Chapter 5 - THE GILDED FORTRESS
The hospital was no longer secure. Less than twenty-four hours after Elena woke, Luke moved her under the cover of darkness. He didn't take her to the penthouse; he took her to a decommissioned underground bunker retrofitted for a billionaire’s paranoia, hidden deep in the Catskills.
“You can’t keep me in a cage, Luke,” Elena said softly as Marco settled her into the plush, heavily fortified master bedroom.
“It’s not a cage, it’s a vault. And you are the most valuable thing in it,” Luke replied, checking the locks on the reinforced steel door.
For a week, the silence between them was deafening. Elena refused to look at him, nursing the betrayal of the divorce alongside the physical trauma of the poison. Luke slept on a chair outside her door, a loaded rifle across his lap, monitoring the perimeter cameras. He was completely cut off from the Mercer syndicate, burning down his own empire from the inside out to fund her protection.
One night, a sudden cramp made Elena cry out. In seconds, Luke was by her side, his hands trembling as he checked her pulse.
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“I’m okay,” she gasped, clutching his wrist. “Just a spasm.”
She looked up, seeing the absolute devastation in his eyes. For the first time since he signed the papers, she realized he was just as terrified as she was.
