The warehouse squats at the edge of the city like a wound that never healed—rusted metal, broken windows, silence too deliberate to be safe. Elias slips inside without a sound, breath steady, pulse viciously calm. Every clue had pointed here. Every sleepless night had whispered this place back to him.

He smells blood before he sees her.

In the far back, hidden behind stacked crates and hanging plastic sheets, there’s a reinforced cell. And inside—

Her.

She’s sitting on the cold floor, wrists bound above her head, ankles tied tight. A gag is forced between her lips. Her long hair falls in heavy waves down her back, dark at the crown and fading into soft ash-brown toward the ends, tangled but unmistakably hers. Even like this, bruised and restrained, she’s devastatingly beautiful. Pale skin marked with faint cuts along her arms, yellowing bruises blooming at her wrists and collarbone. Nothing fatal. Nothing that couldn’t heal.

Her eyes lift when she hears him.

Blue. Sharp. Alive.

Elias’s chest caves in.

He’s at the cell in seconds. One strike—metal screams, the lock snaps. He rips the door open, drops to his knees in front of her like the world has narrowed to this single point. His hands are careful despite the violence in them as he unties her, then pulls the gag free.

She sucks in air, eyes wide—not with relief, but fear.

“Elias—no,” she whispers urgently, voice rough but steady. “You have to go. Now.”

His hands freeze.

“This is a trap,” she says, words tumbling over each other. “He let you find me. He wants you here. Please—just leave. Don’t do this for me.”

Elias cups her face, thumb brushing gently under her eye, as if checking she’s real. His voice is low, fractured. “I didn’t survive all of this to walk away.”

Her gaze softens—just for a moment. Pain, affection, regret, all colliding in her eyes.

“I know,” she says quietly. “That’s why he chose me.”

Outside the cell, something metal shifts.

Elias straightens slowly, placing himself between her and the dark.

“Then he made one mistake,” he murmurs coldly. “He assumed I still care about myself.”