating dust motes that drift lazily through air that smells faintly of lavender.
Someone cleaned while I slept.
I sit up slowly, muscles protesting every movement. My arms are covered in shallow cuts from branches, dirt still embedded beneath my fingernails despite the shower I vaguely remember taking at some point during the night.
The bedroom door opens without knocking. The same maid who delivers meals enters carrying fresh linens, her expression professionally neutral.
“Good morning, Miss Clarke.” Her tone is formal, carefully polite. “Mr. Rudenko has requested your presence for lunch at noon. I’ve laid out appropriate clothing.”
She gestures toward the closet where I find garments I’ve never seen before—a tailored dress in deep burgundy, expensive fabric that probably costs more than my monthly rent, fitted precisely to measurements someone must have taken without my knowledge.
“I don’t want to have lunch with Felix.”
“Noon in the main dining room,” the maid repeats, already moving toward the door. “Please don’t be late.”
