Chapter 59: The One Who Lit the Match
The villa was quiet.
Too quiet for a woman used to being the center of every room she entered.
Misty lounged in her private salon, half-wrapped in a velvet robe and framed by floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the Capital’s western ridge. The marble underfoot was warm from the evening sun, the wine in her crystal glass older than her latest assistant, and the silence—
—deafening.
She hadn’t turned on the music today. She hadn’t summoned the housekeeper. The soft rustle of her robe as she moved was the only sound in a room built for opulence. The walls were covered in imported tapestries, the shelves lined with rare perfumes and rarer contracts. A small fortune slept here in silver frames and monogrammed wax.
She had built this life with precision.
And now it was slipping.
The message from Odin had been brief, but that made it worse. No threats. No fury. Just a single message delivered through encrypted proxy:
I assume there’s a misunderstanding. You have the right to rent him, not sell. You have two weeks to bring him back.
Misty read the message again, each word tightening like a noose.
Rent, not sell.
As if Lucas were a chair at a gala or a villa suite in summer. As if the years she spent grooming him, silencing him, and bleeding every ounce of unpredictability from him meant nothing. As if Odin still believed she held the leash.