“The photographs.”His grip on my chin tightened fractionally.“The break-in.The dead dog, the sabotage, all of it.I will find who’s doing this.I will handle them in ways your hotel security cannot imagine.But I need you to understand something, Lena.”
He leaned closer, his lips brushing my ear.
“You are mine to protect.Mine to punish.Mine to keep safe.The next time someone threatens you, you will come to me first.Not because you trust me.Because you belong to me.And what’s mine, I keep.”
He released my chin and stepped back.The absence of his touch left me cold, bereft in a way I didn’t want to examine.
“Go to your room,” he said.“We’ll discuss the rest tomorrow.I have work to do tonight.”
It wasn’t a dismissal.It was a command.
I climbed the stairs to my room, changed out of my work clothes, and stood at the window watching the last light fade from the sky.The gardens were silver with frost.The mountains were shadows in the distance, blue-gray shapes against the darker blue of coming night.
Somewhere out there, someone was watching.Planning.Waiting.
And I was alone in a house full of secrets, needing a man who’d told me outright that what he felt for me was dangerous.
I stayed at the window until the darkness was complete.Then I turned off the lights and lay down in the bed that smelled faintly of expensive detergent and nothing like home.
Sleep came in fragments.Nightmares I couldn’t remember upon waking, heart pounding, sweat cooling on my skin.Twice I got up to check that my door was locked.Three times I got up and started to walk to his room.
What would I even say?
I’m scared.Hold me.Make me feel like I matter.
Those weren’t the words of a woman protecting her heart.Those were the words of someone already lost.
21
RAPHAEL
Petrov’s security report had arrived before dawn.I’d been staring at it for the past hour.
Two incidents in twelve hours.The report laid them out in cold, clinical detail.
A break-in at Marjorie’s apartment.Someone had entered while the old woman slept, rifled through belongings, left a photograph of Lena with a message scrawled in red:I SEE EVERYTHING.Hotel security footage showed nothing useful.The intruder had known the camera positions, moved through blind spots like they’d memorized the building’s layout.Lena had handled it herself, called her own security team instead of reaching out to us.
Smart girl.She didn’t trust me not to be behind it.
Photographs leaked to the press.Three images of Lena at the manor, taken from the treeline beyond the east garden.Timestamps showed the photographer had known exactly when she’d be arriving, which entrance she’d use, which room was hers.Someone had fed them her schedule.
Petrov had flagged the most damning conclusion in red ink:Source had access to subject’s movements and hotel security protocols.Inside threat confirmed.
I already knew that.Had known since the heating sabotage two weeks ago.The threat wasn’t from outside, wasn’t from my enemies or any of the dozen other possibilities my team had investigated.It was from someone close to her.Someone she trusted.Someone who knew the hotel’s rhythms, its blind spots, its secrets.
Find them.Kill them.
The wolf’s voice was a low growl at the base of my skull.Not helpful.Not yet.I needed proof, not instinct.The list of people with this level of access was long: managers, security staff, maintenance workers, anyone who’d been with the hotel for years.My team was running background checks on all of them, but so far nothing had surfaced.No red flags.No obvious motive.
I closed my eyes and breathed through the rage, counting the beats of my own heart until the urge to shift and hunt receded to something manageable.The wolf was getting harder to control.Every day she stayed under my roof, her scent sinking into my sheets, her presence settling into the spaces of my life like water filling cracks in stone, the beast in me grew more convinced she was already mine.
She wasn’t.Not really.Not yet.
And when she learned the full truth of what I’d done, she never would be.
I should have felt satisfied.I’d waited decades for this moment, had built my entire empire on its foundation.
Instead, I kept thinking about the way Lena had walked past my study door last night.The way her footsteps had slowed on the hardwood, hesitated for three heartbeats, then continued on toward her empty room.The way she’d chosen isolation over my bed.
