The elevator rises in a silence so dense it feels intentional.
I stand between Moretti's two men, my reflection splintered across the mirrored walls. A dozen versions of myself stare back, each with a bleeding lip, swollen eye, and bruises blooming like dark flowers. I don't recognize any of them.
The men beside me don't speak. They don't look. Their indifference presses closer than their bodies do.
Stories about Moretti's penthouse drift through Eden's Ruin like smoke no one ever tells the ending. Either because they don't know it, or because knowing is dangerous.
The elevator climbs. Higher. Higher.
A soft chime. Then the doors part.
The penthouse stretches across the entire top floor, floor-to-ceiling windows displaying Milan like something already owned. Minimalist. Cold. Expensive in a way that leaves no fingerprints. It looks like a place a man occupies only as long as it serves a purpose.
One guard gestures toward a hallway.
"Bathroom. First door on the left. Clean yourself up."
My legs hesitate.
"Go," the other repeats, the tone final an instruction that won't be given twice.
I move.
The bathroom light is unforgiving.
My reflection is worse than I expected. My cheek a violent bloom of purple, my lip split open, one eye already puffing. I look ruined. Disposable.
I turn the water— hot enough to sting and scrub until the dried blood runs thin and red down the porcelain. My hands tremble the entire time.
A knock.
I freeze.
"There are clothes on the bed," a woman calls. "Clean ones. When you're done, come to the main room."
Footsteps fade away
The clothes are simple: black silk pants, a soft grey sweater. Real clothing. Nothing meant to display me the way Riot prefers. They fit perfectly, which shouldn't be possible considering no one ever bothers to note my size.
That thought prickles at me, but I shut it down and change.
When I re-enter the main space, the penthouse is quiet. Moretti's men are gone. The city glitters below, indifferent and vast.
Luca Moretti stands at the windows, his suit jacket discarded, sleeves rolled to his elbows. Scars mark his forearms old, deliberate lines that speak of fights he survived rather than inflicted. His stance is relaxed, almost casual, but there's precision in it. Calculation.
He doesn't turn when I enter.
"You're wondering why you're here," he says, his voice clean and sharp.
"Yes."
"Not to hurt you. Not to use you the way Riot does." He finally turns, his gaze cutting and cool. "At least, not in the way you're imagining."
I hold still.
"Sit." He gestures toward the leather sofa.
I obey, perched at the edge, ready to bolt even though there's nowhere to run. My body throbs with pain. The absence of Riot's presence is disorienting, like misplacing a chain that had become familiar.
Moretti approaches with unhurried steps, a quiet certainty in each one. He stops a few feet away close enough that his cologne reaches me. Close enough that I feel assessed.
"Dmitri Volkov," he says. "You know him."
My stomach drops. "He was in Room 7."
"Yes," Moretti replies, tone unreadable. "And he's been paying for access to you for months."
The words for months tighten something in my chest. How would he know that? Riot never talks.
Moretti continues before I can speak.
"Volkov is a problem. A Russian problem. He answers to Rashevsky, and the syndicate has been creeping into my territory. Too bold. Too careless. They think I haven't noticed." His eyes flicker with something sharp. "I notice everything."
He says it casually, but it lands like a weight.
"Volkov has an… attachment," he adds, watching my reaction with unsettling attention. "He doesn't fixate often. But he's fixated on you."
The way he says fixate carries precision, not discovery. As if he's known this, tracked it, measured it.
Cold understanding creeps in.
"You want me to—"
"I want you to go back," he says, cutting me off with a flick of authority. "To Eden's Ruin. To dance. To let him believe he still has access to you. And you will report everything his conversations, his contacts, his movements. Every careless word he drops."
"You want me to spy."
"I want to use his obsession against him." His voice is soft now, almost gentle in its ruthlessness. "Volkov's weakness is rare. I intend to exploit it."
The clarity of his strategy hits hard.
"Riot thinks you're his property," he continues. "Let him think that. But you work for me now. And in exchange, Riot never touches you again."
"If I refuse?"
"Then you go back downstairs. To Riot. To Volkov. And you hope you survive the next time." His tone never changes. "Or you stay here. Safer, maybe. But a cage all the same."
He's not offering mercy. He's offering a deal.
"What if Volkov hurts me again?" The question escapes before I can swallow it.
"Then the next body pulled from the Navigli Canal will be his." Moretti says it lightly, like commenting on the weather. "You are no longer expendable. You're an asset. And I protect my assets."
Possessive. Final.
"How long?" I ask.
"As long as it takes." He moves toward the hallway. "Rosa will help you through withdrawal. In three days, you return to Eden's Ruin. Riot will think you understand your place. Good. Let him."
"What if Riot suspects?"
"Riot never suspects the right things," Moretti says with a faint, humorless exhale. "And even if he did, the alternative that you're working for me is something he'd never admit. His ego wouldn't survive it."
He reaches the door, pauses.
"One more thing. When Volkov touches you, he marks you" his voice loses all warmth, "you come back here and tell me every detail. Not because I care. Because information is leverage. And leverage is the difference between killing a man cleanly or making his entire organization bleed."
He opens the door.
"And Prinel, you'll feel the withdrawal soon. Riot's dependency cocktail is messy. Rosa will manage it. Don't hide anything. Clarity afterward is worth the pain."
Then he's gone.
The silence he leaves behind is vast.
I sit there, staring out at the glittering city, knowing that whatever I was before tonight is no longer relevant.
I'm not Riot's dancer.
I'm not Moretti's prisoner.
I'm something sharpened.
A weapon.
And weapons don't get choices they get wielded.
The real danger begins when they learn how to aim themselves.