Chapter 95: Amelia

Amelia

I don't know when the dark finally swallows me whole. One moment I'm screaming against the rope, against the hand pinning my shoulder down, against the smoking wreckage still falling apart on that screen, and the next moment there's nothing at all, no warehouse, no chair, no swinging bulb, just a long, empty stretch of black that asks nothing of me and gives nothing back.

When I surface again, it isn't the rust smell that greets me first. It's softness. My cheek is pressed against something that gives gently under the weight of my head, something that doesn't scrape or bite or dig into raw skin, and for one disoriented second I think I'm dreaming, because nothing in the last several days has felt this gentle.

I blink hard, forcing the room into focus. White ceiling. A soft golden light coming from somewhere off to the side, warm instead of harsh. Sheets, actual sheets, pale and clean, tangled loosely around my legs. My wrists ache with a deep, throbbing soreness, but when I lift one hand to look at it, there's no rope anymore, just faint bruising and a thin line of raw, healing skin.

I sit up slowly, my head swimming with the movement, and press my palm flat against my forehead like that might somehow steady the room. Everything comes back in pieces, disjointed and overlapping. The chair. The bread. The television. Ren walking up those stairs. The white bloom of fire swallowing the sky.

"No." The word leaves me in a whisper, barely more than breath. My throat feels raw, scraped from screaming, and tears start gathering hot and fast before I can stop them. "No. It can't be. He can't be dead."

I say it again, quieter, like repeating it enough times might actually change what I watched happen on that screen, and I hate myself a little for how badly I want it to work.

The door opens.

I go rigid instantly, wiping at my eyes with the back of my hand, forcing my spine straight even though every muscle in my body still aches with exhaustion. The man who steps through isn't anyone I recognize. Not the leader, not the silent one, not the broader man who split my lip. Someone new. Someone I've never once seen since this entire nightmare began.

He's tall, dressed simply, nothing about his clothing suggesting rank or authority, and he still wears a mask, the same kind the others favored, dark fabric that leaves only his eyes visible. Those eyes are pale, almost colorless in this light, and they study me with an unhurried, unbothered curiosity, the way someone studies a piece of furniture they're deciding whether to keep.

"I wouldn't cry for him, if I were you," he says, and his voice carries none of the distortion the leader's did, no device altering it, just a low, even tone that somehow unsettles me more for how normal it sounds. "Especially considering the fact that you already promised to kill him yourself. I did what you planned to do. You should be thanking me."

Something in me snaps clean through whatever exhaustion had been holding me together.

"Who the fuck are you?" The words tear out of me sharper than I intend, my voice cracking halfway through, but I don't care anymore how weak I sound. Anger is easier to hold onto than grief, and right now I need something to hold onto.

He tsks, slow and almost amused, shaking his head like I've disappointed him somehow. "That's not something you need to know."

He steps further into the room, hands clasped loosely behind his back, and begins talking the way the leader used to talk, unhurried, methodical, like he's rehearsed this speech in front of a mirror more times than he'd ever admit. He talks about the Moretti name, about bloodlines and debts owed across generations, about how Ren's death is only the beginning of something much larger, much older, something that's apparently been building for longer than I've been alive. I stop listening somewhere in the middle of it, the words blurring together into background noise, because none of it matters anymore. None of it changes the only fact currently sitting like a stone in my chest.

"Are you the leader?" I ask suddenly, cutting through whatever monologue he's currently working through. "The one behind all the schemes?"

He scoffs, and something in the sound tells me I've hit close enough to a nerve that he doesn't appreciate the question. "That's not something you need to know either." He tilts his head slightly, studying me again with that same unbothered patience. "What you need to know is that from now on, I'll be the one taking care of you. You'll be in my care."

"Hell no." I push myself further up against the headboard, ignoring the way my head spins with the effort. "You got what you wanted. You used me as bait to kill him. What more do you want from me? Let me go."

