POV: Elara Winters
The room is beautiful in a way that feels like a lie.
Four-poster bed. Antique furniture. Windows overlooking mountains. Fresh flowers on the dresser. It's the kind of room Elara always imagined having, back when she let herself imagine things.
"This is your room," Dante said when a woman named Sarah led her upstairs. "Clothes should fit. There's a bathroom through there. Someone will bring you food."
That was three hours ago.
Elara hasn't moved. She's been standing at the window, staring at the dark forest outside, trying to process a reality where she's been kidnapped, sold by her parents, and deposited in a luxury bedroom like she's a guest instead of a prisoner.
The knock comes soft.
"Come in," she says, though she doesn't move.
Sarah enters with a tray—soup, bread, water. She sets it on the table without speaking, turns to leave.
"Wait," Elara says. "What am I supposed to do here?"
Sarah pauses at the door. "Work off your debt."
"How long will that take?"
"However long it takes," Sarah replies. "Sleep. Eat. Tomorrow you start your assignments."
She leaves.
Elara stares at the food. Her body is starving but her stomach is tied in knots. She forces herself to eat anyway. The soup is warm. Made with care. Nothing like the instant ramen she usually survives on.
She's sleeping—actually sleeping, exhaustion finally winning over fear—when Dante enters.
He doesn't knock.
Elara wakes to the sound of the door closing. For a moment, she freezes, every instinct screaming danger.
But Dante just stands in the doorway, watching her. He's changed into casual clothes—dark jeans, black shirt, looking more human and somehow more terrifying because of it. His dark eyes study her like she's a puzzle he's trying to solve.
"Couldn't sleep?" he asks.
"You could have knocked," Elara says, sitting up. She's defensive. Afraid. Fighting not to show either.
"I could have." He doesn't move from the doorway. "But I wanted to see you when you weren't performing. When your guard was down."
Elara pulls the blanket around herself. "What do you want?"
Dante leans against the doorframe. "To explain the arrangement."
"I'm a servant," Elara says flatly. "I work until the debt is paid. Five hundred thousand dollars. Minimum wage. That's approximately—"
"Years," Dante finishes. "Roughly six to ten years if you work constantly and I pay you anything at all."
Elara's hands clench into fists.
"However," Dante continues, "the arrangement isn't quite that simple."
She waits.
"Your parents are addicts who stole from me repeatedly. They're not going to suddenly become reliable," he says. "Which means there's a chance they'll come back. Try to collect you. Try to leverage you again."
The thought hadn't occurred to her.
"Or," Dante says, "someone from their other operation—the people they were stealing for—might decide you're valuable leverage against me."
Elara's stomach drops.
"So while you're here, you're not a servant," Dante says quietly. "You're protected. Which means you're under my watch. Constantly. It means you don't leave the estate. It means you follow my rules. And it means that if anyone comes looking for you, they're coming through me."
"That's a prison," Elara says.
"It's safety," Dante corrects. "Which, I suspect, is something you've never had before."
He's right. It's infuriating that he's right.
"Why?" Elara asks. "Why not just kill me? You said yourself my parents' debt doesn't require me alive."
Dante's eyes are unreadable.
"Because," he says slowly, "when I told you I was planning to kill you, you didn't beg. You didn't plead. You just looked at me with rage and exhaustion and told me to get it over with." He tilts his head slightly. "That interests me. That strength, wrapped in that much desperation—most people don't have that. Most people would have broken."
"I'm about to break," Elara says quietly.
"Not yet, you're not," Dante replies. "You're going to survive this. And in six to ten years, you're going to leave here with more money than you've ever dreamed of and the knowledge that you're stronger than everyone who ever failed you."
He straightens, moves toward the door.
"Rest," he says. "Tomorrow, Sarah will assign you work."
"Dante," Elara calls as he reaches the door. "Why would you care? Why would you care if I'm strong or broken?"
He pauses. Doesn't turn around.
"Because," he says quietly, "I was broken once. And I want to see what happens when someone isn't."
Then he's gone.
Elara lies back down, but sleep doesn't come for hours. She stares at the ceiling, trying to understand a man who kidnapped her but wants her to survive. Trying to understand why his interest in her strength feels like the closest thing to caring anyone's shown her in years.
And she realizes, somewhere in the darkness, that this is going to be more complicated than she ever imagined.