LOGINA/N: An Extra chapter to apologize for the delay in upates.Elena's Point Of View"No take-backs, Elena," Graham said softly, his voice dropping into that quiet, dangerous register he used when closing a multi-million dollar merger. "You give me your word in this room, you don't get to slide back into your little heroic defiance tomorrow morning. You don't get to change your mind." I didn't say a single word. I just let my chin drop lower, keeping my throat tight, letting another wet tear trace its way down my jawline. I couldn't push it too far… I knew Graham wasn't daft. He wasn't some naive fool who'd fall for a dramatic 180-degree turn without checking for the knife behind my back. The man was a shark, and sharks could smell blood from miles away, even blood that wasn't really there. He'd made his fortune sniffing out weaknesses and calculating leverage before anyone else even knew a game was being played. If I overacted… if I suddenly started smiling or acting thrilled to be
Elena's Point Of ViewThe silence in the room hung thick and suffocating until the heavy brass latch clicked open, splintering the quiet like a gunshot. Graham walked in, his suit jacket off, his silk shirt sleeves rolled up to his forearms like he'd just finished a light afternoon of gardening rather than ordering a man beaten into the gravel. He paused near the threshold, his dark eyes sweeping over me… over the rumpled linen dress, my bare, smudged feet, and the way I sat stiffly at the edge of the mahogany table.Something in his gaze lingered a beat too long, as though he were cataloguing the wreckage he'd made of me and finding it, perversely, beautiful. I could almost see the calculations running behind his eyes, the quiet satisfaction of a man surveying his own handiwork. "Giulia said you wanted to see me, sweetheart," Graham said, his tone casual, almost conversational. He leaned back against the heavy wooden door frame, folding his arms across his chest. "I must admit, I d
Elena's Point Of ViewThe floorboards were cold under my palms. I didn't move for a long time. I just lay there on my side, my cheek pressed against the plush cream rug, watching dust motes float through a sharp beam of Italian sunlight. My throat felt raw, like I'd swallowed sand, and every breath I took rattled in my chest.The silence pressed down on me, thick and suffocating, broken only by the distant cry of gulls somewhere beyond the locked window. Somewhere in that silence, I thought I could hear my own heartbeat, slow and stubborn, refusing to let me disappear into the numbness creeping at the edges of my mind. Three days. That was seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours on a clock that was already ticking down, each second heavy and suffocating. I could almost hear it counting, a phantom metronome ticking away inside my skull, mocking me with every passing breath. I tried to imagine what those hours would look like, stacked one on top of another like stones building a wall I
Elena's Point Of ViewTwo guards hauled Jaxx up off the harsh gravel. He looked like a wreck… his jacket torn, dark crimson trailing down his jawline, his breathing heavy and ragged. Every muscle in my body twitched, desperate to break away from Graham and sprint straight across that courtyard to hold him up.My throat closed around a scream I didn't dare release, and I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek to keep it there, trapped where it could do no harm. Then Jaxx tilted his head up. His swollen eye fluttered open, locking right onto mine. For one suspended heartbeat, the entire courtyard seemed to vanish… the guards, the gravel, Graham's suffocating presence at my side, until there was nothing left but the two of us and the impossible distance between us. In that fraction of a second, I saw everything I'd been trying not to feel: the terror, the fear, the desperate need to close the gap and never let go. Instead of showing agony, his bloody lips twitched upward into a faint,
Elena's Point Of View"What?" The word barely escaped me. It was just a thin, hollow breath that dissolved in the air between us, swallowed whole before it could mean anything. My ears rang so loudly I thought my eardrums might burst, but beneath the high-pitched hum, the dull, wet impact of another boot hitting Jaxx's ribs echoed like thunder across the courtyard.Every fiber of my being wanted to run to him, to throw myself between his broken body and the men still circling him, but my legs refused to move, frozen in place by a terror I had never known before, a paralysis that felt like betrayal in itself. Graham smiled, his eyes soft, almost gentle, which only made the skin on the back of my neck prickle with absolute revulsion. He raised his hand, his thumb resting against my jawline while his fingers cupped my chin. He rubbed the bone with a slow, deliberate pressure, tilting my face up so I had no choice but to look at him.There was something obscene about the tenderness in h
Elena's Point Of ViewGraham didn't even flinch. He just stood there, letting me shake him, a slow, sickening bubble of laughter building in his chest until he finally let it out. He looked down at my hands clutching his shirt as if I were a stray kitten claws-deep in his favorite sweater, something to be tolerated rather than feared. There was no fear in his eyes, no flicker of doubt… only that maddening, patient amusement, as though my desperation were a mildly diverting show staged solely for him. "Me?" Graham chuckled, his hands rising to calmly wrap around my wrists, his grip like steel bands. "Sweetheart, I did absolutely nothing to him. I've been right here with you the entire time. You're my witness, aren't you?" "You monster!" I screamed, the word ripping from my throat, raw and ragged. Tears were finally rolling down my face now, hot and fast, blurring the sight of his smug, handsome face. "You ordered it! You knew he was out there! You absolute psychopath, let me go!" "
Elena’s Point Of ViewMy fingers trembled around the phone, my breath coming in sharp, uneven gasps. What the hell was wrong with him?One minute, he was gone, vanished like a ghost, leaving me to wonder if I’d imagined the way his hands had felt on my skin, the way his voice had sounded in the dar
Jaxx’s Point Of ViewThe conference room was a tomb of dark wood and polished steel, the air thick with the scent of cigar smoke and expensive cologne. The leaders of the minority clans under The Moretti Syndicate sat around the long mahogany table, their faces a mix of respect and barely concealed
Elena’s Point Of ViewLexy didn’t wait for me to gather my thoughts. Instead, she reached into her bag and pulled out a small, velvet box, tossing it onto my desk with a clink."What’s this?" I asked, eyeing it warily."Open it," she said, her grin turning wicked.I flipped open the box. Inside was
Elena’s Point Of ViewThe tears came without warning.One second, I was talking… voice steady, hands clenched in my lap, and the next, my chest was heaving, my vision blurring, my entire body shaking with sobs I couldn’t stop. It was like something inside me snapped, like the last thread holding me