His gaze hardens instantly, all the lazy amusement draining out of his pale eyes in the space of a single breath. He crosses the room in three quick strides and grabs the sides of my chin between his fingers, hard enough that his nails dig sharp crescents into my skin. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of flinching, refuse to let even a flicker of pain cross my face, though I feel my pulse hammering hard enough against my throat that I'm certain he can see it.

"You're never leaving here, Amelia." His voice has dropped lower, quieter, somehow more threatening for the lack of volume. "Yes, you were brought here as bait, to end Moretti once and for all. But that wasn't the only reason you were brought here." His gaze drops, slow and deliberate, tracking down over my chest before returning to my face. "You're very useful in other aspects."

Bile rises hot and immediate in my throat, and I jerk my chin free of his grip with more strength than I thought I had left.

"Ren might be dead," I say, forcing every ounce of steel I have left into my voice, "but my brother is still alive. He'll hunt you and your men down, and you'll wish you were dead."

The man grins, slow and unbothered, his eyes sparkling with something close to genuine delight. "He'd only be able to hunt me down if we were in Verona."

I blink, confusion cutting straight through the anger for a moment. "What? What are you talking about?"

"You're way too smart for that type of question, Amelia."

"Where the fuck are we?" I growl, gripping the sheets hard enough that my knuckles whiten, some cold, creeping dread already spreading through my chest before he even answers.

"Now that's the million dollar question." He straightens, adjusting the cuff of his sleeve with irritating precision. "I'll give you a hint, though. We're somewhere your brother will never find you."

"No." I shake my head, the word barely more than a whisper, refusing to let it settle, refusing to let it be real. "No."

"Yes, sweetheart." He steps closer again, taps my cheek lightly with two fingers, a gesture so casually condescending that it makes my skin crawl worse than the earlier grip did. "A maid will come to have you cleaned up and properly fed. Try not to be difficult, okay?"

He turns and walks out without waiting for a response, the door clicking shut behind him with a soft, final sound that somehow feels worse than the warehouse door ever did.

I sit there for a long moment after he leaves, staring at the space where he stood, my mind refusing to process everything at once. Ren is dead. I'm not in Verona. Val can't find me. Each thought arrives separately, distinct and sharp, and I can't seem to hold more than one at a time without something inside me threatening to break entirely.

The door opens again before I've managed to pull myself back together. A woman steps through this time, dressed in a plain maid's uniform, dark hair pulled back into a neat bun, her expression carefully blank in a way that makes me wonder how long she's been trained to keep it that way. She bows slightly.

"I'm here to bathe you, ma'am."

I stare at her, and I can feel the hate radiating off my own expression, hate that has nowhere else to go right now except toward the first available target. "I can bathe myself."

"No, you cannot, ma'am. You're quite weak to do anything by yourself at the moment."

"Watch me." I push the sheets back and swing my legs off the bed, determined to prove her wrong out of sheer stubbornness if nothing else, and manage exactly four unsteady steps toward her before my legs give out entirely, dumping me hard onto the floor. Pain shoots up through my knees, sharp and immediate, and for one humiliating second I just kneel there, breathing hard, refusing to look up at her.

She doesn't gloat. She simply crosses the room and crouches beside me, sliding one arm under mine to help me up, her grip surprisingly gentle given how firmly she pulls me back onto my feet.

"If you don't resist," she whispers, close enough to my ear that I doubt the words are meant to carry beyond the two of us, "things will go so much easier for you. So please. Just cooperate. For the two of us."

Something in the way she says it, quiet and almost pleading, makes me pause. There's a warning buried underneath the instruction, something that suggests her own comfort or safety might be tangled up in mine, and exhausted as I am, some part of my training still recognizes useful information when it hears it. I file it away, the same way I filed away every drop of water in that warehouse, cataloging it for later even as I let her guide me toward the bathroom attached to this room.

Eventually, I give in. I let her wash the dried blood and grime from my skin, let her work careful fingers through the tangled mess of my hair, let her dress me in soft, clean clothes that feel almost obscene against skin that's spent days chafing against rope. I eat what she brings me afterward, some simple broth and bread that goes down easier than anything the silent one offered, and I let her guide me back to the bed without a single word of protest, because some clinical, detached part of my mind has already started working through the calculations. Fighting costs me energy I don't currently have. Compliance buys me time, information, opportunity. I've survived worse odds than this before. I intend to survive these too.

