Elara's POV
The car was a silent, moving tomb. Elara sat in the back, her body pressed against the cold leather seat as far from the partition as possible. The two guards in front didn't speak. Didn't look at her in the rearview mirror. Didn't acknowledge her existence beyond ensuring she was inside. It was worse than if they'd threatened her. This silent, efficient emptiness felt more dangerous. They're not even worried about me. I'm already caught. I'm already there. The thought made her stomach twist.
The city passed by the darkened, tinted windows, a silent film reel of blurred light and shadow, the familiar made strange and threatening. Where are they taking me? Her mind raced, imagining basements, warehouses, riverbanks. Cold places where people disappeared. But the car didn't head to the rough, industrial parts of town. It glided smoothly into the financial district, toward the shining towers of money and power that she'd only ever seen from a distance. Is he in there? A man like that, in a suit that probably cost a fortune, living up in the clouds? It didn't match the monster in her head. Monsters lived in shadows, not in penthouses.
They took her to the soaring, glass needle of the Conti Tower, piercing the night sky. It was the tallest building in the city, a landmark she'd seen a thousand times but never entered. Of course. He owns the tallest building. The lobby was a cavern of cold, veined marble and echoing, hollow silence. No security desk. No people. Just emptiness and the soft, expensive hum of hidden machinery. It felt like a museum after hours, or a mausoleum. He owns the silence, too. The private elevator didn't have buttons; it just obeyed some unseen command, shooting upward with a gut-lurching speed that made her press a hand to the wall for balance. Penthouse. He's taking me to the penthouse. This wasn't a kidnapping for ransom. This was something else. A summons. And she had obeyed.
The doors opened directly into his world.
It wasn't an office. It was a command center. A throne room for a modern-day king. One entire wall was a seamless window to the kingdom below, the city laid out in a grid of tiny, insignificant lights. The room itself was vast, minimalist, brutally cold. A monolithic steel desk, empty save for a single, dark monitor. A few severe, uncomfortable-looking chairs. No personal touches. No plants. No photos. No life. It was a room for decisions, not for living. A room where people were numbers, problems to be solved. And she was the newest problem.
And behind the desk, haloed by the city's indifferent glitter, sat the man from the mistletoe.
Luca Conti.
Without his coat, in a tailored suit that probably cost more than her bakery's monthly revenue, he didn't look grumpy or bored or even rich. He looked like power itself. Sharp, contained, polished to a lethal edge. A predator in a bespoke cage, and she was the mouse who had scurried in. This is the man I kissed. This is the man whose lips I touched. The thought was so absurd she almost laughed, but the sound died in her throat, strangled by terror.
"Sit."
The single word was a command that vibrated in the sterile air, brooking no argument, no discussion. It wasn't loud, but it filled the huge space, leaving no room for anything else. Her legs, which felt made of wet sand and shattered glass, somehow carried her to the stark, uncomfortable chair facing the desk. She sat, perched on the edge, clutching her hands together in her lap to hide their violent shaking. She felt like a child called to the principal's office, if the principal was a king and the offense was punishable by death. What does he want? What is he going to do to me? Her mind provided terrible answers, each worse than the last.
"My name is Luca Conti," he said, leaning back in his chair. It didn't squeak. Of course it didn't. His eyes, that stormy, wintry gray, scanned her not as a person, but as a piece of problematic data that had landed on his desk. She was a glitch in his system. "Your… performance tonight created a significant complication."
"I'm sorry," the words tumbled out in a rushed, panicked stream. She had to make him understand. She was nobody. A mistake. A blip. "The kiss was a stupid bet, I needed money for the bakery, I never meant to cause any trouble, I swear I didn't." She was babbling. She sounded insane, even to herself.
"I am not interested in your motivations or your financial woes," he cut her off, his voice like a sheet of ice sliding into place. He dismissed her entire life, her grief, her desperation, her struggle with a sentence. Her financial woes. As if losing her family's legacy was a minor inconvenience. "I am interested in the man who witnessed it. Viktor Volkov. He is my business rival. He now believes you are someone of personal importance to me. A lover. A vulnerability."
Elara's mind spun, a hamster on a wheel, trying to catch up to the surreal reality of the words. Rival? Vulnerability? This was dialogue from a bad crime drama, not her life. She was a baker. She dealt in flour and sugar, not… rivals. Not men with bodyguards. "Then tell him the truth! Show him it was a mistake, a dumb joke! He has to believe that!" Surely, even gangsters understood mistakes. Surely, they could see she was just a girl, not a pawn.
A faint, cold shadow of a smile touched his lips. It held no warmth, no humor. It was a crack in the ice, revealing the dark, dangerous water beneath. "Viktor does not believe in mistakes. He believes in opportunities. You are now an opportunity. He will attempt to take you. To hurt you. To use you as a lever to get to me."
The reality of it, stated with such calm, clinical certainty, was a physical blow to her solar plexus. This wasn't about embarrassment or an awkward encounter. This was about being collateral, a pawn in a game between gangsters. A sick, dizzy feeling washed over her. They were talking about her being taken. Hurt. Used. Like an object. Her value wasn't as a person, but as a tool to hurt someone else. "Who are you?" she whispered, the question tearing from a place of pure, childlike fear. She needed him to say it. To make the nightmare real, to give it a name.
He stood and walked to the window, his silhouette a black cutout against the tapestry of city lights. He owned that view. He owned everything in it. "Some call me the Ghost. The city council calls me a benefactor. The financial pages call me a billionaire. Viktor calls me the man who stands between him and everything he desires." He turned, and the backlight from the city carved his face into a mask of sharp, unyielding angles. "Because of your 'stupid bet,' you have walked, unaware, onto a battlefield. And Viktor's first tactical move will be to eliminate what he perceives as my weak point."
He took a slow step toward the desk, his gaze pinning her to the chair like a butterfly to a board. She couldn't look away. His eyes held hers, and in them, she saw no pity, no compassion. Only cold, hard fact. "Your previous life, as you knew it, is over. You are in grave, immediate, and unavoidable danger because of your little stunt."
He said it not as a threat, not as a boast, but as a simple, terrifying fact of nature. Like telling her it was raining. And she was already drowning, and he was the only one with an umbrella, but it came with a price. A price she was only beginning to understand.
Her breath hitched. Her hands, clenched in her lap, were white-knuckled. The room felt impossibly cold. The world she knew, the world of baking, of debt, of quiet loneliness, was gone. It had been erased the moment her lips touched his. She was in a new world now. A world of ghosts and rivals and battlefield tactics. A world where she was a weakness to be eliminated.
And the man in front of her was telling her he was her only chance.