Page 9 of Gilded Shackles
Silver hair swept back from a face that has no interest in being kind. A close-cropped beard, dark and silver-threaded, framing a jaw that could end careers. Forties, easy, but the kind of forties that sharpened rather than softened. He looks like the sort of man your mother warns you about, which is ironic, since my mother never warned me about anything except leaving.
His eyes find mine across the crowd. Blue. Even in this haze, unmistakably blue — the same blue that looked straight into mine on that landing and made my lungs forget their entire job.
They pin me in place again, and this time the tug in my chest isn't strange or unfamiliar. It's recognition, sharp and electric, like being struck by the same lightning twice.
God. How do men like this exist? Was there a secret department handing out bone structure, and I missed the memo?
He looks away, then looks back. Slow. Deliberate. Like he's giving me a choice to keep staring.
I do. Obviously. And that's my first mistake.
I should walk over. Say something.Hey, remember me? The barefoot girl with the shoe?But that would mean explaining the tower, the cage, the mother who keeps me prisoner thirty-five floors up. Tonight I'm not that girl. Tonight I'm no one's daughter and no one's captive.
I turn back to the dance floor and let the music claim me. My hips find the beat easily; I've practiced alone for years, perfecting moves I never thought I'd get to use outside my mirror. Lights flicker. Laughter spills. A group of girls cheer near the DJ booth. For once, I'm not Elle the locked-away daughter. I'm just a body in motion.
Men notice. They always do when you stop trying to hide. One slides in behind me, tentative hand at my hip. Another grins as we spin. It's chaos, but for the first time in my life, chaos feels like oxygen.
But even as I move, a small voice inside me whispers that this isn't me. I was raised to be composed, proper, polished. My mother trained me to be seen only through tinted glass, not under the harsh fluorescence of a nightclub.
Yet here I am. Sweating, laughing, and moving like I was born for this.
It's terrifying how easy it is to lose the version of yourself you've been told to be. How quickly she burns away when the bass hits just right.
I close my eyes and let the music drown out the guilt, the fear, the endlesswhat would Mother say.Because tonight isn't about her. It's not about duty or image or the cage I've spent twenty-six years in. Tonight is about me.
Just me.
I open my eyes, and an instinct I can't name tugs me to look for him again. The man against the wall.
He's still right there. Watching me. Not smiling. Not judging. Just... watching. Every nerve in my body stands at attention. The air feels heavier, thicker, and my skin prickles. I look away, and when I look back, he's still there.
My pulse becomes its own percussion track.
Someone brushes my shoulder. A guy in a too-tight shirt leans in. "You alone, sweetheart?"
He looks too drunk, and a little like a creep.
"Meeting a friend," I say, laughing. The drink helps with the confidence. The buzz of being seen helps most of all.
"What friend?" he leers, inching closer.
"An old friend," I frown.
But he doesn't stop, grabbing my wrist, trying to get me to dance. I pull away, but he just circles like a shark.
I'm uncomfortable as hell, and suddenly I wonder if this is what Mother meant when she said the world was dangerous.
But just then, I see him walking right toward us. The man from the stairs.
He puts himself between me and the drunk without a word. Doesn't shove, doesn't shout. Just stands there, and the creep takes one look at his face and vanishes into the crowd like he was never there at all.
I exhale with relief and look up into eyes that are somehow worse up close. That blue. Not warm, not kind. Just steady. The kind of eyes that look at you like they've already decided something about you and haven't bothered to share what.
Then his scent wraps around me. The same scent that clung to the stairwell air long after he'd vanished down those steps. Up close it's devastating — it cuts through the noise and lands somewhere private, somewhere that makes my pulse do things my brain hasn't approved.
“Are you following me? Did she already hire you?”
His lips quirk. “I was here before you.”
