Chapter 7: A Rival's Game

The first gift arrived on a Tuesday morning.

Elara found it sitting outside the penthouse elevator when she went to retrieve the newspaper—a habit Dante indulged despite his preference for digital news. The small package was wrapped in brown paper with no return address, her name written in elegant script across the top.

"Dante," she called, carrying the package into the living room where he sat reviewing financial reports over coffee.

His dark eyes immediately fixed on the innocuous-looking box. "You weren't expecting anything?"

"No." She turned it over in her hands, noting the precise corners and expensive wrapping paper. "Should I be worried?"

"Everything that comes into this building is screened." But his voice carried a note of uncertainty that made her stomach clench. "Open it."

Inside, nestled in tissue paper like a precious artifact, was her old sketchbook. The one she'd lost three months ago, filled with drawings from her favorite coffee shop near campus. Her breath caught as she flipped through pages of half-finished portraits and architectural studies, all rendered in her distinctive style.

"How did someone get this?" she whispered.

Dante was already on his phone, barking orders in rapid Russian. She caught fragments—breach, security, immediate investigation. When he hung up, his expression was thunderous.

"The building's security footage shows nothing. Whoever delivered this knows how to move unseen."

A small card had been tucked between the pages. Elara's hands trembled as she read the message written in the same elegant script:

"I thought you might miss your old life. You were so talented. It's a shame to waste such gifts in a cage. —A friend"

"Ivan," Dante said, reading over her shoulder.

"How can you be sure?"

"Because he's the only person alive stupid enough to threaten what's mine." His fingers traced the edge of the sketchbook possessively. "This is psychological warfare. He wants to make you doubt, make you remember what you've given up."

But Elara was staring at the sketches with a mixture of longing and loss. These drawings represented freedom—lazy afternoons in coffee shops, the simple pleasure of observing strangers, a life where her greatest concern was meeting assignment deadlines. Looking at them now felt like viewing artifacts from a museum of her former self.

"I had forgotten," she murmured.

"Forgotten what?"

"How much I loved it. Creating something beautiful from nothing." She closed the sketchbook carefully. "I haven't drawn anything since that first night."

Dante's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "You've been adjusting to your new life."

"You mean adjusting to being your prisoner."

The words hung between them like a challenge. Over the past weeks, their relationship had evolved into something more complex than simple captor and captive. There were moments—like during their bargaining game three nights ago—when she felt like his equal, his partner in this dark dance they performed. But gifts like this reminded her of the fundamental truth: she was here against her will, no matter how her body responded to his touch.

The second gift arrived the next day.

This time it was a small jewelry box containing her grandmother's pearl earrings—the ones she'd worn to her college graduation. She remembered taking them off in her dorm room, placing them carefully in her jewelry box before packing for what she'd thought would be one night of rebellion.

The accompanying note was more personal:

"Your grandmother would be proud of the woman you've become. She always said you had too much spirit to be caged. —Your devoted admirer"

"He's been in my apartment," Elara said, her voice hollow with violation. "He's touched my things, gone through my memories."

Dante's response was swift and brutal. Within hours, her former apartment was swarming with his men, every inch searched for surveillance devices or additional intrusions. They found evidence of a break-in so subtle that even her roommate hadn't noticed—a few items moved millimeters from their original positions, photographs examined and carefully replaced.

"I'm having your belongings moved to storage," Dante informed her that evening. "Everything will be catalogued and secured."

"What about my roommate? My life?"

"Your roommate has been told you're studying abroad. Your parents received a similar story." His matter-of-fact tone made it clear this wasn't a discussion. "As far as the outside world knows, Elara Vance is taking a gap year to find herself."

The casual way he'd erased her existence chilled her more than any threat. With a few phone calls and fabricated stories, he'd made her disappear from her old life as completely as if she'd never existed.

The third gift was the cruelest yet.

A USB drive containing video footage of her family's last Sunday brunch—the one she'd missed because she'd been too hungover from a night of rebellion that had led her straight into Dante's web. She watched her parents discuss her absence with the sort of detached concern usually reserved for stock portfolios, her mother mentioning that "Elara is going through a phase" while cutting her eggs benedict with surgical precision.

The message this time was unsigned but clear:

"They don't even miss you. How long before they forget you entirely?"

