The unlikely bond

Chapter five

Amelia's POV:
Days passed, though it was hard to tell how many. The cabin had no clock, no sense of time-only a blur of shadows that shifted with the rising and setting sun. At first, I tried to resist. I pounded on the door, yelled until my throat was raw, but no one came. No one answered.
Jax didn't come back until much later, and when he did, he was as calm as ever. I hated him for it. For the way he looked at me like I was just a part of his plan. Not a person-just leverage. I wanted to scream at him, to demand answers, but every time he entered the room, something in me froze. Fear and anger, swirling together, making it hard to think straight.
But there was something else, too. Something I didn't want to admit.
I was studying him. Watching the way he moved, the way he spoke, trying to figure him out. He was a mystery, and that bothered me. Jax wasn't the mindless brute I'd expected him to be. He didn't hit me, didn't threaten me beyond keeping me locked away. He treated me like I was a problem to solve, a chess piece he could move across the board to win some twisted game.
I couldn't help but wonder why.
Was it just about my father? Was I really nothing more than a pawn to get to him? Or was there something else behind those eyes of his-something darker, something personal? I didn't know, but it gnawed at me, keeping me up at night, wondering what would happen next.
And then there was the way he looked at me sometimes, like I was more than just a tool. Like he was trying to understand me the same way I was trying to understand him.
That terrified me.
Because if I wasn't careful, I might start to understand him, too.

Jax's POV:
I thought this would be easy.
Kidnap her, hold her for ransom, make Marcus feel the kind of pain I'd lived with for years. Simple. Clean. But nothing about this was simple anymore.
Amelia was supposed to be a means to an end, nothing more. And for a while, I kept it that way. I stuck to the plan-kept my distance, made sure she had food and water, made sure she wasn't hurt. It wasn't personal. It couldn't be. But every time I saw her, that fire in her eyes, that stubbornness-it did something to me. It made it harder to keep my distance.
She didn't act like a victim. She wasn't scared the way most people would be in her position. Oh, she was angry, yes-angry enough to spit venom when she spoke to me. But fear? No, not really. And that made things... complicated.
I was supposed to break her father by using her. But every time I saw her, it was like I was the one unraveling. The more I watched her, the more I saw the person behind the girl with the famous last name. She was smart, sharp-tongued, and tougher than I'd expected. She wasn't some delicate princess sheltered from the world-she was stronger than that. Stronger than I'd ever given her credit for.
And that was the problem.
Because the longer I spent around her, the more I started to see her not as Marcus's daughter, but as Amelia. The more I noticed her quiet strength, the way her gaze challenged me every time I walked into the room. She wasn't like anyone I'd met before, and that scared the hell out of me.
Because I wasn't supposed to feel anything.
I wasn't supposed to care.
But there were moments-small, fleeting moments-where I caught myself hesitating. When I lingered at the door, watching her, wondering what she was thinking. Moments where I considered saying something, explaining why she was here, why I had to do this. But I didn't. I couldn't. It wasn't part of the plan.
She was still the key to breaking Marcus. That's what I had to remember. But the more time I spent with her, the more the lines blurred, and I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep myself from crossing them.

Amelia's POV:
I hated the silence.
The cabin was too quiet. No sound but the creak of old wood and the faint whisper of wind through the cracks in the window. No distractions, no escape from the thoughts running circles in my mind. Every day felt like an eternity, waiting for something to change, for someone to come.
And every day, Jax came. He didn't talk much, didn't try to intimidate me. He just... watched. Like I was some puzzle he couldn't quite figure out. Sometimes, he'd bring food, set it down without a word. I tried not to eat it at first, tried to hold on to some small shred of control. But hunger was stronger than pride, and eventually, I gave in.
It was in those small moments-when he'd hand me a plate, or when our eyes would meet across the room-that I started to notice things. Little things. Like the way his jaw clenched when he was thinking too hard, or the way he always kept his distance but never looked away.
I told myself it didn't matter. That he didn't matter.
But then there were nights when I couldn't sleep, and I'd lie there, staring at the ceiling, wondering about him. Who he really was, what he wanted from me, if there was more to this than just revenge.
And that's when the fear set in. Not fear of him, but fear of myself.
Because I shouldn't have been thinking about him at all

I told myself I wouldn't cry anymore.
But late at night, when the quiet stretched too thin and the isolation pressed down on me like a heavy weight, the tears would come anyway. I hated it-hated the way my body betrayed me, the way my mind kept drifting back to him. The captor. The man whose name I'd learned but whose face I still didn't fully understand.
Jax.
I wanted to hate him. I should've hated him. He'd taken me from everything I knew, thrown me into a nightmare I never saw coming. But the longer I stayed in this place, the harder it was to feel the clean, righteous anger I'd had at the beginning. Because Jax wasn't the monster I'd expected him to be. And I wasn't sure what to do with that.
There were moments-brief, flickering moments-when he almost seemed human. Not the cold, calculating criminal who had dragged me into a van and locked me away, but someone different. Someone conflicted. I caught it in the way he hesitated before leaving the room, the way his eyes softened just a little before he turned his back.
It made me sick. Not because I saw it, but because I cared.
I didn't want to care. I didn't want to see the human behind the mask. But the more time passed, the more those cracks in his armor showed, and the more I found myself drawn to them. Drawn to him.
I thought about him at night, when I couldn't sleep. Wondered about the life he led, about what had happened to him to make him this way. I imagined him as a boy, before the bitterness and the rage, before he'd decided to become a criminal. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized how little I knew about the world my father had kept me from.
Maybe I didn't know my father as well as I thought. Maybe I didn't know Jax either.
But I was afraid-afraid of what would happen when I found out.