Chapter 8: Threats and Promises

Chapter 8: Threats and Promises

The space between them was a ghost limb, an phantom ache where a kiss should have been. In the two days since the arboretum, Dane had become a silent, brooding shadow at Ellie’s side. He walked her to her classes. He waited for her outside the library. He said little, his face a granite mask, but his presence was a constant, intense declaration. He had warned her he wasn’t safe, and now he seemed determined to prove it by standing guard against the very danger he embodied.

The charade of their contract was a distant memory, a foolish premise from another lifetime. They were no longer pretending for Caleb or the campus gossips. Dane was guarding her, and they both knew it. The unspoken question lingered in every charged silence: what was he guarding her from?

Tonight, the silence felt heavier than usual. Ellie’s shift at the fine arts library ran late, and by the time she was done shelving the last of the cart’s heavy monographs, the campus was quiet and dark. Dane was waiting for her just outside the glass doors, leaning against a stone pillar, a solitary figure swallowed by the shadows. He didn’t offer a greeting, just fell into step beside her as she started the walk toward her dorm.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said, her voice small in the vast, empty plaza. “Walk me everywhere.”

“Yes,” he said, the single word sharp and absolute. “I do.”

The finality in his tone shut down any further argument. They walked on, the rhythmic slap of their footsteps on the flagstones the only sound. The path cut past the multi-level parking garage reserved for faculty and visitors, a concrete behemoth that always felt vaguely menacing at night. As they approached, a flicker of movement from the garage’s gloomy entrance caught Ellie’s eye.

Two men stepped out from behind a thick concrete pillar, blocking their path.

Ellie froze, her blood turning to ice. One of them she recognized instantly. It was the man from the Sigma Chi party, the one with the harsh, weathered face and cheap jacket who had taken the envelope from Dane. The other man was older, dressed in a surprisingly well-tailored dark suit that seemed to absorb the dim light. He had silvering hair at his temples and a calm, almost professorial air, but his eyes were as cold and dead as chips of slate.

Dane moved instantly, a fluid motion of pure instinct, placing himself squarely in front of her. His body was a rigid shield, coiled with a tension she had only seen once before—in the alley, right before the crowbar swung.

“Silas,” Dane said, his voice a low, lethal rumble. “You’re a long way from your usual hunting grounds.”

The man in the suit, Silas, smiled. It was a thin, bloodless expression that didn’t reach his eyes. “Business brings me where I need to be, Blackwood,” he said, his voice smooth and educated, a terrifying mismatch with the cold menace he projected. “And my business, unfortunately, still involves you.”

Silas’s gaze slid past Dane, landing directly on Ellie. He looked her up and down, not with lust, but with the detached appraisal of a butcher eyeing a side of beef.

“I’m disappointed,” Silas continued, his eyes still fixed on her. “I thought we had an understanding. A price was agreed upon, a settlement was paid. I considered the matter closed. But you continue to be a problem. You’re drawing attention. And now…” He gestured vaguely at Ellie with a manicured hand. “You’ve involved… inventory.”

“She has nothing to do with this,” Dane growled, taking a half-step forward. The man in the cheap jacket tensed, his hand twitching inside his coat.

“Doesn’t she?” Silas mused, tilting his head. “You’ve been very public with her. The Golden Boy Remington is upset. People are talking. And talk is bad for my business. It draws the wrong kind of attention to my… associates.” He took a slow, deliberate step toward them. “I came to deliver a message, a friendly addendum to our previous contract. You were supposed to be paying a debt to keep someone else out of the spotlight. A girl, if I recall. A very stupid girl who got in over her head. But now you’ve put another one in her place. This blonde girl.”

Every word was a hammer blow, making Ellie’s world shrink. The danger she had only glimpsed was no longer abstract. It was standing ten feet away, giving her a nickname, marking her as a liability. The man Dane had protected, the reason for the alley attack and the envelope of cash—it was all for some other girl. And now Ellie had unknowingly taken her place.

