Two weeks.
Fourteen days in Lucian Moretti's keeping. Fourteen nights of learning exactly how much a man could take from a woman without killing her.
She was still breathing. That had to count for something.
The driver hadn't spoken since he'd collected her from Lucian's estate. One of Damien's men. He'd looked at her once when she'd climbed into the car. A quick sweep from head to toe.Assessing damage. Cataloging what remained.
She'd let him look.
There was nothing on her face that would give her away. No visible wounds,Just a woman in a wrinkled dress returning to her husband's home after an extended absence.
An absence.
That's what they'd call it. Not abduction. Not violation. An absence, like she'd simply wandered off and gotten lost.
Her husband hadn't come for her.
Fourteen days, and Damien Moretti hadn't lifted a finger. Hadn't sent men. Hadn't raged or threatened or demanded her return. He'd simply... continued. Business meetings. Territory negotiations. His mistress warming his bed.
Elara had heard about Sofia during her time with Lucian. He'd enjoyed telling her,enjoyed watching her face for cracks that never appeared.
"My brother has a whore he's kept since she was a teenager. Did you know?
Elara had said nothing. Just filed the information away with everything else.
Sofia. Eighteen when she first spread her legs for Damien. Twenty-two now. Four years of warming a monster's bed—that kind of tenure meant something. It meant the woman had learned to survive him.
It also meant she'd see Elara as a threat.
Good.
Threats could be useful when properly managed.
The car turned onto a long driveway lined with trees . The Moretti estate rose ahead.A fortress dressed as a home.
Her cage for the foreseeable future.
Alessio was still here—still inside Damien's household, still her only ally. The two weeks with Lucian had been a setback.
The car stopped. The driver opened her door and waited.She stepped out on steady legs—legs that had learned to walk again three days ago when Lucian had finally tired of keeping her horizontal—and smoothed her dress.
Wrinkled. Stained in places she'd tried to scrub out with cold water. She looked like exactly what she was: a woman who'd been used and discarded.
Perfect.
"Mr. Moretti wants to see you immediately," the driver said. "His study."
"Thank you."
She walked into her husband's home for the first time.
The study door was closed.
Elara stood outside it for precisely three seconds,enough time to arrange her features into something appropriately fragile before knocking.
"Enter."
His voice. Cold and flat as a frozen lake. She'd only heard it once before, at their wedding, when he'd spoken the vows like a man reading a grocery list.
She opened the door.
And stopped.
Damien Moretti sat behind an enormous mahogany desk, papers spread before him like he was in the middle of important work. His suit was immaculate—charcoal gray, perfectly tailored. His dark hair was swept back from a face that might have been handsome if there was anything alive behind it.
He didn't look up when she entered.
But Sofia did.
The woman was kneeling between his legs, her dark hair fisted in Damien's hand. Her mouth was occupied. Her eyes—brown and sharp and immediately hostile—locked onto Elara with the kind of hatred that takes years to cultivate.
Ah.
So this was the welcome.
Elara didn't move. Didn't gasp. Didn't flinch or flee or avert her gaze like a proper traumatized bride should.
She simply stood there, hands folded, face neutral, and watched.
Damien's grip tightened in Sofia's hair. His other hand continued writing actually writing, signing documents while his mistress serviced him.
Elara closed the door.
She remained standing just inside the room. Waiting. The sounds were obscene in the silence—wet and rhythmic and deliberately degrading. Sofia's eyes never left hers, even as her head bobbed. There was triumph in that gaze. See?
*
*Damien: didn't look at me when I entered. Hasn't looked at me yet. Demonstrating hierarchy. I am below even his signature on a page.*
The scene continued for another two minutes. Damien's breathing never changed. His pen never paused. When he finished a quiet grunt, nothing more—Sofia swallowed dutifully and sat back on her heels, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
Only then did Damien look up.
His eyes were gray. Pale and flat like winter ice. They moved over Elara without interest
"You're filthy," he said.
Three words. No question about where she'd been. No inquiry into what had been done to her. No concern, false or otherwise.
*You're filthy.*
Elara lowered her gaze. Submissive. Broken. "I... I know. I'm sorry, I—"
"There's a bathroom attached to the room you've been assigned. Use it." He returned his attention to his documents. "Your father will be here at seven. I expect you to look more presentable.
My father.
The man who'd sold her. The man whose death she'd been planning since she was old enough to understand what he was.
Of course he was coming.
"Yes," she whispered. "Of course."
She turned to leave.
"One more thing."
She paused, hand on the doorknob.
"My brother's scent is on you. I can smell it from here." Damien's voice remained flat, almost bored. "Wash thoroughly. I don't want to be reminded of where you've been every time you walk into a room."
Sofia laughed—a sharp, cruel sound.
Elara didn't respond. She opened the door, stepped through, and closed it behind her with a soft click.
The bathroom was large. White marble. Gold fixtures. A tub deep enough to drown in.
Elara turned on the water,hot, as hot as it would go and began to undress.
The dress had been clean when Lucian's men had put her in the car. She'd made sure of it. But Damien was right: she could still smell him. His cologne. His sweat. Other things.
She let the ruined fabric fall to the floor and stepped in front of the mirror.
Her body was a map of the last two weeks.
