A Contract Written In His Name

Chapter 4:ELARA’s POV

The first rule of the cage revealed itself at dawn.

I tried to leave.

Not to run—that was a stupid, suicidal fantasy. Just to walk. To feel the outside air on my face and prove the walls weren’t already shrinking. I dressed in the soft grey light: jeans, a sweater, silent sneakers. My heart was a frantic prisoner in my chest.

The mansion was a tomb. My footsteps on the polished concrete floors were the only sound. The grand foyer yawned before me, the massive front doors like the entrance to a cathedral I wasn’t allowed to pray in.

I reached for the handle. Cold, brushed steel.

It didn’t budge.

I pushed. Pulled. A quiet, desperate struggle. Nothing. The door was a seamless, immovable part of the wall. A pretty barrier.

“It’s biometric.”

His voice came from the shadows of the staircase. I whirled, my back hitting the door.

Lucien descended the steps, already dressed in a suit that looked like it had been tailored onto him in the night. Not a hair out of place. Not a trace of sleep in his eyes. He looked like he’d been waiting.

“You locked me in,” I said, the accusation trembling.

“I secured the perimeter.” He stopped a few feet away, close enough that I caught his scent—clean, sharp, expensive. It wrapped around me. “You’re not a prisoner. But you don’t get to wander the city alone at five in the morning.”

“I was going for a walk. On the grounds.”

“Why?”

The question was a trap. “Because I wanted to feel like I still could.”

He studied me, his gaze a physical caress that felt more invasive than a touch. It lingered on the pulse hammering in my neck, the white-knuckled grip I had on my own sleeves. “Not yet.”

Anger, hot and bright, washed through the fear. “You keep moving the line.”

“I’m not moving anything, Elara.” His voice dropped, a low, intimate rumble. “You’re just learning where I’ve drawn it.”

Breakfast was a war fought with cutlery and silence.

He sat at the head of the table, a tablet propped beside his plate, the glow illuminating the sharp planes of his face. I pushed scrambled eggs around my plate, the food turning to glue in my mouth.

“Where am I allowed to go?” My voice shattered the quiet.

“Anywhere on the estate.” He didn’t look up.

“And outside?”

“With notice.”

“And if you say no?”

Finally, his eyes lifted. Dark, endless, and completely unreadable. “Then you don’t go.”

I pushed my chair back, the legs screeching on the floor. “That’s permission. Not freedom.”

He set his tablet down with a deliberate click. “You agreed to the terms.”

“I agreed to save my father! Not to be your… your pet in a gilded kennel!”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. The first crack. “Is that what you think this is?”

“What else would you call it?”

He stood then, and the room seemed to shrink. He didn’t come around the table. He just… loomed. “I call it protection. This house, these rules—they’re a fortress. And you’re what I’m protecting inside it.”

The words should have felt like a chain. So why did a treacherous, stupid part of me feel a flicker of… something else? Something warm and dangerous?

I fled before I could figure it out.

I found the library by accident hours later, a sanctuary of leather and old paper. It was the first room that felt alive. Books lined the walls, not for show, but for use—their spines cracked, pages dog-eared. I trailed my fingers along the shelves, a strange calm settling over me.

“Looking for an escape route?”

I jolted, snatching my hand back. He stood in the doorway, jacket gone, tie loosened. He looked more approachable. More human. More dangerous.

“You followed me,” I said.

“I live here.” A ghost of a smile. “You gravitate toward quiet.”

“You don’t know my habits.”

“I know you’re a runner,” he said softly, stepping into the room. The space between us charged instantly. “Not with your feet. With your mind. When things get hard, you retreat into stories. It’s in your university records. You switched your major from Business to Literature after your mother died.”

The breath left my lungs. He’d not just read a file. He’d dissected my soul. “That’s a low blow.”

“It’s an observation.” He stopped before a shelf, pulling out a worn copy of Wuthering Heights. “Heathcliff and Cathy. A destructive, all-consuming obsession. Is that a fantasy?”

“It’s a story about love being a prison,” I shot back, my voice trembling.

He turned the book over in his large hands. His fingers were long, elegant, but I could see the strength in them. I imagined, with a shocking clarity, what they would feel like on my skin. “All love is a prison, Elara. The question is whether the walls are worth the view.”

