When I wake, the world tilts. Everything feels wrong in a way that twists low in my stomach. Silk slides beneath my palms as I move my hands cautiously. A soft scent of roses fills the space, but the undercurrent of whiskey cuts through, sharp and unmistakable. The combination clings to the air like a signature.
I blink slowly, forcing my eyes open, but the dim light only confirms what my hands already know. This isn’t my cottage with its worn quilts and creaking floors. Not the café with coffee stains and chipped mugs. Not anywhere that belongs to me.
Luxury surrounds me in a way that makes my throat tighten with something close to nausea. Heavy velvet drapes frame tall windows that look built for mountain views but now shut out the night. A vase of red roses sits on a carved log table polished to a shine. The bed is massive, easily king sized, dressed in ivory silk that pools around my waist, glinting in the lamplight. A thick rug muffles every sound. The fireplace across the room is made of stone, its mantle lined with ironwork detail. At the same time, paintings of alpine landscapes hang between the timber panels.
It’s not comfort. It’s containment. The lock turns from the outside, a single sound that reveals the cage beneath the polish. My pulse roars in my ears, so loud I wonder if whoever stands on the other side of that door can hear it. The door opens slowly, and I know before he fully appears who will fill the frame.
Luka Barinov. Six feet and four inches of controlled violence in an immaculate suit that costs more than three months of my café's revenue. Broad shoulders blocking the light from the hallway, his presence somehow taking up more space than his physical form should allow. His eyes lock on me immediately and the breath catches in my throat. My hands curl into the silk sheets before I can stop them.
“You—” My voice cracks, but I force the words out anyway. Fury floods in, stronger than fear, and hotter than the panic that wants to consume me. “What the hell is this?”
He doesn’t waste time on pleasantries or pretense. No apology. No explanation. Just a question delivered like an accusation. “What is your connection to Ray Bellamy?”
The name lands in the quiet room like a stone dropped into still water, rippling out into my confusion and creating more questions than answers. I blink at him, genuinely baffled, my mind scrambling through memories and coming up empty. “Who?”
“Ray. Bellamy.” His tone sharpens, each syllable clipped and precise as a scalpel. “Tell me who he is to you.”
My hands clench the silk sheets harder, my knuckles going white with the force of my grip. “I don’t know who that is.” My voice is stronger now. Anger is easier to hold onto than terror. “I don’t even know who you are. Not really.”
I refuse to look away. If he thinks I’ll cower, curl into myself, and break under the pressure of his stare, he doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know what I’ve survived already. Losing my father when I was too young to understand death. Watching my mother work herself into an early grave. Shouldering Hope's medical bills that pile up like snow in a Colorado winter until you can’t see the ground anymore.
The air stirs, and Vega slips through the door before Luka can close it. The dog moves straight to me, his massive body crossing the distance between us in seconds, pressing his enormous head into my lap with a sigh that sounds almost human. As if the chaos of the night never happened, and we’re back in the café with him begging for treats.
Something inside me cracks. My hand finds his fur without conscious thought, my trembling fingers sinking into thewarmth of his coat, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breathing. The tears that sting my eyes have nothing to do with relief and everything to do with betrayal. Because his presence here, in this locked room, proves beyond doubt that Luka orchestrated all of this. The hands that grabbed me in the fog. The chemical that stole my consciousness. This cage disguised as luxury.
“Vega,” I whisper, my lips faltering around the name. My voice breaks on the second syllable. “What are you doing to me?”
I don’t know if I’m asking the dog or his owner, but it hardly matters. Neither one will answer in a way that makes this nightmare make sense.
Luka doesn’t move from his position by the door or soften even fractionally. He just watches, his eyes fixed on the way my fingers clutch his dog as if Vega is the only solid thing left in a world that’s spun completely off the rails. Those hazel eyes miss nothing. Not the way my shoulders shake. Not the tears I am fighting to hold back. Not the fury and fear warring for dominance in my expression.
I lift my chin, fire scraping up through the fear, burning away some of the vulnerability I can’t afford to show. “You had no right,” I grit out.
My mother taught me to stand tall even when everything in you wants to fold. To meet trouble head-on rather than wait for it to swallow you whole. She never bent, not where anyone could see and I won’t either.
His expression doesn’t change. It remains as unreadable as stone, but his words tear through the air between us. “I haveevery right. Especially when a name like Bellamy reappears in my world.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My voice cracks again despite my determination to keep it steady, but I push through the break, forcing the words out. “Thomas Bellamy is the only name I know. My father died when I was nine. A car accident on a mountain road, the story the sheriff told my mother in our living room while I hid on the stairs, listening to every word. I don’t know anything about someone named Ray.”
The name means nothing to me. Less than nothing. But the way Luka watches me now, as if every micro-expression on my face might reveal some hidden truth, tells me the name should mean something. That in his world, in whatever dark circles he moves through,Ray Bellamycarries a power I can’t comprehend.
His eyes narrow, hazel shards flecked with suspicion that borders on contempt. “Lies have cost men their lives. Choose carefully,printsessa.”
The endearment cuts deeper than the threat. There is no affection in it, no softness. Just irony laced with warning, reminding me he holds all the power in this room and I hold none. That my life might depend on answers I don’t have.
I stroke Vega's head, grounding myself in the steady thump of his breathing and the familiar texture of his coat under my palm, but my heart still slams hard enough to bruise my ribs from the inside. My pulse pounds in my ears, nearly drowning out my own thoughts.
I think about Hope, alone in our cottage on the edge of town. She’ll wake up in a few hours, expecting to find me in the kitchen making coffee, preparing for another day at Bean &Bloom. Instead, she’ll find an empty house and no explanation. The panic that will grip her when my phone goes straight to voicemail might trigger an episode if she spirals too far into fear.
I picture Jenny arriving at the café tomorrow to find the door locked, and the lights off. She’ll wonder where I am, call, and get nothing. She’ll try to keep it running on her own, but the revenue will slip away, and the bills will keep piling up, indifferent to the fact that I’ve been stolen from my own life.
I think about my mother, buried three years now in the cemetery on the hill overlooking town. About how she would handle this moment with the same spine of steel she showed when creditors called, and medical bills mounted. When life delivered blow after blow, and she refused to stay down.
Beneath the scrutiny of a man who could ruin me with a single command, I realize the truth with crystalline clarity. I don’t know who Luka Barinov is. Not beyond surface observations and overheard fragments. Not beyond the way he drinks his coffee and watches me as if I’m a threat rather than a woman just trying to keep her family afloat.
But he already knows too much about me. My name. My café. Perhaps my routines, vulnerabilities, and the sister who depends on me for everything. And that imbalance terrifies me more than a locked door, or the cold promise in his eyes that he will have his answers whether I possess them or not.
The thought of Hope breaks through the haze, turning panic into purpose. I push myself up straighter on the bed, my hand still buried in Vega's fur as if he might brace me through what comes next.
