Episode seven: No way out
840 Words
It started with a phone call.
Short. Cryptic. Urgent.
Damian had been watching her from across the room when his phone buzzed. A second later, his jaw tightened, and his expression darkened. He didn’t say a word. Just stood and signaled her with a look.
“Come,” he ordered.
She hesitated, but her feet moved before her brain caught up. She told herself it was curiosity. Or maybe concern.
But the truth?
She didn’t want to be away from him. Not even for a minute.
The black car was already waiting outside. He opened the door for her, didn’t speak. The silence inside the vehicle felt thick, like it knew what was coming and didn’t want to say it aloud.
“Where are we going?” she finally asked, heart tapping nervously against her ribs.
He didn’t look at her. “Somewhere I don’t want you to be.”
“Then why bring me?”
His voice was flat. “Because if I leave you out of this, someone else will drag you in.”
She didn't understand it. But she nodded anyway.
Minutes later, they pulled into the back entrance of a high-rise she didn’t recognize. The hallway inside was bare—concrete, dim, metallic. Damian walked like he owned the world. Elena followed like she had no other choice.
The door at the end of the corridor opened with a keycard. What lay beyond it made her stomach twist.
Three men stood inside.
Two of them looked like muscle—sleeves rolled up, faces hard, eyes cold. The third was tied to a chair, bloody and breathing hard. His lip was split, and one eye was already swelling shut.
Elena froze. “What is this?”
Damian turned to her, calm as ever. “You said you wanted to understand who I am.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to see this.”
“And yet here you are.”
He stepped into the room, cracking his knuckles. Elena remained by the door, frozen by the weight of it all. She should run. She should scream.
But she couldn’t.
The man in the chair looked up and spat blood onto the floor.
Damian’s tone was quiet, almost bored. “Who paid you to tap my servers?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man groaned.
Damian didn’t raise his voice.
He didn’t shout.
But what he did next chilled Elena to the core.
He turned to one of his men. “Break his hand.”
The c***k was sickening.
Elena gasped, covering her mouth with her hand, stepping back instinctively. Her legs hit the wall, and still, she couldn’t move.
This was real.
This wasn’t power in theory.
This was the side of Damian she hadn’t seen. The one everyone whispered about but never dared confirm.
And now she was inside it.
“I’ll ask again,” Damian said, crouching in front of the man. “Who paid you?”
The man whimpered something Elena couldn’t hear.
Damian nodded once, then stood. “That’s all I needed.”
He turned back to her, as if nothing had happened.
“You okay?”
Elena stared at him. “Are you?”
His face twitched, just barely. “You knew I wasn’t a good man.”
“But I didn’t know you were... this.”
He walked toward her slowly, every step echoing off the cold floor.
“I didn’t bring you here to scare you, Elena,” he said softly. “I brought you here because you need to stop pretending I’m someone I’m not.”
“And if I don’t want this life?”
He stopped inches from her. “Then you should’ve walked away the night we met.”
“I didn’t know what I was walking into.”
“Now you do.”
His eyes were burning again—like fire behind glass. And somehow, even after everything, her body still reacted to him. Still wanted him.
That terrified her more than the violence.
“You’re not trapped,” he added.
She laughed, bitter and broken. “Aren’t I? You said if you left me out of this, someone else would drag me in. That sounds like a trap to me.”
Damian reached out and touched her cheek—gentle, careful, tender in a way that didn’t match the man she’d just witnessed.
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“By pulling me into a world I can’t survive?”
He hesitated. “You’re stronger than you think.”
Her hands trembled at her sides.
“Do you ever feel guilt?” she asked suddenly. “For what you do?”
His jaw tensed. “Every day. But I feel more guilt imagining what they’d do to you if I wasn’t in control.”
And somehow, she believed him.
That was the scariest part.
Damian offered her his hand.
She stared at it like it was a weapon.
Then, against every instinct she had left, she took it.
- Writer
