The dining room was a hollow cavern of dark oak and candlelight. Silas sat at the head, a king in a suit, while I was positioned at the opposite end of a table long enough to host a funeral. The distance was deliberate a physical manifestation of the gap between us, yet the diamond at my throat felt like a live wire connecting us through the air.
I didn't touch the wine. I didn't touch the silver. I watched him.
"You're vibrating, Marlowe," Silas said, his fork clicking softly against the porcelain. He didn't look up, but his focus was absolute. "It's a low-frequency hum. Like a machine that's about to overheat. Is it the necklace, or the realization that the light in the woods wasn't a rescue party?"
My heart skipped. He had seen it too. Of course he had. "It was a car on the service road. Nothing more."
"It was a 2024 Sedan with a jammed transponder," he corrected, finally meeting my gaze. His eyes were flat, drained of any warmth. "Halloway's associates are persistent, I'll give them that. They think because I snapped your card, I've destroyed the only copy of the Pier 90 ledger."
I froze. The SD card in my bra felt like it was burning through the fabric. He thought he had destroyed the evidence in the Cathedral. He didn't know I had swapped the cards in the dark.
"Is there another copy, Silas?" I asked, my voice a whisper of silk and steel.
"There is always a backup," he said, standing up. He walked the length of the table, his shadow stretching across the white linen like a shroud. He stopped behind my chair, his hands resting on the back of it. I could feel the heat of him, the sheer gravity of his presence. "But they aren't looking for a disk anymore. They're looking for the witness who can verify the signatures."
He leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. "They want to turn you into a martyr, Marlowe. They don't want to save you. They want to use your corpse to bury me."
"And what do you want?" I turned my head, my nose inches from his.
"I want to see if you're smart enough to choose the monster who feeds you over the heroes who would bleed you dry," he whispered.
He reached around, his fingers tracing the line of the diamond leash. He didn't pull, but the threat was there. He wasn't just my captor anymore. He was the only thing standing between me and a "rescue" that ended in a shallow grave.
"The car in the woods belongs to a man named Elias Reed," Silas continued, his voice dropping to a lethal purr. "He's the one who paid for Arthur's betrayal. He's coming for this house tonight, Marlowe. Not for the ledger. For you."
A heavy thud echoed from the foyer and the sound of a breach.
Silas didn't flinch. He simply reached into his waistband and pulled out a sleek, black handgun. He offered it to me, handle first.
"Prove me right," he said, his eyes burning with a dark, expectant hunger. "Show me you aren't just a ghost. Show me you're a survivor."
The alarms began to scream, a high-pitched wail that tore through the silence of the estate. The game had just turned into a war.