OWNED BY THE ENEMY

CHAPTER THREE – NEGOTIATIONS[Part 1]

The staircase is made of glass, like everything else in this world.

Each step feels like walking on air over a city that would gladly watch me fall.

Damon Valtieri doesn’t look back to see if I’m following. He just climbs, hands in his pockets, like he already knows I will.

At the top, the space feels different.

The ceiling lowers a little. The lighting shifts—warmer, softer. Still glass and steel, but there are things here that don’t belong in a corporate brochure: a low leather sofa, a fireplace that flickers with real flame, shelves of books instead of curated décor. The storm outside throws shards of light across everything.

This isn’t an office.

It’s a lair.

He stops near a discrete panel in the wall and presses his thumb to it. A soft chime answer. The faint hiss of locks, vents, some mechanism under the skin of the tower adjusting to his touch.

“This floor is private,” he says. “Separate security. Separate systems. No one comes up here without me knowing.”

“No one?” I echo. “Ever?”

“Not without invitation,” he says. “And I don’t invite easily.”

I think of Elena, the endless parade of sleek assistants and lawyers rumored to orbit him.

“Do they know this exists?” I ask.

“They know it’s here,” he says. “They don’t know how it works.”

He turns toward a glass wall and nods.

Through it, I see a bedroom that looks like it belongs in a magazine spread.

King-sized bed in charcoal gray. Floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, the city bleeding neon into the room. A low seating area near a modern fireplace. A door to what’s probably a bathroom bigger than my entire apartment.

My stomach tightens.

“Before you panic,” he says, eyes on my face, “you’re not sleeping there. Yet.”

The “yet” lands like a brand.

I look away first.

“Then where?” I ask.

He moves past me to a door on the right and pushes it open.

“Here,” he says. “Your room.”

I step inside.

It’s…perfect. That’s the problem.

Soft cream walls. A wide bed with white sheets and too many pillows. A desk facing a huge window, a high-end monitor waiting, cables neatly arranged. A walk-in closet already half-filled with clothes in my size, in my style—only more expensive than anything I own.

I run my fingers over the nearest dress. Silk. The exact cut I like. The kind of thing I bookmark online and never buy.

“You guessed my measurements,” I say.

“I don’t guess,” he replies from the doorway. “I calculate.”

Of course he does.

“There’s a private bathroom through there,” he adds. “Shower, tub, basic necessities. If you want anything else, Elena will arrange it.”

“This feels less like a guest room and more like a holding cell,” I say.

“It’s both,” he says. “You’re here as my liaison. My leverage. You need to be comfortable enough to be functional.” His gaze tracks down my body and back up, not leer, not kindness—assessment. “And secure enough that no one can take you from me.”

“From you,” I repeat. “Or from this building?”

His eyes meet mine.

“Yes,” he says simply.

I hug my arms around myself.

“What are the rules?” I ask. “Since I apparently live here now.”

He leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms. The move pulls his shirt across his chest. My treacherous brain notices.

“Rule one,” he says. “You don’t leave this floor—let alone the building—without my permission or my presence.”

“That sounds reasonable,” I say. “If you’re a prison warden.”

“For the term of our contract, I am,” he says.

“And if I decide to treat this contract like a piece of paper instead of divine law?” I ask. “What then?”

His gaze doesn’t waver.

“Then you test how far I’m willing to go to enforce it,” he says. “And we both lose time we don’t have.”

Luca’s face flashes in my mind. The live feed is going black.

I grind my teeth.

“Rule two,” he continues. “No unmonitored communication with anyone outside this building. No private email, no anonymous messages, no ‘accidental’ calls. If you want to contact someone, you do it through a device I provide on a schedule I control.”

“My mother will have a heart attack if she doesn’t hear from me,” I say. “My best friend will probably hack your entire tower out of spite.”

“Then it’s in your best interest to keep them both calm,” he says. “On my terms.”

“You want my brain,” I say, heat creeping into my voice. “Not just my body and my last name.”

His eyes narrow a fraction. “I want all of it.”

“Then stop acting like I’m a houseplant. You can lock in a closet and expect to thrive,” I snap. “You choke me off from everyone and everything I care about, I stop being useful very fast.”

