Page 20 of The Chief (Those (Damn!) Texas Dantes #3)

SHE WOKE to silence.

Not peace. Not stillness. Silence, the heavy, unnatural kind that hummed with threat. Like the world had been padded in cotton and locked in a box. Like someone had sucked the sound from the air to make sure she couldn’t scream.

It wasn’t absence. It was presence. Brooding. Dark. Watchful.

The kind of silence that warned you a predator was near.

A pale gray dawn filtered through sheer drapes, soft enough to suggest morning but too dull to be welcoming. Her body ached in deep, throbbing ways, beneath her ribs, down her side, up into her shoulder. But it was the wrongness in the air that had her pulse ticking faster.

No machines. No nurses. No voices.

Her room was empty. Except it wasn’t. Not really.

She could sense them.

Someone was watching.

She rolled onto her back, hissing as her bandages pulled. The bed was too big. The covers too smooth. Nothing personal in the space, no framed photos, no chipped mugs, not even a damn book. A luxury suite built by a man who had everything and trusted no one.

A prison disguised as care.

Her breath hitched. She pulled her knees up, as far as her wound would allow. Her other hand—the branded one—shivered in deep, rhythmic waves, like her skin remembered something her mind hadn’t caught up to yet.

She flexed her fingers.

The brand didn’t glow, not now, but it had awakened.

Like a signal just beneath her skin, quietly bound with something ancient and unspoken.

A heat that wasn’t fire, but knowing. As if the mark were listening.

As if it remembered and was waiting for her to catch up.

Each beat echoed not just with life, but recognition.

A coded heartbeat only one other man shared.

She climbed out of bed, careful and shaky, like her body no longer belonged to her.

Each step felt unearned. Borrowed. Every breath tugged at the bandages, a reminder that her survival had come at a price she hadn’t chosen.

The cool floor bit at her bare feet, sharp and unfriendly.

She shuffled toward the door, not expecting freedom, but unable to stop herself from checking.

A test. A ritual. Something human in a world that no longer was.

Her fingers curled around the handle. It didn’t budge. Deadbolt locked. No keypad. No way out.

She turned, took in the room with new eyes. No clothes. No shoes. No phone.

But her wedding ring—

It was still there.

Relief bloomed sharp in her chest. Her pulse tripped, stumbling between disbelief and gratitude.

Not because the ring was gold or rare or beautiful.

But because it was proof. Of him. Of them.

Of vows exchanged in fire and blood. Proof that she hadn’t imagined the look in his eyes when he said forever.

She curled her branded hand around it, thumb brushing the smooth band. She hadn’t dreamed the vows. Hadn’t imagined the mark. Whatever this place was, however locked down, Cade had made sure of this one thing. That she would remember who she belonged to.

Who belonged to her.

She crossed to the wardrobe, her steps methodical, the silk of her shift whispering against her thighs. The doors swung open without resistance.

Inside, everything was neatly stocked, dresses, silk robes, and delicate underthings folded with care. The drawers opened to soft cottons, elegant lounge clothes, and a new phone laid facedown, locked, its screen dark.

She padded to the bathroom, taking a moment to refresh herself, then wash her hands. The mirrored cabinet nearby held everything: toothbrush, luxury soaps, soft towels, even skincare in the brand she used back home.

None of it comforted her. If anything, the accuracy of it all tightened her chest. It was too complete, too knowing.

Whoever arranged it hadn’t just guessed what she might need.

They’d known. Down to the scent she wore, the lotion she used, the exact thread count that wouldn’t irritate her skin.

It wasn’t care. It was surveillance, disguised as luxury.

And that knowledge pressed heavier on her than any bandage.

She hadn’t been abandoned.

She was being curated.

Every choice made for her. Every product placed to make her seen without ever being asked.

It was intimacy without consent. Familiarity without freedom.

Like someone had taken her memories, her preferences, her scent, and constructed a version of comfort so precise it felt invasive. A museum exhibit behind glass.

Just glass. And her face staring back.

She collected a toothbrush, toothpaste, and washcloth, then closed the mirrored cabinet with a soft click, the sound sharp in the heavy silence.

She washed up swiftly, the motion grounding her in something ordinary, something hers.

Not comfort, but a ritual she could own.

Her reflection didn’t flinch. Her eyes didn’t blink.

