CHAPTER 51: CHAPTER 51: PANIC BUTTON

Elias’s thumb pressed down.

A soft click. Barely audible. But somewhere deep within the manor, a chain of signals jolted awake, hidden circuits lighting up, silent alerts were sent to Adam, to the closest guards, and to whoever Victor had left behind.

Elias didn’t wait to see if it worked.

He kept the phone to his ear, but his body was already moving. The terrace doors loomed behind him, tall panes of glass that reflected the dim firelight and the faint blue glow of his phone screen. They had always seemed elegant, almost too beautiful to touch. Now they felt like a liability, nothing but a thin barrier between him and the night.

The curtains stirred again, a soft whisper of movement though there was no wind, and Elias’s chest tightened. Moonlight slicked silver over the terrace tiles outside, and beyond that, just darkness. Endless, waiting.

He took another step back, heart hammering hard enough to make his fingertips tremble. His bare feet found the edge of the rug, the weave rough against his toes as he retreated deeper into the room.

"You’re lying," Elias said finally, forcing the words past the tightness in his throat. "You can’t know that."

Matteo’s chuckle was low, soft, and wrong. "I told you, Elias... I’ve always known. Did you think I wasn’t paying attention all those years?"

Elias’s free hand brushed the edge of the desk as he moved, using it to guide himself without taking his eyes off the terrace. The glass glittered faintly as he shifted his angle, and for a breathless moment he thought, no, he knew, he saw a shadow move beyond the railing.

He drew in a sharp breath, pulse roaring in his ears. The panic button had been pressed, but would they get here in time?

"I don’t know what you think you’re doing," Elias managed, voice low, almost steady despite the adrenaline burning through his veins. "But you’re not coming in here."

Matteo hummed thoughtfully on the other end, as if amused by a child’s defiance. "Do you really think those pretty doors will keep me out?"

Elias’s stomach dropped. He took another step back, then another, putting the solid bulk of the desk between himself and the terrace. His palm skimmed over cool wood, then gripped the back of the armchair for balance.

The glass looked thinner now, fragile. A single pane, a single lock. Not a barrier, but the illusion of one.

The curtains stirred again, and this time, Elias swore he saw movement outside, just past the edge of the moonlight.

Matteo’s breathing softened on the line, as if he’d settled into something intimate.

"You sound scared," he whispered. "I don’t want you to be scared, Elias. Not of me."

Elias didn’t answer. His back was pressed to the far wall now, the cool plaster seeping through his thin shirt. The room felt smaller, tighter, the air heavier with each word Matteo spoke.

"You’ve always been so careful," Matteo went on, his tone almost reverent, as if confessing a prayer instead of a sickness. "Always keeping everyone at arm’s length. Even me. Do you know how long I watched you walk past me in the hallways, pretending not to see?"

Elias’s pulse hammered in his throat. "Matteo, stop."

But Matteo’s voice only grew softer, coaxing, as if Elias hadn’t spoken at all.

"You’ve never let anyone in. Not a single hand on you, not a single soul close enough to touch what’s yours." A sigh ghosted through the speaker, shaky and adoring. "I know you, Elias. You’re still untouched. Still perfect. That’s why I waited. That’s why I stayed in the shadows."

Elias’s stomach turned, heat rising behind his eyes: anger, panic, something uglier. He pressed his back harder to the wall, knuckles white around the phone.

Matteo’s words spilled on, dreamy, certain. "I’ve watched them try to reach you. All of them. But you never let them. Not their hands, not their mouths. I knew it would be me someday. It was always supposed to be me."

A bitter laugh almost rose in Elias’s throat, but it caught before it escaped. ’If only you knew.’

If only Matteo knew about Victor’s hands braced against his hips, the taste of Victor’s kiss still burning on his lips, and the bruise blooming on his collarbone.

But Matteo didn’t know. He thought Victor was just another predator, another opportunist circling for what Elias could offer.

"He only keeps you there because you’re useful," Matteo whispered, as if reading his thoughts. "You know that, don’t you? He doesn’t want you, Elias. He wants your mind, your skill, your... gift. That’s all you are to him. I see through him. I see you."

Elias’s heart slammed painfully against his ribs. He could hear the obsession in every word, the blind devotion curling tighter, darker.

"You don’t have to be afraid," Matteo murmured, voice dipping into something softer, coaxing. "I’ll take you away from him. I’ll keep you safe. No more games. No more threats. Just you... and me."

Elias’s fingers hovered near the panic button again, his breath shallow. The sound of distant footsteps somewhere in the manor reached his ears, faint but steady, and a flicker of relief sparked deep inside him.

But Matteo’s voice kept unraveling in his ear, slow and sure, the cadence of a man who had built an entire world in his head.

"I’ve imagined it a thousand times, Elias. The first time I hold you, the first time you let me touch you. We were so close after our last date, so close. Too bad your father had appeared." He chuckled.

Elias’s throat constricted. That night, four days ago, flashed behind his eyes in jagged fragments: the warm bar light soft on Matteo’s face, the quiet laughter over glasses, the way the cold had bitten at his hands as they left the booth and stepped into the dark street. The stillness of the car ride, Matteo’s hand lingering too long on the steering wheel, words hovering unspoken in the narrow space between them.

Then the sharp, surgical interruption of Jonathan Clarke on the curb, his father’s shadow splitting the night in two. And afterward, the suffocating sensation of being watched, of footsteps in the wrong place at the wrong time. That night hadn’t ended in safety. It had ended in Elias bolting through back alleys, heart pounding in his throat, until Victor’s car had found him and the world had blurred into motion.

And now Matteo was admitting it out loud, like it had been a love story and not a nightmare.

Elias’s pulse thundered. His fingers twitched over the panic button again as his other hand gripped the phone so tightly it creaked in his palm. "You..." His voice caught, brittle. "You tried something that night."

Matteo sighed, soft, dreamy, as though Elias hadn’t spoken. "I didn’t want to let you out of the car," he repeated, almost tender. "We would have been so good together, Elias. I thought you would ask me for help."