VENUSThe silence wasn’t just thick anymore, it was sentient. It no longer filled the room passively; it loomed. It listened. It judged. Every second inside this place crawled across my skin like something alive. Something waiting. Gerald had grown quieter, but not calmer. There was a new edge to him now, a kind of manic energy that didn’t speak in volume but in tension. In the twitch at the corner of his mouth. In the pause between his movements. In the way he stood by the window and stared through the blinds, like the trees themselves were conspiring against him.He was unraveling. Slowly. Horribly.And I said nothing.I didn’t ask anymore. Didn’t cry. Didn’t scream. Not because I’d learned to cope but because I’d stopped hoping.Escape? That was a fairytale I no longer read.I lived by rhythms now. Not freedom. Not survival. Just cycles. I woke up. I ate if he asked me to. I moved when told. I listened. I responded. I obeyed, even when it killed me inside.The strange thing about i
AARONThe next morning, I didn’t sleep...I just stood by the glass walls of the penthouse, watching the sun rise like it owed me answers. The city blinked awake beneath me, unaware it was standing on the edge of a reckoning.I made the call before Sabine even woke up.“Find him,” I told Rick, head of my private security detail. “I want eyes on Gerald Marlowe. I want his location, his schedule, who he talks to, what he eats for breakfast—I want everything.”Rick didn’t flinch. “On it.”But hours passed. Then a day. Then two.Nothing.On the third morning, Rick called back. His voice was tight, coiled with frustration. “Sir, it’s like he disappeared. No phone pings. No credit card activity. No visual confirmation from our usual networks. I even checked border control, no travel records. No alias pops. He’s just… gone.”Gone.Like smoke through fingers.I stood silent, the burn in my throat thick like bile. People don’t just vanish. Not unless they’re running. Or hiding. Or being protect
VENUSThe silence had grown thick. Not just with boredom or fear, but with something colder, meaner. The kind of silence that didn’t just exist....it waited. It loomed like a shadow just out of reach. It carried weight like a loaded gun, full of intent, full of consequence.Time passed.Or maybe it didn’t.Time had long ago stopped meaning anything in this place. The walls didn’t shift with the sun. The light didn’t change. There were no clocks, no schedules. Only hunger pangs and Gerald’s unpredictable footsteps to break the monotony. I’d drift in and out of sleep, startled awake by my own heartbeat, always hearing echoes of words he’d said.The city. He said the city.That one word still rang like a distant bell in the fog. “City.” He hadn’t said in the city. He’d said he’d have to go to the city. That meant we weren’t there. That meant isolation. It meant distance. It meant no one could hear me scream.I’d held onto that word like a talisman, a shard of truth in a room built on lie
AARONTime didn’t crawl anymore.It snapped. Lashed. Tore.Every tick of the clock was a threat. Every breath I took without her felt like an insult. Like I was cheating time. Betraying her with my survival.I didn’t go back to being docile. Hell no.I barked orders like a general in a losing war. Snapped at Connor, Jane, even my mother. Sabine got it the worst, though she never flinched. Nobody was spared. My days became hollow: rituals of sharp commands, colder silences, and the taste of fury I couldn’t swallow. I didn’t eat. Didn’t sleep. My suits hung looser. My jaw stayed clenched. The empire was no longer mine to hold but I wasn’t done swinging.My free time? A graveyard. A museum of dead ends and faded footprints. I reread every report. Cross-referenced files like they might bleed her name if I ripped them open hard enough. Nothing came. No sightings. No whispers. No messages. Venus was still gone.And the blame? It didn’t knock. It broke the door down and built a home in my ch
VENUSThe days crawled by with agonizing precision, each second dragging like it had something to prove. Gerald, in his infinite delusion, thought he’d earned something from me. Maybe respect. Maybe affection. Maybe gratitude. Whatever it was, he called it trust. I called it bait.After my feigned obedience—the rehearsed smiles, the whispered thank-yous that tasted like ash, the hollow compliance that curled at the edges—he gave me a reward.He unlocked the cuff.Not both. Just the one.My right wrist, finally free, felt almost weightless. I could stretch, shift, pace the length of the room in lazy, bitter loops. It was freedom in the cruelest sense: just enough to remind me what I’d lost. The left wrist remained shackled to the bedpost, a constant anchor. A reminder.The door? Still locked. Always locked. The windows? Sealed with industrial expertise. No latch, no hinge, no give. It was like the room itself had been hermetically sealed, vacuum-packed for captivity. Time didn’t flow h
VENUSThe rain kept ticking at the windows like a metronome gone mad. I sat propped against the pillows, wrists sore from their weight against the mattress, heart slow but loud, like it was pacing inside a cage. Minutes passed. Hours, maybe. Or seconds. Time was unreliable here, bending under the weight of silence.Then I heard it.The creak.Not from the hall. Not faint or distant. No, this was right outside the door. purposeful and heavy.He was back.The doorknob turned with ceremonial slowness, like he wanted me to hear it, to anticipate him. And I did. Not with fear. Not anymore. With precision. With restraint. I had learned the rhythm of his delusion, and I was learning how to weaponize it.The door opened.Gerald stepped in like a scene rehearsed. Pressed shirt. Bare feet. A tray in his hands, covered in a silver lid. Steam rising. Always a production with him."You’re awake," he said with that voice—too calm, too pleased.I didn’t speak.His eyes swept over me, checking. Not i