The next morning, I woke up to sunlight spilling through the curtains Lucas had drawn the night before. The silence in the room was louder than any noise—thick, uneasy. The kind of quiet that wraps around you like chains.

I’d barely slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his face—calm, controlled, terrifyingly beautiful. And that last thing he’d said...

“She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s the only leverage I have left.”

Leverage.

That word coiled around my ribs like a ...