Bound by Debt [✔]

5: His Visit

THE air in the apartment was thick with an eerie silence.

Vince Luca stood in front of the door, his expression calm but unreadable. Two of his men waited behind him, tense and alert. The building itself was quiet, the kind of silence that made instincts sharpen.

Debts were meant to be paid.

That was the rule Vince lived by.

But there was another rule he never tolerated—cruelty toward those who could not defend themselves.

Vince motioned to his men to knock on the door, but there was no answer.

They waited.

Still nothing.

Vince's eyes narrowed slightly. Something about the silence felt wrong.

"Again," he said.

The second knock was harder.

The hallway echoed with the sound.

Nothing.

Frustration and suspicion gnawed at him.

He signaled for his men to force their way in. The door crashed open with a loud splintering crack.

The living room was a mess.

A chair lay overturned. Glass glittered across the floor. A lamp had been knocked sideways, its shade torn. The place looked as if a storm had passed through it.

Vince stepped inside slowly, his sharp eyes scanned the area, but there was no sign of Ethan.

Something very wrong had happened here.

He gestured for his men to search the place. As they moved deeper into the apartment, they reached the bedroom door. One of Vince's men opened it, revealing a scene that made even the hardened men pause.

"Boss... you should see this."

Vince walked down the short hallway.

Lila was lying on the bed, naked and motionless, her eyes wide and unfocused. Her face was streaked with dried tears, and it was clear she had been crying for hours. She looked like a broken doll, shattered and discarded.

When he stepped through the bedroom door, he stopped.

Vince's usually stoic expression betraying a flicker of anger and pity. He approached the bed cautiously.

"Miss?" he said softly, trying to gauge her reaction. "Can you hear me?"

Lila didn't respond. Her eyes were distant, lost in a world of pain and confusion.

Vince glanced around the room and noticed the camera equipment near the bed. The pieces of the situation came together quickly in his mind.

His jaw tightened.

Carefully, he picked up a blanket from the floor and gently draped it over her, trying to offer some semblance of dignity and comfort.

"Water," he said.

A glass was brought to him.

Vince crouched beside the bed and gently lifted it toward her lips.

"Here, drink this."

But she remained unresponsive, her body stiff with shock.

Vince's frustration grew, not with Lila, but with the situation. He had seen this kind of trauma before and knew that she needed help. Leaving her in this state was not an option.

He called out to his second-in-command, Marco.

"Find out what happened here," Vince said, quietly. "And locate Ethan Reynolds."