Chapter 105

**Hadassah POV**

I mop my face with my hands as I rush into the kitchen and I reel myself to a standstill when I see the chef's attendant tidying up the kitchen. Wiping down the glossy surface of the granite island countertop with a white rag. Her eyes spring to me and she straightens into a formal stance, holding the cloth behind her back as she smiles back at me politely.
“Mrs Moon, would you like—”
“Mrs Moon?” I blurt harshly.
She fumbles for words, staring back at me quizzically. “Mr Moon informed the staff and security to no longer address you as Miss Moor, but Mrs Moon.”
I free a pent-up breath, outstretching my hand to press it against the frame of the archway for stability.
“I can prepare you something to eat? Should I call the chef?’
I shake my head as I lift myself back up with a stretched smile. “No, I think I’d rather want to prepare something myself. Not that I don’t love ya’ll’s food—it’s amazing, but I find cooking calming. So you can take the evening off if you like.”
She bows her head at me and scurries away. I amble towards the pantry, opening both doors to examine the floor-to-ceiling stock of provisions. I wander to the fridge with the information of the pantry shelved in my mind as I compare and speculate on what to make for Calum and I. Even though after that fun chat, I no longer have an appetite. I didn't even realize I was just staring blankly inside the fridge until it started beeping urgently. I close the door. My mind is still replaying the conversation with Calum, tormented by the thought of my best friend’s long-simmering resentment growing inside him like a canker.
Just then, a towering figure spills into the kitchen. Ellis enters with his arms folded behind his back before he stops with a semi-wide stance, staring at me with critical observation.
“Can I help you?” I say with a conjured, carefree tone.
“You can,” he says bluntly. “You can start by telling me what’s wrong?”
I fix him with a long look, surprised as I am stunned. “And why do you care?”
He sets his eyes in front of him in a military manner, stern and straight ahead. “I’ve been entrusted with your security. That also includes your emotional safety.”
I break into a smile, former woes warded away. “Never knew that was part of the package.”
“What did he say to upset you?” he asked as forthright as his unfettered concern. “It must be significant, since you're usually all smiles when you’re around him. At least from that time when he was still with us when we were in Germany.”
I look away for a split-second and when I look back at him—he’s already staring and our gaze clashes. We both sever eye contact and he begins to recede as if suddenly reminded of his place.
“Wait.” I draw a step closer thoughtlessly. “I need help, cooking. Do you mind helping me?”
His bushy brows collide at the request. “I can call for the chef?”
“I don’t want the chef. I asked you,” I point out with a demand lining my tone. “Besides, it's dangerous, you know… all the knives.”
A glimmer of a smile flickers across his plump lips. “I can’t cook.”
“Then today you’ll learn.”
I move out to get the chopping guard and set it down on the slab of granite. I collect a variety of vegetables I eyed in the fridge and I instruct him to cut it. His hands, though accustomed to gripping weapons, now expertly chop vegetables with sharp efficiency. Across the counter, I stand close by, my fingers arranging fresh basil leaves. The air between us charged with a tension that neither of us can fully acknowledge.
“I think I should be fairly compensated for going above the call of duty.”
“As you can imagine, all my accounts have been frozen. So I hope you take any kind of payment.”
My eyes flick up and our eyes lock, and time seems to stretch, elongating the moment into something almost tangible. His eyes, usually so sharp and vigilant, are now pools of deep, smoldering intensity. There is a vulnerability in his gaze, a crack in the armor of his stoic demeanor that only I seem to pierce.
“I’ll settle for information,” he says with his voice taut with unsaid words.
So I give him a recap of my history with Calum—my job, my cases—a comprehensive overview. One that fills the missing gaps about all he thinks he knows about me. Everything that led me to be here at his side without exposing crucial intelligence about Magnus. Not that I don’t trust him, I doubt he cares about anything involving Torin except for guarding him, his interests and getting paid for it.
