Chapter 4

Stella was already in the doorway.

Her arms opened wide and folded around Sophia in a hug that felt like being gripped by something with too many fingers.

"I'm so sorry," Stella breathed. "I keep hurting you. I don't mean to. I really don't." She pulled back just far enough to look at Sophia's face, eyes bright with tears. "Tell me what to do. Tell me how to make it right."

Through the open door: Lucian, and eight members of his security team, arranged in a quiet line.

No way out.

Sophia gave one small nod.

Stella released her. In the brief moment of contact, her fingers had pressed hard enough to leave marks. Bruises bloomed across pale skin, visible even from where Lucian stood.

"Does it hurt?" he asked.

He sent for ointment. Sat beside her on the edge of the bed and applied it to the broken skin of her forearm—touch careful, face unreadable.

"Where is my assistant?" Sophia asked.

His hands stopped.

"I let him go. He wasn't right for the role."

"Don't fire my staff without asking me."

He set down the ointment and looked at her the way he always looked at her when she pushed back—from slightly above, with the coldness of someone who has never had to recalibrate.

"Everything you have came from me." He pulled her close. "Have you fallen in love with that assistant?"

Before she could answer, the hospital began to shake.

A low tremor—something enormous clearing its throat underground. Then the walls moved. Windows rattled. Someone in the corridor screamed: "Landslide—get out—the hillside is going—"

Sophia dropped into a crouch. Slabs of earth cracked loose and thundered down. One hit the exterior wall and blew it open like paper.

Lucian reached for her.

Then Stella's voice cut through—high and terrified, from the middle of the corridor, sitting directly beneath a massive crystal chandelier swinging in wide, sickening arcs.

Lucian's hands stopped.

He looked at Stella. He looked at Sophia.

"Sophia—"

She pushed him.

Not hard. Not angrily. One firm, deliberate push toward Stella.

"She needs you."

She watched him run. Watched him scoop Stella up. Watched him turn—just once—to look back at Sophia, his face stripped of everything.

That was when the ceiling came down.

The rubble hit in sections. First the plaster, then the support beams, then the weight of everything above. Sophia had no time to move, no direction to move in. She covered her head and waited.

The last thing she saw before the darkness took her was Lucian Drake fighting back through the rubble toward her, his mouth forming her name over and over in the roar:

"Sophia—"

Then: nothing.