Something sharpens in his gaze.

“Then your investment loses value,” I say, dropping my voice. “Because I’m not useful if I’m isolated. I’m unstable. Emotional. Distracted.”

His eyes go colder. “Are you threatening to become a liability?”

“I’m telling you I already am,” I say. “Unless you fix it.”

Silence stretches, tight as a wire.

This is too much, too soon. I know it even as I say it.

But if I show him, I can only bend, never push, he’ll never give me anything I don’t steal.

He studies me, weighing cost versus control. I can almost see the calculus happening behind his eyes.

“Ten minutes,” he says at last.

I blink. “What?”

“Per day,” he clarifies. “Supervised calls. Your mother. Your friend. No one else. You don’t choose the time. I do.”

It’s nothing. It’s everything.

A tiny concession, insulting in its limits.

But it’s a concession.

I school my features into something between gratitude and indifference, burying the tiny flare of victory.

“So you do negotiate,” I murmur.

His gaze hardens. “No. I optimize.”

“That’s a very fancy way of saying I was right,” I say.

He doesn’t respond.

He doesn’t have to.

He just rewrote his own rules for me.

It’s a small win. A dangerous one.

But in a cage, even a loose bar is data.

“Rule three,” he says. “You do not lie to me.”

A short, humorless laugh escapes me. “You just said my reports are efficient lies.”

“Those are professional fictions,” he says. “Shaping data for optics. I don’t care about those. I care about anything that affects my security, my business, or your safety. You lie to me about that, we have a problem.”

“You expect me to tell you everything?” I ask. “Every thought, every doubt, every—”

“No,” he cuts in. “I expect you to tell me anything that can get you—or me—killed if I don’t know it.”

His nearness is starting to make my head swim.

“And if you lie to me?” I ask. “About anything that matters?”

“I don’t lie,” he says.

“Everyone lies,” I say. “Especially men like you.”

“I withhold,” he corrects. “I delay. I choose what to share and when. I don’t lie.”

“That’s a pretty distinction,” I say.

“Pretty isn’t the word I’d use,” he says, eyes dragging over me.

My pulse stutters.

“Anything else?” I manage.

“Yes.” His tone shifts, lower. “Rule four. If something scares you, you tell me. Immediately.”

“I’m not a child,” I snap. “I don’t need a—”

“You lost your brother,” he says, the bluntness knocking my breath sideways. “Your family is collapsing. You just sold yourself to the man you were raised to hate. You are allowed to be scared.”

He’s too close now. I can see the darker ring around his irises, the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, the small pale scar that curves from his chin toward his ear.

I hate that standing here with him, I feel…steadier than I did downstairs."

“I don’t need your permission to feel anything,” I say.

“I’m not giving it,” he replies. “I’m telling you fear is useful if you aim it at the right things. Let it make you careful, not reckless.”

“Reckless,” I echo. “Is that what you think I am?”

“I think you came here knowing exactly what this would cost you and signed anyway,” he says. “That’s not reckless. That’s…committed.”

He says it like both a compliment and an accusation.

The room feels smaller.

“I want to call my mother,” I say abruptly. “Before she sees some leak on the news and thinks I’m dead.”

“You will,” he says. “Tomorrow. After I’ve isolated a secure channel.”

“Tomorrow might be too late,” I say.

“If they wanted to hurt your mother to motivate you,” he says, “they would have done it before you walked into my building. The fact that they haven’t suggests she’s more useful to them alive.”

He says it clinically, but there’s an undertone there—something like experience.

I don’t ask.

“Shower is stocked,” he adds. “Clothes. You look—”

“Terrible?” I supply.

“Raw,” he says. “Like you’re still deciding whether to bolt.”

“I thought you said I can’t leave,” I say.

“You can’t,” he says. “Doesn’t mean you’ve accepted it yet.”

He pushes off the doorframe.

“Oh, and Aria?”

The way he says my name does things to my heart I don’t appreciate.

“Yes?”

“Don’t test my systems tonight,” he says. “No little latency checks, no ghost pings, no trying to see which walls are real and which are glass. I let it slide once because I wanted to see what you’d do. Next time, I shut you down.”

My stomach drops.