Chapter 15 · The Punitive Vow

The vault smelled like gun oil and old blood.

I knew which brown stain on the concrete was the blood. Lucian wanted me to know.

"Say it again," he said.

He had both my wrists in one hand, pinned over my head against a steel weapons rack. Something long and cold dug into my shoulder blade. The silk robe had slid off one shoulder. His free hand was still where it had landed upstairs, high on my bare thigh, thumb dragging slow.

"Go to hell," I said.

"I live there. Try again."

On the steel table behind him lay two forged passports. Mine. Mia's. Boston to Zurich, seven-forty a.m. I'd spent eleven nights memorizing guard rotations to build that route. He'd folded it up like a napkin in under an hour.

"Who sold me out?" I asked.

"Nobody." His mouth brushed my jaw. "You used the same bank code twice. Best memory on the East Coast, and you got lazy." A pause. "Or you wanted to get caught."

That landed worse than the hand did.

I jerked against his grip. He didn't budge. Eight inches of heat and black shirt, and not a single breath out of place.