POV: Elara Winters
The door shouldn't be open.
That's the first thought that crashes through Elara's exhausted brain as she climbs the last flight of stairs, rain dripping from her hair and soaking through her work uniform. Her feet scream with each step. Thirteen hours. Thirteen hours of smiling at customers who couldn't be bothered to look her in the eye. Thirteen hours of pretending her life wasn't slowly collapsing.
Bookstore until 5 PM. Diner until 11 PM. And still, it wasn't enough.
Her apartment door—the door to the shabby one-bedroom she shared with her parents in a building that smelled like mold and broken dreams—hangs open. Not ajar. Not slightly loose. Open. Like someone pushed it and forgot to close it behind them.
Elara's heart stutters.
"Hello?" Her voice sounds small in the stairwell. "Mom? Dad?"
No answer. Just the sound of rain battering the windows and her own breathing, suddenly too loud, too fast.
She knows she should be scared. Part of her is. The smarter part is already calculating: What if it's a robbery? What if Mom and Dad finally did something stupid enough to get arrested? What if—what if—what if?
The larger part is just... tired. So tired she can barely feel the fear underneath the exhaustion.
Elara pushes the door wider.
The apartment is wrong in every way that matters.
The small living room where her parents usually sat in a chemical haze has been destroyed. The thrift-store couch is overturned. Drawers hang open like broken mouths. Her mother's collection of cheap porcelain figurines—the things she'd somehow kept even through the addiction—are smashed across the floor in glittering fragments.
And the walls.
Blood. Splattered across white walls like an abstract painting. So much of it that Elara's mind refuses to understand what she's seeing.
"No. No, no, no."
She whispers it, pulls out her phone with shaking hands.
Then: "Where do you think you're going?"
A voice. Male. Behind her. Before she can turn, a hand clamps over her mouth. Hard. Warm. Immovable.
Elara tries to scream but the sound dies in her throat.
"Your parents sold you for drug money," the voice says directly into her ear. "Didn't they tell you? You belong to me now."
Everything stops. Her heart. Her breathing. Time itself.
"I'm going to move my hand," he continues, calm and terrible. "If you scream, this ends badly. Understand?"
She nods.
The hand drops.
Elara spins around and finds herself staring into the most beautiful, terrible face she's ever seen.
Dark hair. Sharp features. And eyes—black eyes, bottomless and cold, scanning her with clinical precision. He's tall. Expensive suit. Like he owns everything just by standing in the room.
Three men stand behind him, watching her like wolves evaluating prey.
"Please," she whispers. "I don't understand. What debt? I didn't—"
"Your parents stole from me," he says. "Half a million in product. They couldn't pay it back."
Elara's entire body goes numb. She already knows what he's about to say. Somehow, she's always known.
"They offered me something else instead."
His words hang in the air.
Elara looks at this man. At the blood on the walls. At the ruins of her apartment.
And something inside her—something that's been sleeping under years of guilt and obligation—wakes up angry.
She lifts her chin.
Meets his black eyes directly.
"Then do it," she says quietly. "Kill me. I'm tired of waiting for my life to start anyway."
The silence that follows is absolute.
His jaw tightens. His hand clenches at his side. The three men shift uncomfortably, like they can sense the moment something has broken inside their boss.
"Interesting," he breathes.
He turns to one of his men. "Bring the car."
"Boss?" the man questions, confused.
"We're taking her with us."
Before Elara can move, before she can process, his men are guiding her downstairs toward a black SUV idling on the street.
She doesn't fight them.
She doesn't know his name yet.
She doesn't know that decision—that one word, interesting—just changed the entire trajectory of her life.
All she knows is that she's leaving behind everything she was.
And something electric and terrifying is beginning.