Mors

9

My jaw didn't just drop; I’m pretty sure it hit the expensive Persian rug with a dull thud. I stared at him for what felt like an eternity, searching for a "just kidding" or even a hidden smirk in those cold, dark eyes. There was absolutely nothing. His face remained as expressive and welcoming as a slab of granite in a graveyard.

"You’re letting me go?" I croaked. My voice sounded like I’d swallowed a handful of gravel and washed it down with battery acid. "Just like that? No catch? No fine print?"

He leaned back in his chair, the heavy leather creaking under his weight. He looked so effortlessly powerful, so entirely in control of every molecule of my existence, that it made my skin itch with a deep, primal discomfort.

"You have a life to settle," he said. His voice was a low, vibrating hum that seemed to settle in my bones. "Debts, a job, your friends. I don't need a distraction when the real work begins. Pack your things. Settle your affairs. You have forty-eight hours."

"And then?" I asked. My heart was hammering against my ribs so hard I thought it might actually crack a bone.

"And then you belong to me. Permanently." He reached into a mahogany drawer and pulled out a sleek, black smartphone, sliding it across the polished desk toward me. "This stays with you. If I call, you answer. If I track you, you stay exactly where you are. If you try to run, I will find you. And trust me, Eve, you won’t like the version of me that has to come looking."

I reached out with trembling fingers and snatched the phone. It felt heavy and cold, like a digital shackle made of glass and circuit boards. "I understand," I whispered, though my brain was screaming that I understood nothing at all.

"Good. Abriana will see you to the car." He looked back down at the files on his desk, dismissing me as if I were nothing more than a minor, boring line item on a multi-million dollar budget.

The transition from the gold-trimmed mansion to the backseat of a black SUV was jarring. I sat in a suffocating silence as one of the guards, a man who looked like he ate bricks for breakfast and skipped the water, drove me back toward the city. The sunlight felt too bright, almost violent. The city sounds were too loud and chaotic. I felt like a ghost haunting my own life, watching the world move on while I was stuck in a nightmare.

When the car pulled up to my apartment complex, the guard didn't even turn the engine off. He just sat there, hands like hams on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead into the distance.

"I’m... I’m here," I muttered, half-expecting him to tell me it was all a prank.

"Forty-eight hours," he grunted. His voice sounded like two tectonic plates grinding together in a deep cavern. "Don't be late, girl."

I scrambled out of the car and practically ran to my building. I didn't stop until I had bolted my door, turned the deadbolt, and leaned my back against the wood, gasping for air as if I’d just run a marathon. My apartment was exactly how I’d left it. It was messy, smelling faintly of the vanilla candle I had forgotten to trim, and quiet. It was so incredibly quiet that it made my ears ring.

I walked into my bedroom and stared at my expensive, soft-as-a-cloud sheets. I crawled onto the bed and buried my face in the fabric, trying to find the scent of my old life. I wanted to cry, to scream, to wake up from this horror movie. But the weight of the black phone in my pocket was a constant, cold reminder of my new reality. I wasn't the girl who worked at a five-star hotel anymore. That girl died the second I pulled that trigger.

A sudden, loud pounding on my door made me jump nearly five feet in the air. My heart went from zero to sixty in a heartbeat.

"Eve! Open this damn door right now! I know you’re in there, I can hear you breathing, you i***t!"

Oralee.

I scrambled off the bed, wiping my tear-stained face with the back of my hand. How was I supposed to look at her? How was I supposed to tell my best friend that I’d spent the last few days in a mafia dungeon and had a contract with a literal devil in my pocket?

"Coming!" I yelled back. My voice was shaking so much I barely recognized it.

I took a deep breath, trying to smooth my hair and look "normal," whatever that meant now. But as I reached for the handle, a terrifying thought stopped me cold. The Don knew her name. He knew where I lived. He let me come back here not because he trusted me, but because he knew I had everything to lose. He was using my love for her as a leash. I wasn’t free. I was just being allowed to roam the yard for a minute.

I backed away from the door as if the wood were made of white-hot iron. My heart was a frantic bird trapped in my chest, beating against my ribs until it actually started to ache. Oralee didn't stop for a long time. She kept pounding and calling my name, her voice cracking in a way that made me want to collapse right there on the floor. She sounded so small and so utterly broken, and it killed me to stay silent.

I had to do it, though. If I opened that door, I was dragging her into a world of gold-handled doors and blood-soaked dungeon floors. I held my breath, standing perfectly still in the middle of my living room until the silence finally returned. It felt like an eternity, but she eventually gave up. The sound of her retreating footsteps was the loneliest thing I had ever heard in my twenty-four years of living.

Once I was sure she was gone, I didn't head for my bed. I couldn't even look at those expensive sheets anymore. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that man in the chair. I looked down at my hands, and even though they were scrubbed raw from the shower, all I saw was blood dripping from my fingertips. I could still feel the kickback of the gun and the cold weight of the trigger.

I knew right then that if I went back to that mansion, I would lose my mind. I would become a shadow in a suit, a weapon for a man who didn't view people as human beings. I would go crazy within a month. I knew that with every fiber of my being.

So, I decided to be a complete i***t. I decided to run.

It was a suicide mission, and I knew it. The Don had told me he would find me, and his voice had carried the weight of a final death sentence. I had less than forty-eight hours to disappear before the leash snapped shut for good. I started pacing the room, my mind racing a mile a minute. I had to plan an exit that made no sense. I had to disappear in a way that a man with unlimited resources would not expect.

The problem was that I had nothing. No car, no secret stash of cash, and definitely no help. If I used my credit cards, he would track the electronic ping in seconds. If I went to the bus station or the airport, he would have someone watching the cameras before I could even buy a ticket. I had to do this on my own, and I had to do it without leaving a single digital footprint.

My "heavenly" sheets stayed on the bed because I could not take comfort with me into the dark. I grabbed a worn-out backpack from the back of my closet and started throwing in the essentials with shaking fingers. My breath was coming in short, jagged gasps, but I forced myself to focus. I was jumping into a bottomless abyss, and I just had to pray that I would not hit the jagged rocks on the way down.

~•~