When The Devil Wants

Chapter Fourteen

(Eleanor's POV)

The doctor was still talking about forms and signatures when the double doors at the end of the hall opened.

I didn’t look up at first. I was too busy trying to keep my hands from shaking while I held the pen over Tiffany’s paperwork.

But the air in the hallway shifted, and everyone else seemed to feel it too.

He walked in like he owned the entire hospital.

Lucian.

His suit was dark and perfect, and his face gave nothing away, but his eyes found me immediately and stayed there.

I stood up too fast and the chair scraped behind me, loud in the quiet.

“Ms. Thornhill,” the doctor started, but Lucian cut her off with a single glance.

“I’ll handle the signatures,” he said, and his voice was low enough that only I could hear the edge under it.

The doctor hesitated, then nodded and walked away like she knew better than to argue.

Lucian hadn’t touched me, not yet. He just waited until the hall was empty before he stepped closer.

“You look like hell,” he said quietly.

It wasn’t an insult. It sounded almost like relief.

I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, because no one had said anything that honest to me in days.

Instead I just handed him the clipboard with Tiffany’s forms and my fingers brushed his by accident.

He signed where he needed to, quick and clean, and then he was holding my elbow.

“Come on,” he murmured. “We’re leaving.”

I didn’t argue. I let him guide me down the hallway because my legs felt like they might give out.

Outside, the cold air hit me again and he was shrugging off his coat before I could even shiver.

He wrapped it around my shoulders and the weight of it felt safer than anything I had in weeks.

Then he opened the passenger door of a black car idling at the curb and helped me in.

The door closed and the world went quiet.

For a long minute neither of us spoke. He just drove, one hand on the wheel, the other resting close enough to mine that I could feel the heat.

Finally I broke first because I couldn’t stand the silence anymore.

“If I do the divorce,” I said, staring out the window, “what’s the next part of the deal?”

He didn’t answer right away. He just kept his eyes on the road.

“I’ll tell you after you sign the papers,” he said, and there was a trace of something almost amused in his tone. Like he already knew I would give in.

“That’s not fair,” I snapped, and turned to face him. “I’m not going to be kept in the dark again. Not by you. Not by anyone.”

He glanced at me then, and the corner of his mouth pulled up.

“You’re asking a lot of questions for someone who just signed her life away to me,” he said lightly.

“But you can relax, Len. Nothing’s going to happen until you’re ready.”

“I hate that name when you use it like that,” I said, but there was no heat in it.

“Then stop acting like you need saving every five minutes,” he shot back, and for the first time in days something in my chest loosened.

The car kept moving through the city and I realized I wasn’t scared.

Not with him beside me. Not with his coat around me.

“Where are we going?” I asked, softer this time.

“Somewhere you can sleep without looking over your shoulder,” he answered. “We’ll talk about the deal when you’ve had rest.”

I nodded and leaned my head back against the seat.

For now, that was enough.

The car slowed down until the gates in front of us started to open on their own.

We drove through them and into a place that felt like it was cut off from the rest of the world.

There were no other houses close by.

No streetlights, no neighbors, just trees and stone walls and a massive mansion sitting alone at the end of the driveway.

It was too big to feel like a home.

It felt more like a fortress someone built so they would never have to explain themselves to anyone.

Lucian pulled the car to a stop and came around to open my door before I could.

He didn’t say anything as he helped me out, but his hand stayed at the small of my back like he was making sure I wouldn’t fall.

The inside was just as quiet as the outside.

High ceilings, dark floors, and nothing personal anywhere that would tell me who actually lived here.

“This is where you’ll be staying,” he said, walking ahead of me down the hall.

His voice echoed a little, like the house was too large for just one person.

He showed me the kitchen, the sitting room, the stairs that curved up to the second floor.

Everything was clean and expensive and completely empty of warmth.

Then he stopped in front of a door at the end of the upstairs hallway.

It looked like every other door, but the way he stood in front of it made it different.

“You can use any room in this house,” he said, turning to look at me.

“Except this one.”

I frowned, because of course that was the only door I would immediately want to open.

“You’re not allowed to go in there,” he continued, his tone firm but not cruel.

“You’re not allowed to touch anything in there either. Understand me?”

I nodded slowly, even though my mind was already making up reasons why that door mattered.

“Good,” he said, and some of the tension left his shoulders.

His phone buzzed in his pocket right after that.

He glanced at the screen, and for the first time since he picked me up, something in his face went hard.

“I need to take this,” he said, already turning away.

“Stay downstairs. Rest. Don’t go looking for trouble.”

I watched him walk off to answer the call, his voice dropping too low for me to hear.

And the whole house went quiet again, except for the sound of my own breathing and that one closed door behind me.

Lucian’s footsteps faded down the hall as he answered the call.

The house went quiet again, except for the low sound of his voice somewhere downstairs.

I shouldn’t have moved.

But sitting still in that big empty room made my skin feel too tight.

So I turned and walked toward the sitting room instead.

The chairs were leather and cold, and the windows showed nothing but dark trees outside.

I sank into one of them and tried to breathe.

That’s when I heard it.

It was faint at first, like maybe I was imagining it.

A scratching sound, coming from down the hall.

It kept going.

Like something was clawing at wood, over and over, from the other side of a door.

My stomach dropped because I knew exactly which door it was.

The one he told me not to touch.

I sat there for a long time debating with myself.

If I followed his rules, I could stay safe. If I didn’t, I might finally understand why he was hiding me here.

In the end my body decided before my brain did.

I stood up and crossed the hall in bare feet, quiet enough that the floor didn’t creak.

The scratching was louder now.

It sounded desperate, like whatever was in there wanted out badly.

My hand was shaking when I reached for the doorknob.

I wrapped my fingers around the cold metal and started to turn it.

“What do you think you are doing?”

The voice came from right behind me.

I froze with my hand still on the door.