Page 24 of Fractured Loyalties
I turn. “Elias.”
He waits.
My voice is quieter now. “Thank you. For what you did.”
His jaw tics, barely. “You don’t owe me gratitude.”
But I do.
He saved me—from something I still can’t name.
I close the door gently.
The silence inside the room is heavier than I expect. My hands tremble when I touch the edge of the bed. I sit. Then lie back, boots still on.
Somewhere down the hall, I hear a cabinet close. Water running.
He’s here. And I’m here. And everything between us now feels like a fuse waiting to burn out.
I think about the way he caught me, how fast I obeyed when he told me to get in the car. I should be ashamed of how quickly I yielded, how little resistance I gave. But it didn’t feel like surrender to a stranger. It felt like recognition. Like a door I’d already opened somewhere in the back of my mind, long before last night.
Chapter 7 – Elias - In the Quiet of the Trap
The sound of her door closing doesn’t echo, but it lands in me like a loaded promise.
I don’t move from the hall right away. I listen—to the soft give of the mattress as she lowers herself onto it. To the barely audible hitch in her breath. She didn’t cry. Not when I pulled her into the car. Not when I drove her up the cliffside. Not when she walked into this house with eyes wide and jaw tense.
She didn’t cry.
That matters.
I take three steps backward and vanish into the kitchen. No lights. I don’t need them. The house is wired into me. I know the exact shape of every object, every shadow.
Water runs. My hands beneath it. Cold.
Control is the only true safety. It’s what I offered her. It’s what she took.
But I saw her eyes when I touched her. The way her lips parted. The pause before she pulled away.
She wants to believe she can still run.
I dry my hands on a linen towel and place it exactly where it belongs. Then I cross to the panel behind the wine rack, key in a short sequence. The latch releases with a muted click.
Inside: screens.
Only exterior feeds. A perimeter net. Nothing inside. I promised myself that. And her. Even if she doesn’t know it yet.
One camera shows the road—still empty.
Another: the edge of the woods. Undisturbed.
She’s safe here. But safe isn’t what unsettles her.
I lean against the far wall and watch the monitors.
At exactly 8:12 p.m., I hear the faint sound of her door creaking open.
Bare feet. Slow steps.
