Sebastian Blake – First Person
The car door shuts behind us like a vault.
Silence.
She's curled into the leather seat like she wants to disappear. Knees to chest, eyes fixed on her lap, shivering like it's the dead of winter and not a climate-controlled Maybach. The chain's gone, but her arms still press against her ribs like she's waiting to be yanked again.
Pathetic.
Not her.
What they did to her.
I shrug off my jacket and drape it over her shoulders.
She jumps.
Then freezes.
Like she's trying to decide whether to flinch or say thank you or beg not to be hit. She ends up doing none of the above. Just blinks up at me from under a curtain of black hair, dazed, confused. Her lower lip is split in the middle like someone punched her for speaking.
Her voice is hoarse. "Why… why did you…"
"Put the jacket on," I interrupt, voice low. Final. "You're freezing."
She hesitates.
Then obeys.
It swallows her frame like armor. Rich black wool. Tailored. Mine. But she clutches it like it's a shield, like something in her finally lets go. She exhales a breath she's been holding for years.
I sit back.
And I look.
At the bruises.
At the marks on her thighs.
At the raw skin on her wrists where the metal dug in.
There's a welt on her cheekbone that's starting to purple. Her hair's tangled, matted, almost impossible to comb through without scissors.
And yet—
She's beautiful.
Not in the way men say when they want something.
Not in the way magazines fake with lighting and filters.
She's beautiful because she's alive when she should be dead. Because she sat through hell and still smiled at me in that damn café. Because she's broken and still warm.
I want to burn whoever touched her.
My jaw tightens.
I grab my phone and speak without looking away from her.
"Luca."
"Yes, boss."
"I want names."
He pauses. "Names?"
"The stepfather. The handlers. Every man who laid a finger on her. Every bastard who looked at her in that auction with a price tag in their eyes. I want names. And I want them tonight."
"Consider it done."
I hang up.
She stares at me. Swallowed by my jacket. Half-lucid. Half-silent.
"You're safe," I say.
Her mouth opens like she wants to argue. Like she doesn't believe me.
"You're safe," I repeat, dead serious. "With me."
She blinks fast, and one silent tear slips down her cheek.
I don't touch her.
Not yet.
Not until she learns to breathe again.
---
Ray Lin –
I keep expecting someone to yell at me.
To hit me.
To drag me back.
But no one does.
The car is so quiet I can hear my own breathing. It's too soft. Too clean. Like I'm not supposed to exist here. Like this leather seat is allergic to someone like me.
I bury my face in the jacket.
His jacket.
It smells like cedarwood and something colder. Expensive. Not cheap cologne or cigarettes. Not sweat or beer or blood.
It doesn't smell like fear.
I inhale deeper.
I shouldn't.
I know I shouldn't.
But it makes my hands stop shaking for a second.
My skin itches with old bruises and dried blood. My dress—or what's left of it—scratches against my thighs. I feel disgusting. Like I'm infecting this perfect, silent space just by breathing in it.
But when I glance sideways…
He's watching me.
Not like them.
Not like I'm for sale.
Like I'm something he doesn't quite understand, but wants to.
His eyes are hard, unreadable. The kind of eyes people flinch from. The kind of man people don't speak to unless spoken to. But when he looks at me, I don't feel small. I feel… seen.
"Why did you buy me?" I whisper.
He doesn't blink. "Because they were going to."
That's it. No poetry. No softness. Just fact.
And still… my throat tightens.
"You knew I was—"
"I didn't," he cuts in. "I saw you once. Laughing. You dropped your drink."
The café.
He remembers.
"I thought you were loud," he mutters.
"I was," I say, and a small laugh escapes. It's cracked. Ugly. But real.
He turns away like he doesn't know what to do with the sound. Like it unsettles him more than the silence did.
The car stops.
A tall building looms outside the window. Modern, towering, terrifying.
"I don't have to go back?" I ask, voice barely there.
His head turns toward me slowly.
"You're not going anywhere but up."
Up.
He means the penthouse, I think.
But something in me wants to believe he means something else too.
Something safer.
Something warmer.
I don't move when he steps out of the car. I can't. My legs won't work.
So he circles around, opens the door, and holds out his hand.
I stare at it.
No one's ever offered me a hand without expecting to be paid for it.
"I can walk," I whisper, ashamed.
"I know you can," he replies. "But I'm not making you."
I take it.
And for the first time in my life, my fingers don't feel small in someone else's palm.
They feel held.