HIS CONTRACT, MY CAGE

Elena's POV

The gun hit my chest, and for a second, I forgot how to breathe.

Out of everything that happened that night, the only thing I couldn't forget was the gun against my chest. I couldn't remember the darkness or even the sound of my own breathing. All I remembered was how cold the barrel felt through my blouse, right above my heart, held there by the man who had promised three weeks earlier to love me forever.

Who would've thought life could change that fast?

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let me take you back to that morning, when the biggest thing I had to worry about was a melting ice cube.

****

Maya was standing over my bed at six in the morning, holding that ice cube like it was completely normal behavior.

It hit my face before I even knew what was happening.

“Wakey wakey! Some numbers are calling you, and they sound very bored without your voice.”

I shot upright, gasping. “Maya!”

She was already dancing backward across the room, laughing with that grin she'd had since she was five, the one that meant she knew exactly what she was doing and felt absolutely zero regret about it.

“It's six in the morning,” I said, wiping my face.

“Exactly the point. You're already late in your head.” She pointed at me. "Get up. I made some pancakes for ya.”

“You made pancakes?”

“Yhhh... I tried making them. You know I'm not that good with pancakes.” She shrugged. “But the coffee is perfect, I promise.”

I dragged myself out of bed, honestly still half asleep and dizzy.

She spent the next ten minutes trying to force me into a red dress while I stood there with my towel wrapped around me, telling her absolutely not. It was too tight, too flashy, and I was neither of those things.

“You're twenty-four, El. Not eighty.” She held it up against me like that would somehow change my mind. “You dress like a very boring spy.”

“Nobody gives extra work to someone they barely even notice,” I said, pulling my charcoal blazer off the hanger.

She laughed and shoved a piece of burnt pancake into her mouth. “Fine. Suit ya self.Stay boring then.”

“Love you, El!” she called as I grabbed my bag. “Don't let the numbers bite!”

I didn't answer her. I just smiled and walked out.

At the time, I thought the worst thing waiting for me that day was another spreadsheet until it happened.

****

Ravenscar Group headquarters sat in the middle of Manhattan like a threat, with its sixty floors of glass and steel that caught the morning sun and threw it back in your face.

I had worked there for two years.I didn't even associate myself with anyone. I swiped my badge, grabbed my coffee, and disappeared into my screen. That was the plan… to stay quiet,useful and invisible.

That strategy worked for everyone except Killian Ravenscar.

At least once a week, his face ended up on some magazine cover in the lobby, a billionaire, philanthropist, and corporate genius.

The kind of man who existed in a different universe from people like me.

I had never spoken to him.

I wasn't important enough to.

My colleagues Sarah and Dave were already deep into a conversation about their weekend when I sat down, so I smiled at the right moments and opened my spreadsheets. The quarterly asset allocation report had been eating my life for three weeks, and I was almost done.

Almost. Just a little more and I would be done.

By six that evening the floor was mostly empty and Dave stopped by my desk on his way out.

“Staying late again, Vance?”

“Thirty more minutes,” I said without looking up. “I want to be done with this report before morning. It's eating me up.”

“Don't let the ghosts get you.”

“Even if a ghost finishes this report for me, honestly,I’ll thank it.”

The lights dimmed one section at a time as people headed home. By eight, the only sounds left were the vending machine humming down the hall and the tapping of my keyboard.

I finished the last column, leaned back in my chair, and let out a long breath.

“Ohhh, thank God.”

I rubbed my eyes, reached for my coffee, then remembered I'd finished it hours ago.

I moved to save the report to the main server.

That's when something strange caught my eye.

A folder sitting inside the finance directory that had no business being there. No department name. No date. No file code.

Just two words where a proper file name should have been.

*Project Hades.* What the heck is this? Every file in the Ravenscar system had a code,but this one had nothing, which showed that someone had either put it there recently or moved it from somewhere it was never supposed to leave.

