THE TETHER AND THE BLADE
Lucien's POV:
There's a particular quiet that only comes after disappointment.
Not rage. Not heartbreak.
Just quiet.
That hollow, echoing kind that reminds you how much you've gambled — and how much you're still willing to lose.
Celeste returned from the retreat last night. I knew the moment the car crossed into the city. Adrien had someone posted near the lodge. No cameras. No recordings. Just eyes. Eyes trained only on her.
He said she didn't smile all weekend.
Didn't laugh. Didn't kiss her husband in public. Barely touched him at all.
But she played her part.
Elegant. Controlled. Tired.
A woman performing the act of devotion with a noose of obligation tightening slowly around her throat.
Exactly what I expected.
Exactly what she needed to remember.
---
I sit at my desk long after midnight, the lights of the skyline stretching out beyond the glass like a kingdom I no longer care about.
The dossier Adrien gave me weeks ago lies open again. Damien Morano. The golden boy in tailored suits and empty promises. His spreadsheets are pristine, but the men behind his clients aren't.
I trace my finger along a wire transfer from a shell corporation to a subsidiary in Zurich. Hidden in plain sight. A surgeon's cut instead of a brute's blow.
Damien doesn't know he's a pawn in a blood game. But that won't save him.
Because I'm no longer playing to win.
I'm playing to unmake.
And Celeste… she's the reason.
Not because I want to possess her — though I do.
Not because I crave her skin beneath my hands — though I do.
But because I've never seen someone build such a beautiful prison for herself… and then ask, with a voice trembling but brave, if she could learn how to leave it.
She hasn't said it in words. Not yet.
But I've seen it in her eyes.
The way she looked out over the mountains during that retreat, hands folded in her lap like she didn't know what to do with them unless they were working.
The way she flinched when Damien touched her back — not out of pain, but out of disinterest. Out of nothing.
She's forgetting what it feels like to be wanted.
So I'm going to remind her.
---
The first move is small. Subtle.
An anonymous donation made in her name to a women's shelter she volunteered with during grad school — one she hasn't visited in years.
Enough money to fund a trauma therapy wing.
The note attached to the wire transfer simply says: "For the woman who never stopped seeing the broken."
I know she'll see the receipt. I know it'll make her think. And feel.
The second move?
I call Étienne — the artist behind the mirror cube installation. He owes me. I funded his first major show. I tell him I want a new piece commissioned. Private. Custom.
He asks what I want it to say.
"Not say," I murmur. "Reveal."
A sculpture that evokes both restraint and surrender. Steel and silk. Something Celeste will recognize the moment she sees it.
A reflection of herself. Not as she is.
As she's becoming.
---
Adrien catches me as I'm leaving the gallery studio that evening. He's tense again, shoulders stiff, eyes sharp.
"You're pushing too hard," he warns. "She's not like the others."
"She's not like anyone," I answer.
"That's the problem."
I pause on the steps, look down at him. "You think I'm setting myself up for failure?"
"I think you're setting yourself up to care."
That makes me laugh — dry, cold. "Too late."
He sighs. "So what's the plan?"
"Let her come to me," I say. "But this time, I'll leave the door open."
---
Back in the penthouse, I pace the corridor outside my study.
Her name hums beneath my skin.
Celeste.
A name that tastes like salvation and sin all at once.
I imagine her alone in that sleek apartment, hands curled around a glass of wine she won't finish. I imagine her husband's voice like static behind her. Her heart — elsewhere.
And then I write it.
The letter.
Handwritten. Ink and weight and silence.
I don't say anything obscene. Nothing explicit. Just the truth, veiled enough to pass through any barrier, sharp enough to cut through her armor.
You don't have to run.You just have to stop pretending you want to stay.
No signature. No return address. Just her name in calligraphy across the envelope.
Adrien will have it placed on her desk at the clinic. No witnesses. No trace.
And she'll know.
She'll know.
---
I pour myself a drink. Neat. Dark. Aged.
The city pulses below me like an organism — alive, waiting.
And in the center of it all: her.
I close my eyes and whisper her name again.
Not in prayer. In promise.
Celeste Morano is unraveling.
And I will be the hand that catches every strand she lets fall.
Even if it cuts me open.