The danger wasn't just in the man who wanted to ruin me, but in the one who wanted to break him.
The silence that had fallen between them was a living, breathing entity. For three days, Lysander had been a ghost in his own penthouse. He moved through the rooms with a cold, detached efficiency, his focus turned entirely inward. The man who had kissed her with world-ending fury was gone, replaced by a strategist analyzing a catastrophic system failure. His empire, it seemed, was not built on steel and code, but on a foundational lie, and the tremors were threatening to bring it all down.
Elara tried to paint, but the sterile studio he provided felt more like a prison than ever. The vibrant chaos of her creativity had been stifled, replaced by the monochrome tension of his doubt. Her body still hummed with the memory of his touch, a stark contrast to the glacial distance he now maintained. It was a special kind of torture — to have been seen, however violently, and then to be rendered invisible.
He hadn't touched her. Had barely looked at her. The only evidence that the kiss had even happened was the charged air that crackled between them whenever they were in the same room, a constant, unacknowledged current of what had been and what could never be again.
On the fourth morning, a desperate need for her own space, for the familiar scent of turpentine and dust, overwhelmed her. She needed to breathe air that wasn't filtered through his wealth and his war. Leaving a terse note on the cold marble of the kitchen island, she slipped out and took a cab to her old studio.
The moment she turned the key in the lock, a sense of wrongness washed over her. The door swung open too easily. The air inside was still, but it was a violated stillness.
And then she saw it.
Her latest work, the one she had started after the gala — a tempest of crimson and black, a visual scream of the conflict Lysander ignited in her — was destroyed. The canvas had been slashed to ribbons, the brutal cuts a violent echo of the passion with which it had been created. Shreds of canvas hung like flayed skin, the wooden frame beneath splintered and broken.
Her breath hitched, a cold dread seeping into her bones. Scattered on the floor amidst the wreckage were her brushes, snapped in half. Tubes of paint were crushed, their vibrant contents oozing across the wooden floorboards like spilled blood.
Propped against the ruined easel was a single, pristine white card.
Her hand trembled as she reached for it. The message was typed in a simple, elegant font, the words all the more menacing for their simplicity:
An eye for an eye, Blackwood. I'll take what you cherish. - J.T.
J.T. Julian Thorne.
The name meant nothing to her, but the intent was clear. This was a message for Lysander. She was the medium. The ruin of her art was a promise of the ruin to come. What you cherish. The words echoed in her mind. Did he cherish her? Or was she just a possession, a pawn whose defacement was an insult to his power?
She didn't realize she had backed into the hallway, her phone already in her hand, until she heard the dial tone. He answered on the first ring, his voice a low, impatient growl. "What?"
The single word, so cold and dismissive, almost made her hang up. But the image of the slashed canvas flashed behind her eyes. "My studio," she managed, her voice a thin thread of sound. "Someone was here."
There was a beat of silence, so complete she could hear the shift in his breathing. "Where are you?"
"At my old studio. They… they destroyed my painting. There's a note." Her voice broke. "It's for you."
"Don't touch anything. Don't move." The line went dead.
He was there in under ten minutes. He didn't arrive with a fleet of cars or a security team; he came alone, a solitary force of nature moving with lethal purpose. He brushed past her without a word, his broad shoulders filling the doorway as he surveyed the devastation.
Elara watched him from the hall, wrapping her arms around herself. His expression was unreadable as his eyes scanned the slashed canvas, the destroyed supplies, and finally, the note he now held between his fingers. She saw the muscle in his jaw clench, a tiny, rhythmic ticking that betrayed a fury so deep it was ice-cold.
"J.T.," he said, the two letters a venomous curse. "Julian Thorne."
"Who is he?" Elara asked, her voice small.
"A ghost," Lysander replied, his gaze still fixed on the note. "A man I systematically dismantled. I took his media empire, his reputation, his freedom. It seems he's decided to return the favor." He finally turned to look at her, and what she saw in his eyes made her blood run cold. It wasn't just anger. It was a primal, possessive fear. The same fear she'd seen when he'd shoved her behind him in the study, but now it was raw, unmasked by the recent chaos of his own world.
"He thinks you're my weakness," Lysander murmured, more to himself than to her.
Before she could respond, he was moving. He crossed the small space in two strides, his hand shooting out to cup the back of her neck. It wasn't a gentle gesture; it was a claim. His fingers tangled in her hair, tilting her face up to his.
"This changes nothing," he growled, his eyes blazing into hers. "You are still mine. My revenge. My problem."
But his actions belied his words. His thumb stroked the sensitive skin behind her ear, a soothing motion that contradicted the ferocity in his voice. He was looking at her as if he were memorizing her, as if Thorne's threat had stripped away all the complicated layers of revenge and doubt and revealed something terrifyingly simple.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird caught in a cage of fear and a treacherous, unwanted thrill. His proximity was a drug, and she was starved for it after days of his absence. The clean, sharp scent of him filled her senses, erasing the faint, acrid smell of fear and destruction.
"He touched what's mine," Lysander whispered, his face so close she could feel his breath ghost across her lips. The heat of his body was a brand, and she leaned into it instinctively, her own resolve crumbling.
His other hand came up to frame her face, his touch surprisingly gentle now, a contrast to the storm in his eyes. "He thinks this will break me. He has no idea what he's unleashed."
And then his mouth was on hers.
This kiss was nothing like the first. That had been a battle, a clash of wills. This was a reconfirmation. A branding. It was hard and desperate and laced with a terrifying vulnerability. It was the kiss of a man who had just realized he had something to lose, and the knowledge was shredding him from the inside out.
She kissed him back with equal desperation, her hands fisting in the lapels of his coat. This was the connection she had been craving, the acknowledgment of the fire that burned between them, even — especially — in the face of danger. It was madness, but it was a madness that felt more real than anything else in her life.
When he finally broke the kiss, they were both breathing heavily, foreheads resting together in the dim light of the violated studio. The ruined painting was a stark backdrop to their tangled embrace.
Lysander grabbed her, his face a mask of primal fear. "You will not leave my side. Do you understand?"