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His face is just inches from mine, a familiar smile twisting his handsome features into something monstrous. "Hello, Luna," he whispers, voice intimate as a knife between ribs. "Did you miss me?"

Fifty

LUNA

The pain radiatesthrough my shoulders like fire licking at my bones. My arms stretch above me, wrists bound together, suspended from a steel beam that groans with even the slightest movement. Cold seeps through the thin soles of my shoes, crawls up my spine, and finds the fracture already splintering my chest open.

But I refuse to make a sound.

I won't give him that satisfaction. Not now. Not ever.

The door scrapes open and I hear footsteps approaching.

Calm. Unhurried. Deliberate. As if I'm not hanging helplessly in some abandoned warehouse with dirt-stained walls and rusted chains overhead. As if this is all just... inevitable.

"Pretty little thing."

Christopher steps into view, his expensive shoes clicking softly against the concrete floor. His eyes move over me methodically, taking inventory with that same detached cruelty I remember too well. This version of him is worsethan the one I thought I knew. The mask of civility has slipped away entirely, revealing what was always lurking beneath the surface.

He stops directly in front of me, hands casually tucked into the pockets of his perfectly pressed slacks. Not a single hair out of place. His cologne wraps around me—something woodsy and expensive that can't quite mask the rot underneath.

"I thought maybe you'd cry when you saw me." He sounds almost disappointed, tilting his head to study my expression. "But no. Still full of fight." His eyes narrow slightly. "You were always such a fucking tease."

I keep my gaze fixed somewhere beyond his shoulder, refusing to meet his eyes.

He steps closer, close enough that I can feel his breath brush across my face. "That collar."

His hand rises slowly, two fingers hooking under the black velvet ribbon Beckett fastened around my throat. The one I've refused to remove, even when alone. The one that now feels like the last connection to safety I have left.

Christopher's mouth twitches—caught between a smirk and a snarl. "Do you even know what it meant when he gave this to you?" He leans in, words brushing against my ear. "It wasn't a promise, Luna. It was a warning."

I breathe deeply through my nose, focusing on keeping my expression neutral despite the panic clawing up my throat.

"Let me show you what real ownership feels like."

Without warning, his fingers curl around the velvet and pull sharply. The choker snaps free, tearing against my skin as the fabric gives way. He tosses it behind him like garbage, the delicate silver charm skittering across the concrete floor.

"That thing around your neck?" He spits at the floor beside him, the sound vulgar in the hollow silence. "That wasn't protection. It was branding. And I don't let another man mark what's mine."

He takes a step back, eyes traveling over me from head to toe, his jaw tight. The false smile he wore when he entered is gone completely.

"Do you have any idea what you put me through?"

My breath catches involuntarily. The audacity of it—how he speaks as if he's the wounded one, as if he's the one strung up and bleeding.

"I was promised you," he continues, voice rising slightly. "You. Not your sister. Not some pathetic substitution in a prettier dress." A harsh laugh escapes him, entirely devoid of humor. "I spent weeks preparing. Playing by their rules. Waiting like a good little soldier while you let him put his hands all over you."

He begins pacing, each step measured as he moves back and forth in front of me. Something in his expression shifts, fractures, like glass under too much pressure.

"You think you're the victim here? You think he saved you?" His arm sweeps wide, encompassing the dingy room with its rusted chains and concrete walls. "This is what your choices earned you, Luna. This is what happens when you take what doesn't belong to you."

He closes the distance between us again, breathing harder now. I can see it in his eyes—the self-righteous indignation of a man who believes he's been wronged.

"You made me do this," he says, voice dropping to something almost tender. His head tilts as his eyes scan my face like he's searching for something. "You used to smile at me when I walked into a room. Remember that? Before he turned you against me." His voice softens further. "That was real, Luna. I know it was."

His hand shoots out before I can blink, wrapping around my throat. He doesn't squeeze yet—just holds me there, his palm warm and suffocating against my skin.

"He got inside you, didn't he?" His other hand runs down my side, fingers tracing a slow, possessive path over my ribs, my waist. I clench my jaw so hard I can feel my teeth grinding. "He marked you from the inside out."