A Contract Written In His Name

Chapter 5:LUCIEN’s POV

She’s adapting.

Not breaking. Not bending. Adapting. It’s the most inconvenient thing she’s done yet.

I watch her through the security feeds—a habit that’s become a compulsion. This morning, she didn’t try the front door. She mapped the ground floor instead. Her fingers trailed over doorframes, her eyes calculating sightlines. She’s not looking for an escape. She’s learning the architecture of her cage.

It’s not defiance. It's a strategy.

And it’s making my blood run hot in a way that has nothing to do with anger.

“She’s changing,” Mara observes as she pours my coffee. Her tone is carefully neutral.

“Explain.”

“She’s quieter. But her eyes… they miss nothing. She watches the staff. She watches the gates. She watches you.”

She watches you.

The words land somewhere low in my gut. I’ve been aware of her gaze since the moment she walked into my office—a palpable weight, equal parts fear and fire. But now… now it feels like a touch. A challenge.

“She’s waiting,” I say, more to myself than to Mara.

“For what?”

For me to slip up. For a crack in the armor. “For an opportunity.”

I find her in the east garden, sitting on a stone bench with a book. Sunlight catches the loose strands of her hair, turning them to copper. She looks soft. Peaceful.

It’s a lie.

I can see the tension in the line of her shoulders, the tight grip she has on the book’s spine. She’s a coiled spring painted in gold.

“You’re avoiding me,” I say, stepping onto the gravel path.

She doesn’t look up. “You’re hard to miss.”

“That wasn’t an answer.”

She closes the book slowly and lifts her gaze. The directness of it is a punch to the chest. “I’m conserving energy.”

“For what?”

A faint, knowing smile touches her lips. “You’ll see.”

The spark of challenge in her eyes is a live wire. It’s not fear. It’s not a submission. It’s awareness. She sees the game, and she’s decided to play.

The realization is equal parts thrilling and infuriating.

“You can leave the estate today,” I hear myself say. The offer is a risk. A test.

Her eyes narrow. “With an escort?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

The refusal is clean, sharp. It shouldn’t arouse me. It does. “No?”

“I don’t want supervised freedom,” she says, standing. The movement is graceful, deliberate. “I want real terms.”

“You’re in no position to negotiate.”

Her smile doesn’t fade. If anything, it deepens. “You’d be surprised.”

She turns to walk away, and something primal, something I’ve spent a lifetime suppressing, snaps its leash.

“If I let you go alone,” I called after her, my voice tighter than I intended, “where would you go?”

She pauses. Looks back over her shoulder. The sunlight frames her, and for a second, she looks like a dream I once had and forced myself to forget.

“Somewhere,” she says softly, “that reminds me who I was before you rewrote me.”

The blow lands with devastating precision. It’s the first time she’s acknowledged the truth without screaming it. The quiet of it is worse.

“One hour,” I say, the words torn from me. “No tracker. No escort.”

She turns fully, her expression unreadable. “No surveillance?”

“I’ll know if you run.”

She holds my gaze, and in the green depths of her eyes, I see something that looks like pity. “Then trust yourself, Lucien.”

She walks away, and I’m left with the echo of my name on her lips. She’s never used it before.

The sixty minutes that follow are a masterclass in self-torture.

I canceled two meetings. I dismissed three calls. I stand at the window of my study, watching the empty stretch of road beyond the gates, and imagine every possible scenario. Her hailing a cab. She called a contact I missed. Her disappearing into the city’s bloodstream, forever.

My fear wasn’t that she would run, it was that she’d choose not to return.

She returns in fifty-seven minutes.

I’m in the study when she enters, my posture carefully relaxed, my heart a jackhammer against my ribs. “You’re early.”

“I didn’t want to give you a reason to imagine things,” she says, closing the door behind her. Her cheeks are flushed from the wind. She looks alive. Vibrant. Mine.

“Did you test me?” I ask, staying seated, letting her come to me.

“Of course.” She stops before the desk, her hands clasped loosely in front of her. A picture of calm. A lie.

“And?”

“You didn’t follow me.” She tilts her head, studying me. “That surprised me.”

“It shouldn’t have.”

“It did.” She takes a breath, and her composure cracks, just a hair. “I went to see my father.”

