FORTY-ONE

FORTY-ONE

I didn’t knock.

The black dress was balled in my fist like evidence at a crime scene as I shoved open the office door. Wesley looked up from his desk, only mildly surprised. No guards tried to stop me this time. Maybe he knew I was coming.

“You tracked me.”

The words shot out sharp. My voice didn’t shake, but something inside me did.

Wesley sat back slowly, like he was calculating the weight of each breath. His tie was already loosened, shirt sleeves rolled up, but there was nothing casual about his stillness.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

I slammed the dress down on his desk, the silk slumping like a discarded snake skin. “There was a tracker. Sewn inside. Tiny. Hidden in the lining near the waist. I found it last night.”

Still, he didn’t flinch. His eyes moved from the dress to me, unreadable. “You think I put it there.”

“I know what it looks like.”

“No,” he said calmly, “you know what you want it to look like.”

I crossed my arms, heat prickling at the back of my neck. “Don’t gaslight me.”

He sighed, leaning forward now, elbows on the desk. “It wasn’t mine. Maybe it was Marco. You wore the dress out in public. I tried to keep an eye on you the whole time, but it could’ve been done before it even got to you. Easy move, if you want someone paranoid.”

My chest tightened. It did sound like something Marco would do. He was always two steps ahead, even when he was losing. But Wesley—he always had control over what touched me. What reached me. What I wore.

“I don’t buy it,” I said, but even I could hear the hesitation tucked behind my words.

He stood. Slowly. Walked around the desk until he was close—close enough that I had to tilt my chin to meet his gaze.

“If I wanted to keep you close,” he murmured, “I wouldn’t need a tracker.”

The room pulsed with silence.

The air between us stretched thin, like the hem of the dress that betrayed me. I didn’t know what scared me more—how easily he could say something like that, or how much truth I thought there might be in it.

I stepped back. “You think that’s comforting?”

“I think it’s the truth.”

He didn’t try to stop me as I turned to leave.

I didn’t storm out this time. I walked slow. Controlled. But inside, my heartbeat was a riot—every breath tight, every step echoing with doubt.

I didn’t know if he was lying. I didn’t know if he was protecting me or managing me. I didn’t even know if those were different things anymore.

When I reached my room, I locked the door behind me.

Then I sat on the bed, pulled out my phone, and stared at the screen for a long time. My fingers moved without thinking, muscle memory guiding me through a quiet cleanse.

I deleted everything—texts, calls, social apps, tracking permissions, everything he might already have access to.

Everything except one.

A single encrypted line buried behind fake folders, a number no one knew I still had. Not Wesley. Not even Marco.

I stared at it, thumb hovering.

Just in case, I told myself.

Just in case all of this was about to burn down.

The ping came through the encrypted app I hadn’t used in over a year.

Private drop. No names. Urgent.
—You need to come alone.

I hesitated. Rational thought screamed trap, but my thumb still moved. I texted back one word:
Where.

The alley was three blocks from an old butcher shop downtown—derelict, shielded by chain link and dumpsters. I wore black. Hood up. No phone. Just the burner clutched in my jacket pocket like a weapon I wasn’t sure how to use.

I found him slumped between two bins, half in shadow, half in blood.

The man who broke into my room. The one Marco had sent.

He looked like death had already come for him once—and was circling back to finish the job.

“Jesus,” I whispered, crouching beside him.

His head jerked up, face bruised and split. “You came,” he rasped.

I scanned the street, pulse racing. “What happened to you?”

“Wesley,” he choked. “Your… your shadow prince.”

My stomach turned. “You’re lying.”

“I broke into your room, yeah. For Marco.” He coughed hard, red flecking his lips. “But I didn’t deserve this. He’s tying off loose ends. Everyone who touched you. Everyone who knew.”

“You think I believe anything you say? You followed me. You—”

“I followed orders,” he growled, then winced, clutching his side. “Marco didn’t just want you back. He wanted to expose something. He said Wesley had secrets. Files. Something you’d never find unless he burned for it.”

