CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

ZOEY

The gilded bars of my luxurious prison were starting to lose their shine. Three days. 

The only company I've had are the starched stares of the mute maids and the whispering echoes in this opulent prison. Not a single hello, not a friendly face, just the suffocating silence pressing down on me like a leaden blanket.

No phone, no Emma, just the gnawing ache of her absence. I can almost hear her frantic calls, the tears she sheds in the quiet of our apartment, the worry etched on her familiar face. Alexei Pushkin, the name rolls off my tongue like a curse, a bitter reminder of my stolen freedom.

He threw me in this gilded cage, and for what? My safety? My sympathy? I saw the shadows in his eyes that day, the ghosts that danced behind the carefully crafted mask of power. A darkness that mirrored the one I knew so well, the one that gnawed at the edges of my own soul but maybe it was just a trick, a cruel mirage in the desert of his