Chapter 3 - The Gilded Cage
Julian Markov left New York that night in the trunk of a syndicate car, bleeding, broken, and stripped of every financial asset his family held in the United States. Mason had dismantled his empire in less than an hour, purely through the terrifying, limitless power of the Orlov name.
But I did not go back to my small apartment in Brooklyn.
Mason’s Maybach bypassed the city entirely, driving straight to his heavily fortified, sprawling estate in the Hamptons. When the iron gates locked behind us, the reality of my new existence finally set in. I was no longer just an employee. I was a target.
I stood in the center of the grand master library, the crackling fireplace doing nothing to warm the ice in my veins.
“You can’t keep me here forever, Mason,” I said, wrapping my arms around my chest as he locked the heavy oak doors.
“I can, and I will,” Mason replied, shedding his suit jacket and tossing it onto a leather chair. He walked toward a crystal decanter, pouring a harsh measure of Scotch. “The Markov family will retaliate. Until every last one of their lieutenants is buried, you do not step foot outside this property.”
“I have a life!” I finally shouted, the frustration and fear of the past three years breaking through my professional mask. “I have a mother! I have friends! I wanted one normal evening, Mason! Just one! But I can’t have that, can I? Because I belong to you!”
Mason slammed his glass onto the table. The crystal shattered, sending amber liquid spilling across the dark wood.
He crossed the room in three long, predatory strides, backing me against the towering bookshelves. His massive hands slammed into the wood on either side of my head, trapping me. His chest heaved, his storm-gray eyes burning with a raw, savage emotion I had never seen before.
“You think this is about control?” Mason growled, his voice a dark, vibrating rumble that shook me to my core. “You think I tore a rival syndicate to the ground tonight because you’re a valuable employee?!”
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I couldn't breathe. His face was inches from mine, his scent of cedar and gunpowder wrapping around my senses.
“I did it because the thought of another man touching you, looking at you, holding your hand across a table makes me want to burn this entire city to ash,” Mason confessed, his voice breaking into a ragged whisper. “I have spent three years keeping you at arm's length because my world is coated in blood. But I am done pretending, Bella. You are mine. You have always been mine.”