I stared at him, the stink of garbage and blood turning my stomach. “Why would Wesley care now? Marco’s already out. He’s—”

“Not gone. Not really.” His eyes flicked up. Wild. “Marco had dirt. And you… you’re at the center of it. He thinks you’re leverage.”

A cold ripple crawled up my spine.

“Why me?” I demanded. “Why am I leverage?”

“Because you’re not just a pawn,” he wheezed. “You’re a crack in his armor. And he knows it.”

I leaned in, anger rising like a tide. “If you’re trying to use me to get mercy, it’s not going to work. I’m not some bleeding heart—”

His hand shot out, grabbing my wrist with a strength that didn’t match his state. “He’s not your salvation.”

My breath stalled.

“He’s your cage.”

Then he collapsed, his hand falling limp, blood soaking through his shirt like ink spreading on paper.

I sat frozen, heartbeat crashing in my ears.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

I stood slowly, backing away from the body as the sound grew louder, closer.

His words echoed like a curse I couldn’t shake:
He’s your cage.

The silence felt louder than the sirens.

Back in the room, I didn’t turn on the lights. I didn’t need them. The city outside pulsed red through the windows, a heartbeat I couldn’t escape.

I sank onto the edge of the bed, still in the same clothes, still tasting blood in the back of my throat that wasn’t mine.

My mind replayed it again and again—his voice, breaking with fear.
He’s your cage.

I ran a hand through my hair, fingers tangling at the roots. My scalp ached. My chest tightened. I didn’t know what to do with the storm clawing at my ribs.

My eyes flicked to the mirror. I saw myself. Pale. Sharp around the edges. My collarbone looked like it might cut through skin. A shadow of the girl I’d been two months ago.

And then I remembered Wesley’s fingers brushing my lower back during dinner. The kiss to my cheek. His mouth grazing my ear when he’d said, You’re mine.

I’d felt it then—how easily he wore power like a tailored suit. How easily he used me as part of it.

I stood too fast. My legs stumbled beneath me.

I went to the dresser, tugged open the bottom drawer. It stuck for a moment before giving way with a groan. Inside, nestled in red silk tissue, was another dress.

Still boxed. Still unopened. Like a gift that had been waiting for the right moment to unmake me.

My fingers hovered above it. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to find—or fear I’d confirm.

I peeled back the layers of tissue slowly. The dress shimmered under my touch—deep emerald, soft, expensive. Beautiful. The kind of thing that could make a woman disappear behind the glitter of it.

And I thought: How many things has he wrapped me in to distract me from what he’s doing behind the curtain?

I turned the dress inside out. Felt along every seam, every hem, every stitched edge.

Nothing.

No tracker. No bug. No thread out of place.

But it didn’t matter.

The damage was already done.

The door knocked once. Then opened.

Wesley stepped in without asking. He always did. Like boundaries were a language he understood but never had to obey.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said.

I didn’t turn around. “I did.”

He stilled.

“And he said you’re not what you seem.”

Silence bloomed behind me like poison in a still pond.

When I turned to face him, he was leaning against the frame, arms crossed. That familiar, unreadable calm cloaking him like armor.

“And what do you think I am?” he asked.

I smiled without warmth. “A man who knows how to trap people beautifully.”

He tilted his head, amused by the sting. “Then it’s a good thing you’re not easy to keep.”

That smile of his—danger dressed in silk. It made my pulse skip, made me forget just long enough to fall, every single time.

He pushed off the frame and crossed to me. But he didn’t touch me. Just stood close enough that I could feel the heat of him. A reminder that he was flesh and blood, not the myth I sometimes made him into.

“You want to believe him?” he asked softly. “The man who broke into your room for Marco?”

“I don’t know what I believe anymore,” I whispered. “That’s the problem.”

He nodded slowly, as if he understood. But his eyes said otherwise. They always did.

He left without another word.

The door clicked shut behind him like a lock sliding into place.

I looked down at the silk pooled in my hands.

And wondered—
If I wasn’t in a cage…
why did it feel like the bars were getting closer?