The air leaves the room. I hadn’t anticipated that. I’d prepared for betrayal, for recklessness. Not for this. Not for loyalty.

“You gave me your word,” I say, my voice dangerously low. “You said you wouldn’t involve him.”

“I didn’t.” Her gaze doesn’t waver. “I stood across the street from the hospital and watched him walk out. He was leaning on a nurse. He looked small. But he was smiling.” Her voice softens, fractures. “You already own the consequences, Lucien. I just wanted to see the cost.”

The raw honesty of it dismantles me. There’s no manipulation here. No game. Just a woman staring at the wreckage.

“How is he?” I ask the question, feeling foreign on my tongue.

“Alive.” She wraps her arms around herself. “Grateful. Clueless.” A tear escapes, tracing a path down her cheek. She doesn’t wipe it away. “And I’m angrier at you now than I was yesterday.”

I nod once. “That was inevitable.”

“You don’t even pretend to regret this.” The pain in her voice is a blade.

“I regret inefficiency,” I say, standing, moving around the desk. “Not outcomes.”

“That’s the difference between us,” she snaps, her pain igniting into fury. “You see people as outcomes. I see them as people.”

I’m in front of her now, close enough to feel the heat of her anger, to see the gold flecks in her stormy eyes. “And you,” I say, my voice dropping to a husk, “see emotion as leverage. You think your anger, your tears, will change the calculus. They won’t.”

“You’re afraid,” she whispers, her breath ghosting over my lips. “You’re terrified of losing control.”

“And you,” I counter, my hand rising of its own volition to hover beside her face, “are terrified of realizing you’re good at surviving this. That you might even start to like it.”

Her breath hitches. Her eyes dropped to my mouth.

The world narrows to this inch of charged space. To the frantic pulse in her throat. To the part of me that wants to close the distance, to taste the fury on her lips, to see if it would burn us both to ash.

I step back first. The withdrawal is a physical agony.

The call comes an hour later, a blade to the throat of my carefully ordered world.

“Blackthorne.” The voice on the line is smooth, familiar, and laced with venom. Silas Vale. “I heard congratulations are in order.”

Every muscle in my body locks. “You heard wrong.”

“A wife changes things. Especially a pretty, vulnerable one with a father who can’t keep his mouth shut.” A low chuckle. “How is dear Jonathan?”

The threat is crystalline. He’s not after the debt. He’s after the leverage. He’s after her.

“Stay away from her,” I snarl, the control in my voice shattering.

“That depends,” Vale purrs, “on how valuable she becomes to you.”

The line goes dead.

I stood in the center of my study, the phone gripped so tight the plastic creaks. The cold, calculating part of my brain is already running scenarios, threat assessments, countermoves.

But beneath it, a new, raw, and terrifying emotion is erupting.

It’s not just about control anymore.

It’s not just about a contract.

It’s about her.

I find her in the hallway later, pacing outside her room like a restless ghost. She stops when she sees me, her eyes wide.

“You’re pacing again,” I say.

“You said I could.” A challenge.

“I did.” I move closer, until the scent of her—jasmine and defiance fills my senses. “Your presence has altered the risk profile of my life.”

She crosses her arms, a shield. “I didn’t ask for that.”

“No,” I agree, my voice dropping. “You demanded it.”

Silence stretches, taut and electric.

“Someone called,” I say finally, watching her face. “Someone who knows your name. Someone dangerous.”

Fear flashes in her eyes, so bright, instant. Then it hardens into that terrifying, beautiful resolve. “Then let them come. I’m not fragile.”

I close the final distance between us, my voice a low, possessive growl meant for her ears alone. “You’re not expendable either.”

The words hang in the air, a confession I can’t take back.

She swallows, her gaze searching for mine. “Why?”

Because the thought of anyone else touching you makes me want to burn cities to the ground. Because you’ve become the variable in every equation. Because I’d tear the world apart before I let anyone use you against me.

I don’t say any of that.

Instead, I say, “Because you’re under my name. My protection. My responsibility.” I let my thumb brush, once, over the frantic pulse in her wrist. A brand. A promise. “And I protect what’s mine.”

She doesn’t pull away. Her breath shudders out. In her eyes, I don’t see surrender.

I see the beginning of a war we’re both destined to lose.

And God help me, I’ve never wanted anything more.