Elena woke to the sting of rope against her wrists and the taste of dust at the back of her throat. For a dizzy heartbeat she searched the dim room for a familiar shape, a voice — anything. Only the ceiling above, cracked and stained, answered. Panic rose quick and hot when memory returned: the bar, the stranger's smile, the drink that had felt like sleep creeping under her skin. Then the heavy hands, the forced ride, the slam of the door.
She tried to move and the ropes bit. Her breath came shallow. Footsteps approached — slow, confident. A man stepped into the doorway, leaning like he owned the light. He smiled at her as if greeting an old amusement.
"Oh, you're awake, little Miss Lorenzo," he said with a mock courtesy that made the room colder. "How was your sleep?"
"Elena," she forced out. She fought for composure. "Who are you? Why am I tied to a chair?"
Laughter slid from the shadows. A second voice, sharp and satisfied, answered: "We couldn't touch him for years. Untouchable. Perfect. But everyone has a weakness. His — was always the soft thing at the center of his life. Love makes for excellent leverage."
Her stomach dropped. "No," she whispered. Shame burned her face. I left. I ran. I— She pressed her forehead into the rope, trying to stop the tremor.
The men circled, the sound of their boots like a verdict. One of them knelt to her level and pointed a finger at her like a nail. "You left him, little dove. You ran to us. You gave up your protector." He spat the words, tasting them. "You handed him to us with your feet."
Elena's throat tightened. Through the fog of the last night's liquor and the rope's bite, she saw flashes of Lorenzo's face — the confusion when she stormed out, the pleading that she'd denied him. She felt sick with guilt. If only I'd stayed. If only I'd listened. If only I'd trusted him when he needed me most. Tears tried to force a way out but she swallowed them down; there was no room for weakness in this room.
The men laughed again, not cruel now but triumphant. "We followed him for a long time," another said, voice flat, clinical. "We knew his habits, his favors, his nights. But never his heart. Until you, pretty thing, came and bled us a route in." He tapped the seat beside him as if prompting her to take in the reality. "You cried in the garden. We watched. You slunk out at night. It was all very convenient."
Elena's breath hitched. "Who… who watched the house?" she asked, voice thin. Her chest felt like a fist.
The leader's face hardened into that particular smile men wear when they know a trap has closed. "Don't be dramatic. We have eyes everywhere. A spy, perhaps even someone under your roof. We fed the right words, and you did the rest."
The word spy landed like a stone. Elena thought of the maids, the guards, the way someone had been unnaturally attentive to small movements. Her stomach twisted with the discovery. Someone we trusted was watching — listening — maybe for months. Rage rose in her then, hot and useful. She would not be broken in this chair.
"Do you think he'll come?" she asked, voice steadier now, not because she believed it but because she needed to test them. "Do you think Lorenzo will let you keep me?"
They shrugged, comfortable in their certainty. "He might come. He might turn the city upside. Or he might burn everything and never find you. Either way, we win." One of them leaned closer. "You should tell the story we want you to tell. Tell him you left because you wanted to. Tell him you died to the love you thought you had — and he'll break so nicely."
Elena pictured Lorenzo — not as the mob king but as the man who had sat in the garden and listened to her cry, who had let himself be scolded and carried her like she was fragile and precious. Panic came again, but very quickly it was shoved aside by a new, sharper current: I will not perform for them. I will not give them the narrative. A fierceness she had buried years ago rose like something iron-forged.
"You spy on people," she said, voice low. "You use their sorrow for sport. You think you've taken me, but you only took my hands. My head is free." Her words surprised her with their chill. The men blinked once, then smirked. "We'll enjoy watching you try, little miss."
Outside the city, in a house with tall glass and a study that always smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and old paper, Lorenzo stood with both hands pressed flat against the wood of his desk. Luca had come in and left a report, and the report said the same thing the blind search had said — no CCTV, no recorded taxi, no phone ping. He had expected that. He had called the police anyway.
The inspector had been polite, official, and useless in the way of men who have never been given a name like Lorenzo De Luca in their quieter files. "We're searching all the usual spots," the officer had said. "We need time." Lorenzo had laughed — a sound with no humor. He had known an hour ago that the usual avenues would give him nothing. Had to use the avenues they did not expect.
He picked up his boot and slammed it against an empty chair until the wood squealed. "They can't do anything?" he asked Luca when the man returned, voice low and dangerous.
"No sign of her, boss. No trace."
He kicked the chair away with such force the leg cracked. For a second he simply stood, breathing hard. The instinct to tear down the city like a fever flared inside him; he felt its heat. He thought of burning a safe house, of ordering a war. The thought of Elena in danger made the war a physical thing that would poison whatever calm he wanted to protect her with.
He forced himself to a decision in the coldest way he knew how. "No war," he said at last. "Not now. Not for this." His voice was flat, a blade sheathed. "If they wanted to kill for pride, I'd feed them to the vultures. But this is different. She matters to me. I will not risk her life with explosions and blood. We take her back cleanly — like a ghost."
Luca frowned. "You want a ghost rescue, boss?"
"Yes." Lorenzo's eyes were hard as flint. "Matteo's team. Tess to scramble the feeds. Find the house quietly. Extract her without anyone outside the house seeing a thing. Use legal channels as cover — calls placed in the right direction, a lawyer who can pull strings. If we move loud, they'll kill her the second we arrive. We move like thieves. Silent. Surgical."
He pictured her face in his mind and the memory steadied him like iron. He felt hollow and steady at once; the hunger to explode receded into something colder and more effective.
"And the spy," he added. "Find the spy. Whoever watched our house dies last."
Luca met his boss's gaze and nodded. "Understood."
Lorenzo's voice dropped so low Luca had to lean in to catch it. "Get her back. Clean. No blood. For her."
He stood for a long time after Luca left, hands in his pockets, staring out at the sleeping city. He did not look like a man begging the police for help — the whole world knew he would never beg. Yet tonight he had tried something he'd never imagined doing: asking someone else's hand at rescue. He'd do what it took now; the war would wait. For her.
In the dark room, tied to a chair, Elena thought of the garden where she had screamed and the face of the man who had carried her home the last time. The ropes chafed, but her spine had straightened with a new purpose. If there was a spy in the house, she would find out who. If Lorenzo's enemies thought she would sit and sob for them, they didn't know her.
She closed her eyes and formed the first plan of the fight that had to start now: survive today, learn tonight, strike when they least expect it.
Outside the mansion, the city hummed on — oblivious to the quiet machine that had started turning. Inside the machine, a man who had always used blood as his language, and a woman who had been sold and broken and found a rage that would not be tamed, were moving toward each other on two parallel tracks: one plotting a clean, silent rescue; the other plotting resistance from a chair.