Chapter 54
Adriana’s POV
They brought him in broken.
Two guards dragged Raymond across the steel floor, wrists bound, blood running in thin rivulets down his arm. He looked half-dead, half-fire ..the kind of man who refused to die simply because someone wanted him to.
My stomach twisted.
The cell was cold, clinical, white light bleeding across glass walls that weren’t just for containment, but observation. Every breath echoed too loud, too sharp. I could feel Damian’s eyes on us, even though I couldn’t see him yet.
“Put him there,” a voice ordered through the intercom.
They dropped Raymond to his knees.
When the door sealed, silence settled. Thick. Suffocating.
He lifted his head slowly, and when our eyes met, something inside me cracked.
He smiled small, bruised, exhausted. “You look better than I do.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said quietly.
He chuckled a sound half-swallowed by pain. “That’s what everyone keeps telling me.”
The glass on the far wall flickered to life and there he was. Damian.
Impeccable suit. Calm posture. The faintest smile playing at his lips like this was theatre and he was both the audience and the director.
“Touching, isn’t it?” he said through the speakers. “Two ghosts reunited in my house.”
My jaw clenched. “Let him go.”
“Not yet.” Damian’s tone was measured, almost gentle. “I’ve been waiting to see this. The great Adriana…the rebel, the strategist — undone by the one weakness she swore she didn’t have.”
I said nothing. Silence was the only weapon left that could wound him.
He leaned closer to the glass. “You both want to save each other. Let’s see how far loyalty goes when the cage closes.”
Then the lights dimmed, and the glass went opaque…but I knew he was still there. Watching. Listening.
Always watching.
His words shouldn’t have meant anything not after everything. But they hit like shrapnel.
I turned away before he could see it. “You shouldn’t have risked them. Camille, Marcus—”
“They followed because they believe in you,” he said. “Same reason I did.”
I faced him again, anger flaring to cover the ache. “Believe in me? I got half our people killed, Raymond. I underestimated him. I walked right into his trap.”
He shook his head. “You didn’t walk into it. He built it around you.”
For a long moment, there was nothing but the hum of the walls and the faint buzz of hidden cameras.
I looked up, past the light, because I knew Damian was still watching. He always did.
“Then we make him regret it,” I said softly.
Raymond caught the tone instantly. His soldier instincts hadn’t dulled. “You have a plan.”
“Always.”
He smirked, despite the blood on his lip. “Of course you do.”
The moment the speakers went silent, Raymond exhaled sharply, muscles tensing.
“Now?” he asked.
“Now,” I said.
I pried off the thin metal brace from my wrist restraint , sharp enough to scrape, thin enough to pass as nothing.
Raymond leaned against the vent panel, his weight pressing it just enough for me to wedge the edge beneath the seam. Metal gave a little.
“Still think this is madness?” I whispered.
He grinned. “You taught me madness usually works.”
A faint click. The panel shifted.
Progress.
He looked at me then, serious again..that look he only wore before stepping into hell. “He’s going to make this personal, Adriana.”
“It already is,” I said.
I could almost feel Damian’s presence on the other side of the glass, like static under my skin.
He thought this was his game. His control. His stage.
But if I’d learned anything from him, it was how to turn a trap into a weapon.
⸻
Raymond’s POV
Pain was easier to deal with than helplessness.
Every step I’d taken to get here had been a calculated mistake, and now I was paying for it bleeding for it.
But seeing her standing there, alive that made every broken bone worth it.
I forced a grin, even as my ribs protested. “So this is how he treats his guests now?”
She gave me that look the one that used to make entire soldiers stop talking mid-sentence.
“You’re bleeding,” she said.
“I’ve been worse.”
“Raymond—”
“I said I’ve been worse.”
Silence stretched between us not cold, just heavy. A thousand things unsaid.
Finally, she whispered, “You shouldn’t have come.”
I laughed, low and rough. “You’re the only thing worth coming back for.”
Her eyes flickered, just for a second. And that second nearly undid me.
We needed to move carefully every word, every glance could be recorded, analyzed, replayed.
So we gave him what he wanted to see.
Conflict.
“You think you can fix this?” I snapped suddenly, slamming my cuffed fists against the glass wall. “You always think you can fix everything, Adriana, even when it’s already burning!”
She turned on me, eyes blazing. “Because someone has to, Raymond! Someone has to stand when everyone else runs!”
Perfect.
From the outside, it looked real. Passion. Rage. Guilt. The kind of emotional chaos Damian loved to feed on.
But beneath the shouting, her eyes locked onto mine ..subtle, deliberate.
Top corner of the cell.
I followed her gaze. A faint seam in the wall panel…ventilation grid. Small enough to miss unless you knew where to look.
We can use it.
She stepped closer, pretending fury. “You don’t get to make this about your loyalty—”
“And you don’t get to make it about your pride!” I cut her off, pushing her shoulder hard enough to make it convincing.
She stumbled back, caught herself, and hissed low enough only I could hear: “When he cuts the feed, we move.”
I nodded once, almost imperceptibly.
The cameras above clicked softly, lens refocusing. Damian was still watching, enjoying every second.
Then his voice slid through the intercom again, smooth and cruel. “Beautiful. I could almost believe you two mean it.”
Adriana straightened, chin high. “We mean everything we say.”
“Good,” Damian murmured. “Because next time, I won’t just test loyalty. I’ll test survival.”
The lights dimmed again and the glass wall between us and him flickered to black.
_____
As Adriana and Raymond force the vent open, a faint hiss fills the cell , not air, but gas. Damian’s voice cuts through once more, calm and cold:
“Round two.”
And the lights go out.