Page 255 of Fractured Loyalties

The world doesn’t end. The ceiling doesn’t crack. Lydia doesn’t gasp. Elias’s thumb slides over my cheek, and his mouth barely moves when he answers.

“Good.”

The word lands in my chest like a weight I finally know how to carry.

Lydia clears her throat, a practical intrusion. “I’ll give you two minutes to be human, then we talk about the drive he stole and the fallout that’s going to walk on its own legs. I’ll be in the hall.”

She leaves without waiting for us to nod. The door to the corridor settles, and the house gives us back our edges.

I look at his hands again. “Did it hurt?” I ask, and then hate the question. “I mean—”

“I don’t measure it that way,” he says. “I measured the moment I came home, and you weren’t flinching anymore.”

“I might flinch later.” I hold his stare. “But not from you.”

Something in his face loosens. Not enough for anyone else to see. Enough for me.

I should let the calm last. I don’t. The other truth has been gnawing at me since the day I walked into his world with my eyes open.

“I know about the club you visit sometimes. If we go forward,” I say, chest tight, “there are lines. No other partners. No ‘release valves’ because the war is heavy. If you need it, you take it from me, or you wait. I’m not asking. I’m telling you what keeps me here.”

He doesn’t blink. “You think I go to Dom’s to get what you wouldn’t give?”

“You go there because control feels safer than feeling,” I answer. “I understand it. I hate it.”

“Do you want punishment for it?” His tone flattens into something clinical. “Confession? Penitence? The theater of repair?”

“I want a vow,” I say. “And if you break it, I want the truth before I hear it from the wall. I won’t be surprised in my own skin.”

A beat. Two. He steps in and brackets my hips against the island. Heat coils low just from the weight of him there. He doesn’t use it. He uses words like knives he is willing to hand me.

“No other partners,” he says, steady. “No scenes without you. No rooms that don’t have your name in them. If I feel the edge closing on me, I tell you before I pick up a tool.”

My ribs loosen a fraction. “And I don’t run,” I say, a vow of my own. “Not when you aren’t pretty. Not when you come home with blood under your nails and call it protection.”

His mouth tilts, almost humorless, almost fond. “You like me better when I’m not pretty.”

“Sometimes,” I admit. “Sometimes, yes.”

He leans in until his forehead brushes mine, and for a second, the world quiets enough for me to hear the thick, grounded thud of his heart under my palms. He isn’t a storm in this moment. He’s a wall.

“Color?” he asks, not as a rote, but as an act of respect. He’s giving me the lever even while he crowds my space.

“Green for this,” I say. “For the talk. Not for what comes next.”

“What comes next?” His voice roughens, and it’s not control. It’s need. Mine, mirrored in him.

“You tell me the thing you hide even from yourself.” I lift my chin. “You tell me why owning the room keeps you sane.”

He stills. Only his thumbs move, sliding a slow line along the bones at my hips. He could deflect. He doesn’t. When he speaks, the words feel cut out of him.

“My father did collections for men who liked to call themselves businessmen.” He doesn’t dress it up. He never does when the knives come out. “He took me with him because I was small and made people softer. He’d put a hand on my neck and tell me when to cry. When to speak. When to watch. If I got it wrong, it was a lesson later in a room with the door shut.”

My throat tightens, bile and fury flooding my mouth at once. He keeps going, voice even, like he’s dictating a report.

“The first time I watched a man die, I was twelve. The man who did it pressed a pistol into my hand after as a joke so everyone could laugh and say I pulled the trigger. I didn’t. I still smelled it for a week. Nothing made it leave.”

He doesn’t lift his eyes from mine. He doesn’t look away from the girl whose shame used to come on the heels of wanting the wrong man.