Chapter 115: 115 ~ Mira
I felt trapped in this space but at least I was safe. That was how I consoled myself every time the thought of going outside crossed my mind.
I had not seen Jace since he stepped out in the morning. The silence in the penthouse was suffocating. The only noise was that of the cars honking on outside and occasionally the television in the living room when I felt like watching something. I couldn’t concentrate so I always turned it off after a few minutes.
My fingers curled tighter around the pendant of the necklace he’d clasped around my neck at breakfast. I held it like a lifeline, as if the little charm could anchor me when my thoughts tried to scatter.
The necklace shouldn’t mean anything. It was just a piece of jewelry, something I’d abandoned years ago in a hospital bed when I ran from him and everything he was. But he had kept it. All these years, he had kept it, and when he placed it back around my neck, it had been like a shackle and a memory all at once.
I hated that it made my heart race. Hated that it made my throat tighten.
Because what kind of person holds onto something like this? A man who doesn’t let go. A man who doesn’t forgive. A man who claims, even without words, that what was once his will always be his.
Or a man who loves... me.
My breath hitched at the thought.
I rose from the couch and wandered to the floor-to-ceiling windows. Los Angeles stretched endlessly before me, glittering and alive. It should have looked beautiful. It should have reminded me of freedom, of possibilities, of anything other than this gilded cage. But instead, all I saw were threats lurking in every shadow.
Massimo’s men. The betrayal. The way I had almost been caught, almost been dragged into God knows what fate if I hadn’t escaped.
My hand shook as I touched the glass.
This was trauma.
I hadn’t heard from him yet but I was sure he was plotting something.
It was easy to lie to myself here, wrapped in Jace’s fortress, but the truth was clear. I could have died. The image replayed in my head every time I closed my eyes—the footsteps thundering after me, the door creaking, the suffocating terror that my next breath would be my last.
I swallowed hard, pressing the pendant to my lips as though it could silence the memory.
"Get it together," I whispered.
But even whispering didn’t steady me.
I went to the kitchen, poured myself a glass of water, and sat at the counter, staring into nothing. Hours ticked by. Still no Jace. Still no footsteps, no shadow of him moving through the penthouse. And the longer he stayed away, the more I wondered what he was doing.
Killing someone? Plotting Massimo’s downfall? Making plans I didn’t want to know about?
Or maybe... maybe he was avoiding me.
The thought left a bitter taste in my mouth. For all his insistence that I belonged here, to him, he had a way of disappearing when I needed him to face the wreckage between us. He was there when it suited him, gone when it didn’t. That was Jace Romano—Don, king, tyrant.
I sighed and set the glass down. My reflection caught in the marble surface, pale and strained, and I almost didn’t recognize myself. I was becoming someone I didn’t like: cornered, dependent, constantly watching the door like a prisoner waiting for her captor.
I hated that this was what safety looked like.
The front door clicked open. My body stiffened instinctively, heart lurching into my throat. Then came the sound of footsteps—measured, heavy, familiar.
Jace.
Relief crashed through me, unwelcome but undeniable.
I stood as he came into view, his suit immaculate as always, but there was something darker in the set of his jaw, something dangerous in his eyes. He looked like he’d just walked out of a war zone and left bodies behind.
Our gazes locked, and for a moment neither of us said a word.
"You didn’t eat," he said finally, eyes flicking to the untouched plate on the dining table.
The chef had made lunch for me and I told her I would eat later. But it was hours now.
"I wasn’t hungry." My voice was steady, though my grip on the pendant betrayed me.
He studied me, his silence thicker than any accusation. Then he crossed the room, each step deliberate, closing the distance until he stood in front of me. His hand lifted, brushing the necklace between his fingers, and my breath caught.
"You’re still wearing it," he murmured. There was a tinge of excitement in his tone. It was very subtle but it was there.
He probably expected me to take it off after he left.
"It doesn’t mean what you think it does," I shot back quickly, even though the words tasted like lies.
They were lies.
His lips curved in the faintest hint of a smirk, but there was no humor in it. "Doesn’t it?"
I looked away, forcing myself not to crumble under the weight of his stare. "You can’t keep me here forever, Jace. I’m going to have to leave at some point."
He tilted his head like a predator studying prey. "Maybe not forever. But for now, you’re safer here than anywhere else. You know it, Mira. You felt it the second they came for you."
My throat tightened. He wasn’t wrong, and that was the worst part. He wasn’t wrong.
"Safe doesn’t mean free," I whispered.
His smirk faded, his expression hardening. "And freedom doesn’t mean alive."
The truth of that hit me square in the chest, knocking the wind out of me. I wanted to argue, to tell him he was wrong, but the memory of footsteps chasing me through the dark passage held my tongue.
Instead, I turned away, breaking eye contact before I lost myself in those stormy gray eyes.
Silence filled the space again, heavy, charged.
And for the first time since stepping into his penthouse, I admitted to myself that maybe, just maybe, safety and freedom couldn’t exist together. Not for me. Not here. Not with Jace Romano.