I should have just flagged it to IT and just gone home.

But I knew better now. Honestly, I really did.

So I double clicked it. Ahh, God help!!!

The screen filled and it wasn't tax forms or budget projections. It was maps, private shipping ports across three continents. The names of four sitting senators with dollar amounts right beside each one and an expense ledger that made my stomach drop straight to the floor.

This wasn't a business file, this was a record of something that got people killed. I scrolled down slowly, barely breathing, and there at the bottom of every single page was the same digital signature.

Killian Ravenscar. My boss. The man I had never once spoken to directly. The same man whose face had been on the cover of Forbes just two months ago smiling about some charity foundation he ran. That man.

He wasn't just a billionaire.

He was running a criminal empire.

I kept staring at the screen, convinced there had to be some explanation I wasn't seeing.

Maybe it was fake. Or some weird internal test. Or maybe I'd finally lost my mind after spending three straight weeks buried in reports and spreadsheets.

Honestly, I wanted any explanation except the obvious one.

My hand moved toward the mouse. I should have just let it go, just close the file and head home and even forget I had ever opened it in the first place.

Then my eyes caught another line buried in the ledger.

*CLEAN-UP COMPLETE.*

*CASUALTIES: 14.*

My stomach dropped.

I might not know much about criminal empires, but I knew enough to understand that nobody described fourteen dead people as a business expense.

“What the f^ck,” I whispered.

My hands were moving before my brain caught up. I pulled the USB drive from my bag and shoved it into the port.

*Copying... 10%... 25%... 35%*

The progress bar crawled.

Seriously... why was this thing taking forever?

I kept looking over my shoulder at the dark, empty office, at the shadows sitting between the desks, at the hallway I suddenly couldn't see the end of.

*50%... 72%...*

"Come on," I breathed.

*99%... 100%.*

I yanked the drive out and stood up. My legs were already shaking, and my bag strap slipped twice before I finally got it over my shoulder.

I just needed to reach the elevator. Get to the street and get somewhere loud, bright, and full of people.

I turned toward the exit.

Then all the lights in the building went off at once. The computers went dark. The servers stopped humming. The green glow of the exit signs flickered once, then disappeared. Somewhere behind me, the heavy glass security doors let out a loud metallic clack as the locks engaged.

Sealed.

I stood completely still in the dark, my heart slamming against my ribs.

Then I heard slow footsteps coming from the direction of the executive elevators. The footsteps of someone who already knew exactly where I was.

I backed up until my hip hit the edge of my desk.

A red light blinked on the wall above me. A camera I had never once noticed in two years of sitting at that desk. Its lens tilted down slowly until it was pointed directly at me, glowing like a small angry eye in all that dark.

The footsteps stopped outside the glass doors.

Then a voice came through the darkness. Low and calm, like a man who had never once in his life been afraid of anything.

“Miss Vance.”

Sh*t... he knew my name.

Which was a ridiculous thing to focus on considering I was trapped in a dark office building and possibly about to die.

But somehow hearing him say it made everything feel worse.

Like this wasn't a random mistake.

Like this had always been about me.

“Don't run. You're going nowhere,” Killian Ravenscar said softly.

And God help me...He was right.

There was really nowhere left to go.

Elena's POV

I have made exactly one terrible decision in my entire adult life.

I made it standing thirty floors above Manhattan with a USB drive in my pocket and Killian Ravenscar blocking the only way out.

Chai, I wish I could say I didn't see it coming.

****

The doors slid open with a smooth, quiet hiss.

For a second nothing happened, and then shadows moved.

Three people stepped out of the darkness.

Two of them first, black tactical gear, weapons low, flashlights cutting thin lines through the office like they already owned the place.

And then the third one followed.

He didn't rush, like he didn't even need the lights to see me.

Killian Ravenscar.

He wasn't wearing a suit or a tie, no Forbes cover smile, just dark trousers, a chest covered in hard muscle and one long jagged scar running down his