The gunshot in the fog had been nothing—a poacher’s careless shot that felled a deer on the estate’s edge—but the echo lingered like poison in Damien’s blood. Paranoia hardened into something colder, crueler. He no longer looked at Elena like a lover; he looked at her like property that might slip through his fingers at any second. That night he didn’t speak. He simply took her hand—fingers bruising—and led her down a narrow stone staircase behind a false panel in the library.

The basement was a labyrinth carved from black granite: low vaulted ceilings, iron rings bolted into walls, chains dangling like metallic vines. Flickering red bulbs cast everything in blood-light. The air was cool, damp, scented with leather, metal, and the faint copper tang of old fear-sweat. At the center stood a massive St. Andrew’s cross of polished ebony and steel, restraints already waiting.