She looked at herself the way someone looks at a ghost, recognizing the shape, unsure of the soul inside it.

There were shadows under her eyes that hadn’t been there before. A painful dryness to her mouth. The branded hand hovered at her collarbone, as if grounding herself mattered more than breath. Her pulse thudded through it, steady and measured. She didn’t look like someone healing.

She looked like someone who had just begun to burn.

She looked like someone who’d died and been stitched back together with secrets.

And that was before the door unlocked.

A sound as subtle as breath, but it snapped through her like gunfire. Her spine went rigid. She pivoted, her branded hand falling to her side as impulse surged where logic failed.

She didn’t know what she expected. Cade, maybe.

The heat in his gaze that always found her, claimed her.

Or a nurse, bearing softness and sterile comfort.

Someone with kind eyes and a voice she could lean into, just for a moment.

Someone whose presence wasn’t a test. Someone she wouldn’t have to brace herself for.

Someone human, whose presence wouldn’t make the air grow thinner.

She stepped into the bedroom, leaving the bathroom behind, the scent of clean linen trailing after her like a veil. The air was colder here. More aware. She didn’t cross to the bed. Just stood, caught between breaths, as the door creaked open.

She wanted Cade.

But it wasn’t just her husband.

He entered first, every inch of him taut with restraint, as if his body were made of chains pulled too tight.

The shadowed face was new. So were the sleepless eyes, the burden he seemed to carry on his shoulders.

Dressed head to toe in black, he looked like the executioner of his own fury.

And behind him came the others, cut from colder stone.

Titus with eyes like steel and Zane with suspicion already loaded in his stance.

She stood there barefoot, bandaged, in a silk shift she hadn’t chosen, surrounded by men who wielded influence like a blade.

Her back straightened despite the tremor in her side.

She wouldn’t cower. Wouldn’t shrink. But everything in her screamed she was no longer a woman—no longer Elise—but a symbol in motion.

A test. A target. A move on a board none of them could afford to lose.

Zane leaned against the wall with all the swagger of a man who didn’t trust her, arms folded tight, like he was already gaging her guilt. Titus stood sentinel beside him, a silent wall of judgment, cold and unreadable.

But Cade… Cade was something else entirely. He radiated tension, as if it took everything he had not to go to her, not to take her hand, not to snarl at his brothers for daring to look at her like a threat. He was restraint barely held together by will, the storm building just behind his eyes.

A man on the verge of snapping.

“Am I under arrest?” she asked. Her voice didn’t shake. Small victories.

Titus stepped forward, his voice sharp. “You overheard something,” he stated, voice steady but cool. His arms remained at his sides, but everything about him bristled with purpose. “We need to know exactly what that was.”

Cade’s jaw tightened, the muscles ticking once before he finally spoke, flat and undeniably dangerous.

“She asked if she was under arrest. Maybe you answer her before you treat her like a hostile witness.”

A beat passed. Then Titus’s eyes slid from Cade to Elise.

“No. You’re not under arrest,” he said. “You’re not a prisoner. You’re not a suspect.”

Elise’s eyes narrowed. “So if I’m not under arrest, and I’m not a suspect—what am I? Because you have me locked in a room just like a prisoner.”

Titus held her gaze, his tone level but laced with a tough undercurrent.

“You are the only person who overheard something that triggered half a dozen warning flags.” He said it without accusation, but there was substance in the words.

The kind that came with consequences. The kind that made Elise’s skin tighten, though she refused to show it.

Zane didn’t bother with soft landings. His voice came clipped, surgical.

“We cross-checked what you remembered with two of our intel networks. And yes, something in it triggered alerts. Russian phrasing. Short, clipped commands. Nothing that made sense on its own, but enough to raise questions. Enough to make the intel analysts wonder if something had been planned under our family’s watch, right beneath the Dante security net, during a high-profile wedding no one thought could be breached. ”

Elise’s lips parted, breath catching on the edge of denial. But she didn’t interrupt. Not yet. She needed to hear where this was going.

“What exactly did I say that has you guys freaking?”

Zane’s eyes narrowed slightly. “The cadence, Elise. The timing. You didn’t just recall the words. You echoed the rhythm. Line for line. That kind of accuracy? It’s not chance. It’s design.”

A chill ran up her arms. “What are you saying?” she asked.