Bruises on her hips—finger-shaped, fading from purple to yellow. Bite marks on her inner thighs. A scratch across her ribs from when she'd struggled on the third night, before she'd learned that struggling made it worse.
Elara studied her reflection without emotion. The body in the mirror belonged to a stranger. It had been borrowed, used, returned but It would heal.
The water was ready.
She stepped into the tub, sinking into heat that bordered on scalding,It hurt but She let it.
For a long moment, she simply sat there, letting the water turn her skin red, watching the steam rise and curl against the marble ceiling.
The plan had been simple: marry Damien, play the trophy wife, gather information on her father's assets, find the right moment to drain his accounts and disappear. Alessio would help her vanish. They'd been planning it for two years.
But that plan assumed Damien would ignore her. Assumed she'd be invisible. Assumed she could move through his world like a ghost, unseen and underestimated.
Now?
Now she was "filthy." Tainted goods. A wife her husband wouldn't touch because his brother had already ruined her.
That changed things.
But it also created opportunities.
If Damien didn't watch her, she could move more freely. If Sofia saw her as defeated, the mistress would get careless. If Lucian thought he'd broken her—
The lock clicked.
Elara turned her head slowly toward the bathroom door as it swung open.
Alessio stepped inside.
He looked like hell. Dark circles under his eyes. A healing cut on his cheekbone.
He'd been in the car with her when Lucian's men had come. She remembered the sound of his body hitting the ground. The shout he'd made before they'd knocked him unconscious.
Fourteen days of wondering if she was dead.
"Elara." His voice cracked on her name. He took a step forward, then stopped, remembering himself. "I—God. I'm so sorry. I should have—I couldn't—"
"Close the door."
He blinked, then obeyed. The lock clicked again behind him.
"I swear to God, I'm going to kill him." Alessio's hands were shaking. She'd never seen him shake before. "Lucian. I'm going to put a bullet in his skull. I'm going to make him suffer for what he—"
"No."
He stopped.
Elara reached for the soap—a delicate bar that smelled like jasmine, and began to wash her arm calmly
"I don't need your guilt, Alessio."
"It's not—"
"And I don't need your pity." She moved to her other arm, scrubbing without urgency. "I don't need your promises of vengeance or your apologies or your pain. I have enough of my own."
"Then what do you need?" He stepped closer, his reflection appearing in the fogged mirror. "Tell me. Whatever it is. I'll do it."
Elara looked up at him.
He was beautiful, in his way. A face that hadn't learned to hide. He loved her—she'd known that for years. Loved her in that hopeless, devoted way that would get him killed if he wasn't careful.
She couldn't love him back.
She'd tried, once. After her father had made her kill Elias—after she'd held the knife and watched the light leave her first love's eyes—she'd tried to feel something for the man who'd stayed. Who'd taught her to fight. Who'd promised to help her escape.
There was nothing there.
Just gratitude and acknowledgment that he was useful and loyal and the closest thing she had to an ally in a world full of enemies.
"I need your head in the game," she said.
Alessio's brow furrowed.
"The plan hasn't changed. It's just... more complicated now." Elara set the soap aside and leaned back in the tub, letting the hot water lap at her collarbone. "Damien won't touch me. His mistress wants me gone. My father is coming tonight to make sure his investment is still functional. And Lucian..."
She trailed off.
Lucian.
"Do you know why I hate him? Do you know what he chose over our mother's life?"
His hand on her throat.
"You're not scared of me, are you. You're not scared of anything."
"And Lucian?" Alessio prompted. Snapping her bank to reality
Elara shook her head slightly. "Later. Right now, I need to know: what happened while I was gone? What did you learn?"
Alessio's expression shifted. The guilt was still there,
"Your father's been nervous," he said quietly. "Making calls. Moving money. Something's got him spooked."
"Something, or someone?"
"The Morettis are making moves on three of his territories. Damien's been... aggressive. More than usual."
Interesting.
"And Sofia?"
"She's been telling everyone you're not coming back. That Lucian probably killed you. That Damien's already looking for a replacement bride from another family."
Elara smiled. It didn't reach her eyes.
"How disappointing for her that I'm still breathing."
Alessio was quiet for a moment. Then: "Elara... what did he do to you?"
The question hung in the steam.
She could tell him. Could describe the two weeks in detail
But that was information she wasn't ready to share.
"He did what men like him do," she said finally. "And I survived it. That's all that matters."
Alessio looked like he wanted to argue. Wanted to push. Wanted to wrap her in his arms and promise that everything would be okay.
He didn't.
Because he knew her. Knew that softness wasn't what she needed. Knew that the woman in the tub wasn't drowning.
"The original timeline is gone," Elara continued. "I was supposed to have months to map Damien's operation, find the gaps, locate my father's vulnerabilities. Now I'm compromised.
"So what do we do?"
Elara stood.
Water streamed down her body,stood there in the tub, naked and scarred and utterly unashamed.
Alessio's eyes stayed on her face. Always on her face,even now.
"We adapt," she said. "We use what they think they know against them. I'm the broken wife now? Fine. I'll be so broken they forget I exist. I'll be invisible. And while they're busy underestimating me..."
She stepped out of the tub and walked past him, leaving wet footprints on the marble floor.
"I'll be taking everything."