Killian is no longer the obedient person Robert molded, he’s becoming something else. unpredictable. And Robert feels it. Meanwhile, Ivy’s trapped just rooms away, and every second that passes raises the stakes. Let me know your theories below. 💬🔥 Until next chapter, JW
The file came just after three a.m.No message. No warning.Just a quiet buzz from my encrypted line, followed by a digital packet that unpacked itself in a slow, efficient bleed of data.I didn’t open it right away.Instead, I stood barefoot in the center of the room, nursing black coffee like it could delay what I already knew was coming. The night pressed against the floor to ceiling windows like a question I didn’t want to answer. I have been awake all night, I couldn’t sleep. The thought of ivy had creep into me all day till midnight. There is something going on, I have seen it with my mother, but with ivy, it is different. She is strong, stubborn and difficult to break. It seems different seeing her being mould into something else by Robert and Victor. Eventually, I walked back to my desk and double tapped the screen.One file.One face.One mark.Red.My stomach clenched, of guilt, but not with fear, and with something heavier. Familiar. The way old grief wraps around your ri
The screen glowed softly in the dim room, my phone resting on the nightstand like a live wire. I didn’t want to look at it again, afraid of what I’d find. But I did. Every second, every pull of my finger brought me closer to pieces I couldn’t handle right now.A single new message: Killian: I’m sorry.I stared. The world shook a little.Not “I love you,” not “I’m here,” just “I’m sorry.” Enough. Too much. It carried every apology he’d never said, every absence, every cowardice, every choice he’d made that ended with my world in shreds.I pressed my forehead to the cool wall. Tears came unbidden, hot and sudden. My breathing came in broken shards. Everything in me had clenched, tightened, shut down. And now…opened, spilling.I curled into myself on the bed, hugging knees to my chest. I pressed the phone against my heart like a talisman. And I fell apart.What I felt wasn’t relief. It was heartbreak all over again. Because I loved him. Still do. I hate that I do. And now I knew love woul
The city at night never slept, but Killian Wolfe’s apartment sat high above it all, quiet, detached. He liked it that way. Clean lines, dark stone, silence stretching through the rooms like a second skin. It was a place built for forgetting. A place where nothing reached him unless he allowed it to.And tonight, he couldn’t stop letting her in.He scrolled through his phone with the slow, unfocused rhythm of someone trying to numb himself. News. Markets. Weather. A text from a broker. Then, There she was.Ivy Lancaster.His chest seized before his mind caught up.It was a photo. Her smile was demure. Too demure. Her back was straight. Her clothes expensive and soft, cream silk and pearl earrings.But it was the caption that shattered him.“Adjusting. Slowly. Grateful.”He read it again.And again.The words were wrong. Ivy didn’t speak like that. Ivy was spitfire and sarcasm. She had once written him an entire paragraph about how “grateful” was the kind of word rich men gave their wiv
Morning didn’t come with sound, only light, soft and golden through the linen curtains. It brushed her cheeks like a whisper, but Ivy didn’t stir. Her body woke before her mind, stretching without direction, her hands curling loosely over the sheets.She hadn’t dreamed. Or maybe she had, and the dreams were so quiet she mistook them for death.Her eyes opened. The ceiling above her was ivory with delicate carvings. A room meant to soothe.But Ivy had begun to understand something ugly, Even comfort could be a kind of violence.She sat up slowly.The breakfast tray was already placed near the window, steaming gently. Eggs. Toast. Fruit cut into perfect shapes. She hadn’t heard anyone come in.They moved around her now like she was something sacred, or untouchable.Her robe lay folded on the end of the bed. Next to it, a dress she hadn’t picked: pale yellow with thin straps and a fitted waist, the color of springtime and submission.She stared at it. Then she got up, undressed, and step
Victor stared at the monitor.The new room suited her.Too well.Muted walls, clean lines, light flooding in from high windows, everything about it whispered calm, comfort, safety. A curated illusion. A silk wrapped cage.And Ivy moved within it like a queen in her sanctuary. Brushing her hair with unhurried strokes. Folding her hands in her lap like a woman meditating. Walking barefoot from window to bed like the walls didn’t choke her.Like she had won something.She hadn’t.Victor’s fingers tapped rhythmically against the leather armrest. One beat, then two. His eyes never left the screen.Her silence had once been sweet to him, proof that she was breaking. A subtle kind of surrender. The absence of screams had meant progress.Now it felt… defiant. Rehearsed.Weaponized.A kind of stillness that threatened everything he’d carved into her skin, everything he’d trained into her breath. It wasn’t obedience. It was control.Hers.“She should be grateful,” he muttered under his breath, l
The water scalded as it hit her skin. Silent maids moved around her like ghosts, scrubbing, rinsing, dressing her in something that smelled like roses and money. The bruises bloomed beneath their touch, raw and unhidden, but no one flinched. Not them. Not her.Her robe was gone. In its place, a pale lavender dress with capped sleeves and a cinched waist. Elegant. Controlled. The zipper dragged slowly up her spine like a seal being pressed into flesh.No one spoke.The final touches were clinical: a light gloss on her lips, a brush through her damp hair. Her wrists were red from heat, her face puffy but powdered. One of the maids handed her a pair of soft slippers.And then they left.Ivy stood alone in the bathroom, the sound of the faucet still dripping into silence.She stepped toward the mirror.The girl who stared back wasn’t her. Not the Ivy from her art studio floor in her house. Not the girl who once laughed with Killian in his cabin or whispered dreams of freedom under a Tuscan