The man returns throughout what I assume passes for the day, though there's no clock in this room and no window to check the sky by, just the same soft golden light that never seems to shift or dim. Every time he comes, he brings some fresh reminder wrapped in casual cruelty. Ren is dead. Nobody is coming for me. My brother doesn't even know which country to start searching in.

I say nothing. I let him talk, let him circle the room and study me and wait for some reaction he isn't going to get, because I've already decided that whatever satisfaction he's chasing, he isn't getting it from me. Not today. Maybe not ever, if I have anything left to say about it.

But underneath the silence, underneath the carefully blank expression I've forced onto my face, something colder and steadier has started building. I think about the maid's whispered warning. I think about the pale, unhurried eyes of a man who clearly enjoys being underestimated. I think about every detail he's let slip without realizing it, the casual reference to Verona, the confidence that no one will ever find this place, confidence that only makes sense if he genuinely believes I have no way of tracking where I've been taken.

He's wrong about that. He just doesn't know it yet.

Late into whatever hour this room considers night, when the golden light finally dims on some hidden timer and the maid has long since left me alone, I lie perfectly still beneath the sheets and let my mind work the way it was trained to, cataloging every detail I've gathered since waking up here. The faint hum of what sounds like distant machinery, low and constant, nothing like the generator noise from the warehouse. The particular quality of the air, thinner somehow, drier, carrying a mineral edge I don't recognize from anywhere in Verona. The accent buried underneath the maid's careful whisper, faint but present if I listen closely enough.

None of it adds up to an answer yet. But it's a start, and starts are all I've ever needed.

I close my eyes, forcing my breathing slow and even, forcing my body to actually rest for the first time in days, because whatever comes next, whatever this man intends for me, I refuse to face it as weak and unprepared as I've been forced to be until now.

Somewhere beyond this room, beyond whatever walls now separate me from everything and everyone I've ever known, a plane fell out of the sky with the only man who ever managed to make me feel something close to safe still inside it, and grief sits heavy and unresolved in my chest, waiting for a moment I haven't given myself permission to feel it yet.

But grief can wait. Right now, survival is the only thing I intend to give my full attention to.

I drift toward sleep still turning the pieces over in my mind, and just as the dark finally starts pulling me under, the door opens again.

I sit up fast, every muscle bracing on instinct, and find the man standing in the doorway, mask still in place, watching me with an expression I can't fully read in the dim light. He doesn't speak right away. He simply steps inside and closes the door behind him, unhurried, like he has all the time in the world and intends to use every second of it.

"Couldn't sleep either?" I ask, keeping my voice flat, refusing to let him see how fast my pulse is currently working.

He doesn't answer that. Instead he crosses the room slowly and stops at the foot of the bed, studying me the way he has every other time he's come through that door, except something about tonight feels different, more deliberate, like he's building toward something he's been holding back until now.

"I've been thinking," he says finally, "about what happens next. About you specifically."

"I'm thrilled to have been on your mind."

The corner of his mouth twitches beneath the mask, something close to amusement, though it doesn't quite reach his eyes. "You should be. Most women in your position don't get offered anything at all. I'm about to offer you considerably more than that."

Something cold settles low in my stomach, some instinct warning me a full second before he actually says it.

"Marry me, Amelia."

The words land in the quiet room like a physical blow, and for a moment I simply stare at him, certain I've misheard, certain exhaustion has finally cracked something loose in my own mind. But he doesn't blink, doesn't laugh, doesn't offer any indication that this is some cruel joke meant to break me further.

"You're insane," I say slowly, "if you think I'd ever say yes to that."

"I don't need you to say yes." His voice stays perfectly even, perfectly calm, and that calm terrifies me more than shouting ever could. "I'm simply extending the courtesy of asking first."