Elara threw the USB drive across the room, where it shattered against the marble wall. Dante found her twenty minutes later, curled on the bathroom floor with tears streaming down her cheeks.

"He's right," she sobbed as Dante gathered her into his arms. "They don't care that I'm gone. They're probably relieved they don't have to deal with their disappointing daughter anymore."

"They're fools if they don't see your worth," Dante murmured against her hair.

"Are they? Or am I the fool for thinking I mattered?"

His arms tightened around her. "You matter to me."

"Because you're obsessed with me. That's not the same thing as being loved."

"Isn't it?" His voice was soft, dangerous. "I've rearranged my entire world around you. I've started a war to keep you safe. I've marked you as mine permanently. If that's not love, what is?"

She wanted to argue, to point out the difference between love and possession. But the words died in her throat because part of her—a growing, treacherous part—was starting to believe him. In her old life, she'd been invisible, forgettable, easily erased. In Dante's world, she was the center of everything, the axis around which his universe revolved.

The fourth gift arrived a week later, and this one broke something fundamental inside her.

It was a photograph—her sitting alone in the library during finals week, looking exhausted and defeated. But it wasn't the image that destroyed her; it was the timestamp. The photo had been taken two days before she'd gone to that nightclub, two days before she'd thrown herself into Dante's path.

The note was brutally simple:

"You were so lonely. So desperate for someone to see you. I saw you first."

"That's not true," she whispered, but her voice lacked conviction.

Dante studied the photograph with cold fury. "He's trying to make you doubt everything. To make you think your feelings for me aren't real."

"Aren't they?" She turned to face him, her composure finally cracking completely. "How do I know what's real anymore? You've isolated me, manipulated my emotions, marked me like property. Maybe Ivan's right. Maybe I was just so pathetically lonely that I convinced myself your obsession was romance."

"You think I manipulated you into caring for me?"

"I think you're very good at making people want what you want them to want."

The accusation hung between them like a blade. Dante's expression went through several transformations—rage, hurt, something that might have been fear—before settling into cold determination.

"Come here," he said.

"No."

"Come. Here." The command in his voice was absolute, backed by weeks of conditioning her body to respond to his dominance.

Against her better judgment, she found herself moving toward him. He caught her hands, pressing them flat against his chest where she could feel his heart racing.

"You think this is manipulation?" He guided her hands lower, over the hard planes of his stomach. "You think I can fake this reaction to you?"

"Physical desire isn't—"

"It's not just physical." His grip tightened on her wrists. "You want to know what's real? I haven't slept more than two hours at a time since Ivan started his little game because I'm terrified something will happen to you while I'm unconscious. I've killed four men this week for getting too close to information about your whereabouts. I've turned down three major business deals because they would require me to leave the city and leave you vulnerable."

The raw honesty in his voice made her chest tight. "Dante—"

"I'm not manipulating you, little bird. I'm being destroyed by you, piece by piece, day by day. And the worst part is that I'd do it all again because one moment of your genuine smile is worth more than everything I built before I met you."

The confession shattered her remaining defenses. She could see the truth of it in his eyes, feel it in the way his body trembled with barely contained emotion. This wasn't the calculated seduction of a master manipulator—this was the desperate plea of a man afraid of losing the only thing that mattered to him.

"I'm scared," she admitted.

"Of me?"

"Of how much I want this to be real." The words came out in a rush. "Of how much I want to believe that someone could love me enough to burn the world down for me."

"Then believe it." His hands framed her face with infinite gentleness. "Because it's the only truth that matters."

That night, as Ivan's psychological warfare continued its relentless assault on her sanity, Elara made a choice. She could let his mind games drive her crazy, or she could embrace the dark romance that had become her reality.

When Dante reached for her in bed, she didn't resist. When he whispered promises of forever against her skin, she didn't doubt. When he made love to her with desperate intensity, she met him with equal passion.

Because Ivan Morozov might know her past, might understand her loneliness, might even be right about her desperate need to be seen.

But he didn't understand that sometimes being seen by the right monster was better than being invisible to the whole world.

And Dante Volkov saw all of her—her darkness and her light, her strength and her vulnerability, her artistic soul and her hidden hunger for danger.

That had to count for something.

Even if it might destroy them both.