“So here is my new offer,” Silas said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that carried with terrifying clarity in the night air. “You are going to disappear. From my business, from this town, and most importantly, from her. If I see you with her again, if I hear your names mentioned in the same sentence again, my associate here will be forced to explain the consequences. Not to you. To her.”

The threat was absolute, delivered with the chilling calm of a man who had given similar orders a hundred times before. The man in the jacket smirked, a cruel, ugly expression. He was looking forward to it.

Ellie felt a wave of nausea, her knees threatening to buckle. This was real. This wasn't campus drama. This was a man threatening to have her hurt, all because she had stumbled into Dane Blackwood’s orbit.

“Consider your message delivered,” Dane said, his voice dangerously quiet. “Now get off this campus before I forget you’re an old man and do something we’ll both regret.”

Silas’s smile widened slightly. “I do hope you’ll be sensible. She has such a pretty, trusting face. It would be a shame to ruin it.”

And with a final, chilling nod, he and his man turned and melted back into the shadows of the parking garage, leaving a poisonous silence in their wake.

Ellie was shaking, a deep, uncontrollable tremor that started in her bones. She couldn’t breathe. The world was tilting on its axis.

Dane turned to her, his face a storm of fury and self-loathing. He grabbed her arm, his grip urgent, and pulled her away, practically running them across the plaza and into the relative anonymity of a tree-lined side path. He didn’t stop until they were hidden in the deep shadows of the fine arts building she had just left.

He finally let her go, turning to pace like a caged wolf. He ran a hand through his dark hair, his knuckles white.

“This is my fault,” he bit out, the words ripped from his chest. “All of this. I was a fool to think I could keep you separate. I dragged you into this fire.”

“Dane…” she started, her voice a reedy whisper.

“No,” he snapped, whirling on her. His grey eyes were blazing, but beneath the fury was a profound, gut-wrenching fear. It was fear for her. “Listen to me, Ellie. The contract is over. It’s done. There are no more lessons, no more games. You are going to go back to your dorm, and tomorrow, you are going to go back to your life. You’re going to avoid me like I’m the plague. If you see me, you walk the other way. Do you understand?”

He was reverting to the cold, cynical bastard from the alley. He was trying to sever the connection, to cauterize the wound of their entanglement to save her.

But she had seen the truth. She had heard Silas’s threat. She knew this wasn’t a game he could just call off. And standing there, trembling in the dark, she knew one other thing with absolute certainty: she was terrified, but the thought of facing this alone, of walking away from him now, was infinitely worse.

He took her silence as acquiescence and his face hardened further. “Good.”

He turned to leave, to put his plan into action, to excise himself from her life like a tumor. But before he could take a step, Ellie found her voice, and her courage.

“No,” she said.

He stopped, his back still to her.

“No,” she repeated, stronger this time. She stepped toward him, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “I’m not running. I’m not hiding. And I’m not leaving you to deal with this alone.”

He turned slowly, his expression a mixture of disbelief and desperation. “Ellie, you don’t understand what he’s capable of.”

“I understand perfectly,” she said, her blue eyes meeting his, fierce and unwavering. “I understand he threatened me to control you. And I won’t be controlled.”

The old contract was dead. The cynical bargain was shattered. But in the terrifying aftermath of Silas’s threat, something new was being forged between them in the darkness. It wasn’t a trade. It was a vow.

Dane looked at her, at this girl who should be running for the hills, who was instead choosing to stand in the fire with him. The protective instinct in him, already in overdrive, roared into a singular, all-consuming promise.

“Okay,” he breathed, the fight draining out of him, replaced by a grim, terrifying resolve. He stepped forward and cupped her face in his hands, his thumbs tracing her cheekbones as if memorizing her. “Okay. But this changes everything. From now on, you don’t go anywhere without me. You don’t do anything without telling me. This isn’t a request, Ellie. It’s not a clause in a contract.”

His stormy eyes burned into hers, sealing his words in her soul.

“It’s a promise. I will keep you safe. No matter what it costs.”