Chapter 4 - The Man Who Wore a Badge
By sunrise, Elena’s apartment looked like a storm had passed through it.
The kitchen window was cracked.
The bedroom drawers had been emptied onto the floor.
Her front door bore fresh marks near the lock.
Lucian lay on her couch, pale but conscious, with clean bandages around his abdomen and shoulder. Elena had made him drink water, taken his temperature twice, and threatened to sedate him with the leftover medication from her trauma kit if he tried to stand.
He had not tried again.
Mostly because he could not.
Her prepaid phone rang.
Elena stared at it.
No one knew that number.
She answered without speaking.
“Hello, Elena.”
Garrett Hale’s voice slid through the phone like poison.
Her fingers went numb.
“You sound surprised,” he said. “You should have known I would find you eventually.”
Elena walked toward the kitchen, away from Lucian.
“You need to stop calling me.”
“You changed your hair. Your name. Your city. Very dramatic.” Garrett sounded amused. “But you always forget one thing.”
“What?”
“You are predictable when you are scared.”
Elena’s throat tightened.
“What do you want?”
“I want to see you.”
“No.”
“You are hiding someone.”
She looked toward Lucian.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t insult me, Elena. I know you were at Harbor Mercy last night. I know two men were brought in after the convoy attack. One died. One vanished.”
Lucian’s eyes opened.
He was listening.
Garrett continued, “You always did have a hero complex. You see someone hurt, and you think you can fix them.”
“You’re not a hero,” Elena said.
A pause.
Then Garrett’s voice turned cold.
“You don’t get to talk to me like that.”
She closed her eyes.
For years, that sentence had been enough to make her apologize.
Enough to make her smaller.
Not this time.
“You are not coming near me,” she said.
“Oh, I am. And when I do, you will tell me where Lucian Moretti is.”
Elena hung up.
The phone rang again.
She turned it off.
When she faced Lucian, he was sitting up despite every instruction she had given him.
“You heard that?”
“Yes.”
“He is not your problem.”
“He became my problem when he sent men into your home.”
“He’s my problem.”
Lucian looked at her with a quiet intensity.
“Elena, Garrett Hale is working with Vittorio Moretti. Vittorio wants me dead because I refused to approve a deal involving human trafficking through our shipping routes.”
Her expression changed.
“You refused?”
“Yes.”
“You’re telling me you’re the moral mafia boss?”
“No.” Lucian’s voice was flat. “I am telling you I was born into a violent family, spent too many years pretending I could survive it without becoming part of it, and finally chose a line I would not cross.”
Elena looked at him for a long moment.
“And your uncle decided to kill you.”
“My uncle decided to make an example of me.”
“What does Garrett get out of this?”
“Money. Protection. Access to people who can make complaints against him disappear.”
Elena laughed once, without humor.
“Of course.”
Lucian reached for his phone.
“We need to leave.”
“No.”
“Elena—”
“You cannot walk two blocks without reopening your wounds.”
“I have people.”
“And one of them might be the traitor your Marco warned you about.”
Lucian stopped.
She had a point.
He hated that.
“Elena,” he said slowly, “your ex knows where you live.”
“I know.”
“He will come back.”
“I know.”
“We need somewhere safer.”
She looked around the apartment.
Every instinct told her not to trust another man who claimed he could protect her.
But Lucian had never ordered her to stay.
Never tried to take the gun from her hands.
Never treated her fear like inconvenience.
Instead, he had asked.
That mattered.
“Mrs. Alvarez has a cousin who owns a closed motel outside the city,” Elena said. “It’s near the old lake road. Nobody goes there this time of year.”
Lucian considered it.
“Can you get us there?”
“I have a car.”
“You have a car?”
“I have a lot of things I don’t tell strangers.”
For the first time, Lucian smiled fully.
It changed his entire face.
Then Elena’s apartment buzzer rang.
Both of them froze.
The intercom crackled.
“Miss Voss?” said the landlord’s voice. “There’s a detective downstairs asking for you.”
Garrett had arrived.
Lucian reached for his gun.
Elena grabbed her keys.
“Not through the front,” she said.
She helped Lucian toward the kitchen window.
Outside, the rain had stopped, but the fire escape was slick and dangerous.
Below them, a black sedan pulled up near the curb.
Garrett stepped out.
He looked exactly as Elena remembered.
Clean-cut. Calm. Handsome enough that strangers trusted him instantly.
He glanced up toward her building.
And smiled.
Elena’s body remembered every reason she had fled.
But then Lucian leaned close, his voice low.
“You are not alone anymore.”
May you like
For the first time, Elena believed him.
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