Ellis reaches for a jar of salt. Our hands brush ever so slightly, a fleeting touch that sends a shiver through us both. The contact so brief it might have been imagined, but it lingers like a promise of an unspoken understanding. Our eyes meet, and in that moment, the world outside the kitchen ceases to exist. The intensity of his gaze, usually so stern and unyielding, softens just for me, revealing a depth of emotion that he rarely allows himself to show.
“I wasn’t expecting all that,” he remarks simply.
“What? That I’d be so ruthlessly ambitious?”
“Admirably motivated,” he amends. “The only thing that could drive a person that far is either love or pain.”
“And which one do you think it is? Pain or… love?”
In that fleeting moment, everything else falls away. The space between us seems to shrink, charged with an electric tether that strains to pull us closer. Slightly overawed, I move away, breaking the spell. But the connection remains, like a thread pulled tight between us, every moment thereafter tinged with the residue of our shared gaze. I dispense instructions that he follows them obediently, every movement methodical. Each time we move past each other, the proximity is almost unbearable, our bodies brushing ever so lightly, despite the vast breadth of the kitchen.
Ellis’s hand grazes my arm as he reaches for a utensil, and the touch is so light it could have been a mere whisper of contact, but it lingers, sending ripples through the fragile barrier we maintain. An echo, a murmur of a plea.
“You think the boy blames you?”
I step over the minor insult. “I don’t think. I know he does. I capsized his whole life.”
“You didn’t ask for him to track you,” he retorts. “He was the one that followed you to Germany, you didn’t ask him to do that.”
“I didn’t have to,” I snap back, letting all off on him. “I’m his best friend and I went missing. He did what I would’ve if he was in my position—”
“Then he should be so lucky,” he says evenly, but there’s a fierceness burning under the kindling of his words. “It’s not an obligation, but a privilege to love someone or be loved enough to want to surrender your own life.”
“You don’t get it. This wasn’t an off chance event,” I admit. “I put us in this situation. I sought after Orian after being advised a thousand times over not to. I chose to get ahead at the expense of what I almost left behind. That makes me no different from the criminals I got locked up, if I’m able to move the boundary of morality to where it’s convenient.”
He storms towards me. “You’re not anything like them,” he says with a sense of outrage. “You did what you had to do, what you felt was right at the time. Sometimes you gotta do bad to get good done, it’s just that simple. And no one should make you feel guilty over your convictions.”
He looms over me with an invincible and invisible impediment that is so impenetrable that he can’t push through it to reach me. His hand twitches impulsively at his side but it remains restrained, locked in place. Another guard marches into the kitchen and snaps to attention when he sees Ellis. And just like that, the Elllis is gone, retreating to that stoic and emotionless reserve. Promptly, Torin struts in and his brows lift to dangerous heights.
“You two starring in a cooking show I don’t know about?”
I step away from Ellis as I gesture to the arrangements. “I just wanted a hand in cooking.”
“That’s what the chef is for. I have a world-class team specially trained and experienced and you ask the head of my security?”
I shrug, unfazed because it’s not like anything happened. “He was the closest to me,” I say nonchalantly. “You should know by now that cooking calms me and having people bearing down on me doesn’t. For once, I wanted to do something for myself.”
Torin tilts his head and beckons for more guards as three more march into the kitchen.
“Take him.”
All four converge around Ellis as two of them flank him to secure their hold, but Ellis doesn’t fight back. They drag him away, drawing shouts from me before Torin comes and seizes me with a force and fury that emulates Orian. He twists my wrist at an unnatural angle, wringing out a screech from me as he pins it behind my back, forcing me forward. Ellis throws a glance behind him; a bestial grunt rumbles out of him as the four guards begin to struggle to contain him as his brute movements send a tremor through them as they grapple, trying to wrest him under control.
“Torin, what are you doing?”
“It seems a lesson needs to be taught on not touching what doesn’t belong to you.”
“He never touched me!” I scream back.
“I’m just making sure he never does.”