Protecting her was supposed to be a matter of pride and possession. He hadn't accounted for the sheer, soul-crushing terror of almost failing.
The silent car ride back to the penthouse was a pressure cooker of unspoken accusations. Alistair's fury was a physical presence, radiating from the driver's seat in waves of cold heat. He hadn't said a word about the phone, about Victoria, but the set of his jaw was a promise of a reckoning. Elara stared out the window at the blur of city lights, the burner phone feeling like a lead weight in her clutch, a symbol of a choice suspended.
Back in the penthouse, he finally spoke, his voice clipped and brittle. "The phone."
She handed it over without a word. He took it, his fingers brushing against hers, the contact sending a jolt through both of them. He didn't look at it, just slipped it into his pocket, his eyes never leaving her face.
"Victoria Sterling is a parasite," he stated, the words like chips of ice. "She feeds on chaos and weakness. Offering you an escape is her way of creating both. If you had taken it, you would have been dead within 48 hours. Either by Sable's hand, or by hers once she had what she wanted."
He turned and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, staring out at the glittering, indifferent city. His broad shoulders were rigid with tension. "You will not speak to her again. You will not be alone with her. Is that understood?"
It was an order, delivered with the cold authority of a king. But beneath it, she heard something else. Something that had been absent in the Hamptons. A raw, frayed edge of fear.
Later that night, the alarm came.
It was a soft, insistent chime from the security panel in the living room, followed by a series of red lights flashing on a digital map of the building. A breach alert. A perimeter sensor on the service entrance two floors below had been tripped.
Alistair moved with a controlled frenzy that was more terrifying than any outburst. In seconds, he was on his feet, a sleek, black tablet in his hand, his eyes scanning the data. He barked commands into his phone to Markus, his voice low and lethal. "Level 42, east service corridor. Scramble the team. Lock down this floor. Now."
Elara stood frozen in the doorway of her room, her heart in her throat. She watched as he moved through the penthouse, not like a billionaire, but like a soldier. He checked the locks on the windows, his movements efficient and precise, his entire being focused on the threat. The polished CEO was gone, replaced by a man operating on pure, primal instinct.
He finished his sweep and came to stand before her in the dimly lit hallway. His chest was rising and falling rapidly, his eyes wild in the shadows. The fear she had sensed earlier was now a live wire in the air between them.
"Get in your room. Lock the door. Don't come out for anyone but me," he commanded, his voice rough.
But she didn't move. She just stood there, watching him. Watching the man who had orchestrated her ruin now standing as her sole protector, his composure shattered by the mere possibility of a threat to her. The animosity between them, so solid and real just hours before, seemed to evaporate in the face of this shared, immediate danger.
He saw her hesitation, and a fresh wave of frustration crossed his face. "Elara, for God's sake — "
He was cut off as his phone buzzed. Markus. He listened for a moment, his body slowly uncoiling from its combat-ready stance. "A false alarm," he relayed, his voice flat. "A malfunction in the sensor. A technician logged in for maintenance and triggered it."
The tension didn't leave his body; it simply morphed from alert to a shaky, post-adrenaline crash. He ran a hand over his face, the gesture one of profound weariness. The threat was gone, but the shadow it cast remained.
He looked at her then, really looked at her, standing there in her silk pajamas, her eyes wide. The fury was gone from his gaze, replaced by a stark, unvarnished vulnerability. The fortress walls were down.
Without a word, she closed the distance between them. She didn't hug him. She simply walked into his space and laid her head against his chest, her ear pressed over the frantic, hammering rhythm of his heart.
He went perfectly still. For one eternal second, he didn't breathe. Then, his arms came around her, not in a possessive grip, but in a desperate, almost clumsy embrace. He buried his face in her hair, his entire body trembling with the force of the adrenaline and fear he was finally releasing. He held her as if she were the only solid thing in a world that was trying to tear them both apart.
In the silent, secure penthouse, with the ghost of a threat still lingering in the air, they stood locked together, two shattered pieces finding a temporary, terrifying hole in the eye of the storm.