Layla flinched when her phone vibrated.
She hesitated, then picked her phone,then answered without looking at the caller's name.
Silence greeted her at first.
Then—
"You think he can protect you?"
Her fingers tightened around the phone. She now looked at the caller's ID.
"Liam, what is it?"
"You forget who my family is?" His voice was low, controlled in that way that meant rage sat just beneath it. "You embarrassed me."
"I didn't do anything to you."
"You went with him."
"You cheated first."
"That was nothing," he snapped. "That meant nothing."
"It meant enough."
Liam went silent and then his tone went colder.
"You belong with me."
Layla's chest tightened at the echo of another voice saying something disturbingly similar.
"I don't belong to anyone," she said.
A sharp exhale on the other end.
"You think he wants you?" Liam continued. "You think you're special? You're just something new to him. Something to break."
Her breath trembled.
"You don't know him."
"I know men like him."
"And you're not one of them?"
"You'll regret this," Liam said quietly. "You don't get to humiliate me and walk away."
The line went dead.Layla sat frozen.The room felt smaller now and the safety felt thinner.
Just then a knock sounded at her door.
Her heart jumped into her throat.
"Layla."
She opened the door slowly and saw him standing there in dark slacks and a black shirt with an unreadable expression.
"You took a call," he said.
"You're monitoring my phone?"
"No,I monitor threats."
"That's not normal." Layla said as heat rushed to her face.
"Neither is what he said to you."
"You heard that?"
"I think so."
The air between them tightened.
"Liam won't stop," Elias said calmly.
"You don't know that."
"I do."
She hated how certain he sounded.
"He's angry," Elias continued. "And anger makes boys like him reckless."
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"What's necessary."
"You're not going to hurt him." Layla asked as fear sparked in her chest.
Elias stepped closer.
"That depends," he said evenly, "on how far he pushes and because he's my family too."
"You don't get to decide that."
"No," he said quietly. "He does."
Heavy silence landed between them. Layla realized something then.
Elias wasn't jealous in the way Liam was.
He wasn't emotional.He was strategic and that was far more dangerous.
"I don't want anyone fighting over me," she said softly.
"This isn't about you," Elias replied.
The words hit harder than they should have.
"Then what is it about?"
His eyes locked onto hers.
"Control."
Layla's breath caught.
"You're proving a point."
"Yes."
"And what point is that?"
"That no one touches what stands under my protection."
"And if I don't want your protection?"
"You're free to refuse it." He said after he studied her for a long moment.
"But?"
"But you won't."
The certainty again.It wrapped around her like invisible restraints.She should have felt insulted,instead, something dangerous stirred beneath her ribs.He believed she would choose him,not because he begged but because he expected it.
Elias's phone buzzed in his pocket.He glanced down once and then back at her.
"He's outside the outer road," Elias said calmly.
"What?"
"He followed the car but he won't come in."
"Why?"
"Because he fears me as much as everyone does."
Layla looked at him and then stepped past him toward the window at the end of the hallway.
Far beyond the trees, headlights sat unmoving in the dark.
"He's not leaving," she whispered.
"No,he won't." He said as looked up to her.
" He won't come in,so go to sleep."
Layla nodded. She went to the bed, lay down and covered herself with the blanket.
Elias looked at her one more time before closing the door behind him as he left.
Layla didn't sleep deeply.She drifted in and out,aware of the house and the quiet hum beneath the walls—the security system, the controlled air, the life of a place that never truly rested and somewhere in that restless half-sleep, one truth settled heavily into her chest:
Elias was dangerous,not loud-dangerous like Liam,but the kind of dangerous that moved in silence.
He prepared r
ooms before she agreed to stay,watched her without announcing it and calculated before anyone else realized there was something to calculate.
And yet—She had never felt more protected and that contradiction followed her into the morning.