He turned toward the ten men standing in formation behind her and gestured sharply toward five of them specifically, singling them out with a quick series of hand signals that were clearly understood by everyone in the room except Cora herself.

"Hold her," he said, his voice taking on the crisp, commanding quality of someone issuing instructions to employees. "Restrain her properly, take her into the room immediately, make sure she is undressed and positioned exactly as I described earlier, and then wait for me there."

The five men he had indicated bowed their heads in silent acknowledgment and began moving forward.

"Wait," Lovi added, holding up one hand to stop them mid-step. His voice softened slightly, taking on a tone that was almost considerate. "Actually, I’ve changed my mind about how we proceed from here. When you get her into the room, just inject her with the sedative I gave you earlier. I do not want any of you present for what happens after that." He paused, as though considering his phrasing carefully. "She is going to be my wife. This is not something I want witnesses for beyond what the cameras will capture for my own security. So administer the injection, make sure she is comfortable, and then leave the rest to me."

The five men resumed their movement toward Cora without a word.

Cora watched them approach, and even though every rational calculation available to her made it clear that resistance was futile - that she was outnumbered, outmatched, and positioned in a location with no exits and no weapons and no realistic chance of fighting her way through ten trained men - she found herself unable to simply stand still and allow it to happen.

She squared her shoulders, planted her feet, and raised her fists into the posture of someone who had decided that going down fighting was better than going down without resistance.

The lead man reached her first, and Cora threw a punch directly at his face with every ounce of strength and speed she could summon.

He caught her fist effortlessly, his hand closing around hers mid-strike with the casual ease of someone swatting away an insect, and before she could pull back or adjust her stance or attempt anything else, the other four men closed in around her from multiple angles simultaneously. Hands locked around her wrists, her arms, her shoulders - iron grips that held her completely immobilized no matter how hard she struggled or twisted or tried to wrench herself free.

She fought anyway.

Pulled, kicked, thrashed with everything she had, her body moving in desperate, frantic attempts to break the holds that were pinning her in place - but the five men were far too strong, far too coordinated, and far too experienced at this exact kind of work. Within seconds, they had her completely restrained, her arms locked behind her back, her feet barely touching the ground as they began dragging her toward the open doorway and the bed beyond it.

"You’re going to pay for this!" Cora screamed, her voice raw and furious and echoing off the warehouse walls with a desperation that she could hear in her own words but could not suppress. She craned her neck to look back at Lovi, her eyes blazing with everything she could not physically act on. "Do you hear me, Lovi? You are going to pay for every second of this! The best thing you could do right now is kill me, because if you don’t - if you let me walk out of here alive - you will never, ever get what you are planning. I will make absolutely certain of that. I will dedicate every resource I have, every connection I have built, every ounce of intelligence and power I possess to destroying you so completely that no one will ever find the pieces." 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Lovi watched her with an expression that was almost serene.

"Calm down, beautiful Cora," he said, his voice carrying the soothing, condescending tone of someone speaking to a child throwing a tantrum. "Just calm down. You are working yourself up over nothing. When I am done - when this is finished and you have had time to settle into your new reality - you will understand exactly why it is in your best interest to keep your mouth shut and play the role I am offering you." He smiled slightly. "You have nothing to worry about. I promise I am going to make sure you enjoy it as well."

Cora’s mind was no longer in the warehouse.

Not fully. Not in any way that mattered.

Even as the men dragged her toward the room, even as she continued fighting against their grip with the last reserves of strength her body could produce, her thoughts were somewhere else entirely - focused on a single name, repeated over and over in her head like a prayer or a mantra or the only lifeline she had left to hold onto.

*Oliver. Oliver, please. Please come. Please let this work. Please do what you said you were going to do.*

Because it was becoming devastatingly, horrifyingly clear that whatever Oliver had promised her - whatever plan he had assured her was in place, whatever contingency he had told her would activate if things went wrong - it had not worked.

He was not here.

Nothing had happened.

And she was seconds away from being dragged into that room and sedated and violated in ways that would give Lovi exactly the leverage he wanted to control the rest of her life.

*Why?*

The thought cut through everything else with sharp, agonizing clarity.

*Why hasn’t he come? Why didn’t it work? What went wrong?*

She felt tears burning at the corners of her eyes - not from fear, not from despair, but from the sheer crushing weight of betrayal mixing with the physical pain of being restrained and the knowledge that she was about to lose control of everything that mattered.

*Am I really going to let this happen? Am I really going to let this bastard - this absolute worthless, demonic bastard - put his hands on me?*

The men were pulling her through the doorway now, into the room with the bed and the cameras, and Cora could feel her body beginning to give out from the sheer effort of fighting against five people who were significantly stronger than she was.

And then, cutting through the sound of her own ragged breathing and the shuffling of boots against concrete and the low murmur of the men speaking to each other in terse, clipped instructions -

A voice.

Clear. Commanding. Furious.

"Let go of her, now!!!."