Chapter 4 The Blood Pact

The ruby necklace lay where I'd thrown it, a crimson serpent coiled on the marble floor, glinting in the half-light like it hadn't just tried to strangle me hours ago. I hadn't moved since Lucien left. I hadn't cried. I didn't even try to run-because I knew better now. You don't escape the devil. You endure him. You adapt. Or you disappear.

I couldn't sleep. Not with my pulse still echoing with the echo of his voice, the feel of his breath against my skin, the gravity of the way he looked at me before he walked out. Lucien hadn't touched me, not really. But somehow he had stripped something away from me in that hallway. I felt raw. Seen. Exposed.

By the time the first light of dawn bled into the windows, the silence in the house had thickened into something suffocating. The villa, usually humming with the quiet movements of guards or distant staff, felt hollow-like it, too, was holding its breath.

I slipped out of bed and crossed the cold marble floor barefoot, the silk robe brushing my legs like water. I didn't know where I was going at first. My body moved before my thoughts caught up. Down the hallway. Past the wings I was allowed to roam. Past the closed doors of my gilded prison. Toward the west wing. The one place he told me never to go.

Lucien's study.

The door wasn't locked.

It wasn't even fully closed.

The light was on. Dim. Golden. As if it, too, had secrets to whisper.

He stood at the window, shirtless, the morning casting shadows over the ridges of scars carved into his back. They weren't small. They weren't clean. These weren't accidents or battlefield stories. They were reminders. Warnings. Memories someone had tried to carve out of him and failed. His body was a cathedral of pain, and each mark a sermon.

He didn't turn. "You disobeyed me."

I didn't expect a greeting. Not from him. Not after last night. But something about the quiet way he said it-without rage, without accusation-made it worse.

"I know," I said.

"You went off on your own. You broke the chain. You let Viktor get close."

I moved deeper into the room. "He followed me. I wasn't-"

"You weren't careful." His voice sharpened like glass under pressure. "And you threw away the necklace I gave you. Publicly."

"I'm not your property."

He turned then.

And something in his eyes said, Not yet.

I braced myself for the explosion. But it never came. Lucien crossed the room, slow and measured, like the predator he was. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't touch me. Instead, he moved past me and pulled open a drawer in his desk. From it, he drew a small black box.

He set it on the desk, opened it, and held it out.

Inside was a blade.

Slender. Silver. Ornate. Engraved with something ancient-looking in Latin across the hilt.

"What is this?" I asked.

His eyes didn't leave mine. "A vow."

I stared at the blade. "You want to punish me?"

He tilted his head slightly, amused by the simplicity of the question. "No. I want a promise."

I laughed. Quiet. Bitter. "Your word isn't good enough, so you want blood now?"

He stepped closer. "Words are wind, Ava. But blood... blood remembers."

He took my hand and turned it palm-up, placing the blade against my skin. "Cut me," he said. "Then I'll cut you. And we press our palms together. That's the vow."

I stared at him. "You're serious."

He nodded once. "The mafia has contracts. The Bratva has scars. The Vatican has silence. But me? I want blood. If you stay in this house, if you wear my name, even in public... then I need to know you've committed."

"To what?"

His gaze darkened. "To surviving me."

There it was again. That quiet truth between his threats. That he didn't expect love. He didn't expect affection. He expected survival. That was the only kind of loyalty he understood.

I should've refused. I should've walked out. But instead I took the blade, and before I could stop myself, I sliced across his palm.

He didn't flinch.

His blood bloomed crimson.

He took the knife from me-careful, like I was a relic, not a girl-and cut my palm next. I gasped, not from the pain, but from the heat of it. The shock. Then he took my hand, pressed our wounds together, and held them there.

His hand was warm. Strong. My blood mingled with his, sticky and bright.

"This is our pact," he said low against my skin. "You don't run. You don't betray. And you don't die without taking at least one of them with you."

I stared at him, and I swear I felt something shift. Not in the air.

In me.

Like something old and buried cracked open.

He stepped back and poured us both a glass of whiskey. I took mine without a word. We drank in silence, the room filled only with the sound of our breathing and the whisper of blood drying between our fingers.

And then he left.

Without another word.

The days after the blood pact passed strangely.

No more guards posted outside my door.

No more locked rooms.

But I knew it wasn't freedom. It was a test. A longer leash meant more ways to hang yourself.

Lucien didn't avoid me, but he didn't seek me out either. When we passed in the halls, he would nod or brush past, always in control, always watching. His presence was like gravity-inescapable even when he wasn't touching you.

I started wandering the estate. Gardens, pools, art galleries hidden behind vault-like doors. The walls were filled with paintings worth more than my father's fortune, many of them stolen from museums or warlords or ghosts.

And yet, no matter how far I walked, no matter how quiet the villa seemed, I always felt it.

Eyes.

His eyes.

Whether from security cameras, guards, or Lucien himself, I never stopped being watched.

Three nights after the pact, I heard music.

A piano.

Soft. Slow. Melancholy.

The kind of music that doesn't come from practice-it comes from pain.

I followed the sound like it was pulling me, barefoot again, wearing a silk robe that clung like moonlight.

Lucien sat in the center of the library, his back to me, playing the piano like he was trying to bleed memories into the keys. I didn't speak at first. I just stood in the doorway and listened.

"You're not as heartless as you pretend," I finally said.

He didn't stop playing.

"Don't mistake grief for softness," he replied.

I walked slowly into the room. "Who was it?"

He paused, fingers hovering over the keys. "The only person I ever failed to protect."

"Someone you loved?"

Lucien looked up at me then. And in that moment, he didn't look like a monster or a killer or a god.

He looked like a man.

"I don't love," he said simply. "I consume."

He stood. Crossed the room to pour himself a drink, and after a pause, poured one for me too.

We stood across from each other, in a library full of knowledge, surrounded by books neither of us needed to read to understand one another.

"I meant what I said," he murmured.

"What part?"

"That you're mine now."

I took the glass. "I didn't sign a contract."

"No," he said. "You signed in blood."

Later that night, I sat in front of the mirror in my room, unwrapping the bandage on my palm. The wound had scabbed over, but it still ached when I moved it. I traced it with a finger. A part of me expected the cut to vanish. But it didn't.

It remained.

Just like his promise.

Or his threat.

Or both.

By the end of the week, the pact wasn't the only thing bleeding.

A shipment was ambushed.

One of Lucien's men was found with his tongue cut out.

And a name scrawled on the floor in blood: Ava.

That was the first time I saw him lose control.

He stormed into the hallway, half-dressed, shouting orders in Italian. His men scrambled like ants under a magnifying glass. And when his eyes met mine-rage, raw and trembling-I thought he might kill someone just for looking at me wrong.

"Stay in your room," he ordered.

I didn't ask questions. I didn't argue.

I obeyed.

Not because I was afraid of him.

But because for the first time, I was afraid of what he would do to anyone who hurt me.

That night, he returned.

His clothes stained.

His hands red.

He didn't knock.

He entered like he owned the oxygen I breathed.

"I took care of it," he said. His voice was low. Flat.

"What happened?"

"They sent a message."

"And?"

He crossed to me.

Lifted my hand.

Pressed a kiss to the scar in my palm.

"I sent one back."