Our eyes locked. The air grew thick, hard to breathe. I was the first to look away, my cheeks burning.

“You’re trying to get under my skin,” I whispered.

“I’m already under your skin.” His voice was a low hum that vibrated in my core. “You’re just too afraid to admit it.”

He summoned me to the gym that afternoon.

It was a brutal, beautiful space—all mirrored walls and cold steel. He was in the middle of it, shirtless, his back to me as he lifted a heavy barbell. The muscles in his back and shoulders bunched and shifted with a raw, powerful grace. Sweat glistened on his skin, tracing the deep groove of his spine.

I stopped dead in the doorway, my mouth going dry.

He racked the weight and turned, not even breathing hard. He didn’t reach for a towel. He just… looked at me, letting me look. Letting me see the hard planes of his chest, the defined ridges of his abdomen, the dark trail of hair that disappeared into his waistband.

My face was on fire. My whole body was on fire.

“You’re restless,” he said, his voice a little rough from exertion. It scraped over my nerves. “Angry. It’s energy with no outlet. That’s dangerous.”

“So you brought me here to… what? Watch?”

“To participate.” He walked to a heavy punching bag suspended from the ceiling and gestured. “Hit it.”

I stared. “What?”

“You’re vibrating with tension. Either you release it here, in a controlled environment, or it explodes somewhere I can’t control. Hit. The. Bag.”

It was the stupidest, most tempting thing I’d ever heard. I walked forward, my limbs feeling disconnected. He handed me a pair of black training gloves. Our fingers brushed. A jolt, electric and hot, shot up my arm.

I faced the bag, my mind blank. Then I thought of the locked door. The humiliating contract. The way he looked at me like he could see every secret, shameful thought. I drew my arm back and swung.

The impact was a shock—a solid, satisfying thud that traveled up my arm. It hurt. It felt incredible.

I hit it again. Harder.

Again.

Again.

Each strike was a silent scream. Each one was for a piece of my life he’d stolen. Tears of frustration mixed with the sweat on my face. I wasn’t just hitting the bag. I was hitting him.

“Good,” his voice came from just behind my shoulder. I hadn’t heard him move. “But you’re leading with anger. It makes you sloppy.” His hands came up, not touching me, but shaping the air around my arms. “Plant your feet. Pivot your hips. The power comes from here.” His voice was a low murmur by my ear. “Channel it. Don’t just throw it.”

I followed the ghost of his instruction, adjusting my stance. The next punch was cleaner. More powerful. The bag swung violently.

“Again.”

I hit.

“Again.”

I hit harder,my breath coming in ragged gasps.

When I finally stopped, chest heaving, arms trembling, I was dizzy. He was right in front of me, his chest gleaming, his eyes dark with an intensity that had nothing to do with training.

“See?” he said, his voice dangerously soft. “Control isn’t about suppression. It’s about direction.”

I was hyper-aware of the inch of space between us. Of the heat radiating from his body. On the way his eyes dropped to my parted lips.

“This changes nothing,” I panted, the lie brittle between us.

“No,” he agreed, his gaze searing into mine. “But something has begun.”

That night, I stood on the balcony outside my room, shivering in the cool air. The city lights were a distant, indifferent galaxy.

I felt him before I saw him. A shift in the darkness. He leaned on the railing beside me, close enough that our arms almost touched.

“You’re angry with me,” he stated.

“Yes.”

“But you don’t hate me.”

I swallowed.“No.”

The truth was a surrender. The most dangerous one yet.

“You will,” he said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear it. “Before this is over, you’ll hate me more than you’ve ever hated anyone.”

I turned my head to look at him. The moonlight carved his profile from stone. “And you? Will you hate me?”

He turned then, his eyes capturing mine. In their depths, I didn’t see hate. I saw a reflection of my own chaotic, terrifying fascination. I saw a hunger so deep it felt like an abyss.

“No, Elara,” he murmured, the words a vow and a threat. “I could never hate you.”

He turned and left me there, his confession hanging in the night air like a promise of a coming storm.

Back in my room, my skin still humming from his nearness, I understood the real trap.

The cage wasn’t the house, or the rules, or the contract.

The cage was him.

And the most terrifying part?

I was no longer just trying to escape.

A part of me was starting to wonder what it would be like to willingly walk deeper inside.