Chapter Nine: Colder Than Winter

The days that followed were colder than any winter Emilia had ever known.

Not because of the weather.

Because of Lucien.

He didn’t yell.He didn’t touch her.

He didn’t even acknowledge her.

She truly felt like an object, bought, caged, and discarded.

Rosa, once tolerable, had turned needlessly cruel. Snapping at her, shoving chores into her hands, slamming doors in her face. Emilia couldn’t help but wonder if Lucien had ordered it, if making her miserable was part of the punishment.

She tried to hold on to the quiet strength she came here with, but it was slipping, slipping through her fingers like sand. She’d wake up and stare at the ceiling, numb, wondering what day it was. What version of herself had survived the night.

Lucien hadn’t said a single word since he slammed the office door in her face.

He hadn’t summoned her either.

She was no longer allowed to join him at the dinner table. The few times she caught glimpses of him, passing through hallways, giving commands in low, lethal tones, sitting in silence at the far end of the long dining table, he looked right past her. As if she didn’t exist.

As if she were no more than the marble beneath his feet.

She wasn’t his guest. She was his slave. She was his property.

Emilia remembered the way his eyes once lingered on her in the greenhouse, how his touch had trembled with restraint when she patched his wound. She thought, stupidly, that maybe he saw her.

Maybe there was a man beneath the monster.

But it was all a lie.

There was no tenderness. No softness. No secret warmth behind his ice.

Lucien Moretti was carved from cruelty.

She is nothing to him, she is a slave, a shadow, a silent possession. She had bury the hope, whatever hope she has.

Because maybe that was the point.

Maybe he wanted to break her so completely she’d forget she was ever whole.

The girl who came here, the one who cried in the bathroom and held her head high anyway, that girl didn’t exist anymore.

Lucien had killed her.

And all that was left was silence.

****

Silence had always been his sanctuary.

But this silence, it was different.

It roared in his head like a storm.

He could still hear her voice echoing in that hallway, soft and trembling when she said “Please.”

He could still see the look in her eyes when he told her she was property.

It was necessary.

It had to be done.

He was not the man she thought she saw. And he would rather burn than let her believe otherwise.

Lucien stood at his office window, watching the rain streak down the glass like veins of silver. Below, the estate was quiet. The guards had rotated out, Rosa had retreated to the staff quarters, and Emilia…

Emilia hadn’t made a sound in two days.

Not since he told her what she was. Not since he shut the door in her face.

And that, too, was necessary.

He had seen it in her eyes, the spark. The flicker of defiance. Of belief. She looked at him like he was still human.

He couldn’t afford that.

He wasn’t human. Not anymore.

Not after the things he had done and still would do.

He turned away from the window and poured himself a drink. The liquor bit into his throat, but it didn’t burn enough to match the heat crawling under his skin.

He didn’t want her to look at him like that.

Didn’t want her to hope. Didn’t want her to reach.

So he ignored her.

Avoided her.

He ordered Rosa to keep her busy. To make it clear that kindness would not be repeated. That whatever she thought she saw in him before, it was gone.

But even as he hardened his exterior, something inside him twisted when he caught glimpses of her.

That quiet way she moved now, small and invisible.

The way her eyes never met his.

The empty chair at the dinner table.

She was folding in on herself like a dying star.

And yet… that was the point, wasn’t it?

Break her.

So she wouldn’t try to change him.

So she would learn to survive without needing anything from him.

Lucien slammed the glass down too hard on the desk, the sound cracking through the stillness.

He hated this.

Hated the ache in his jaw from clenching it every time he saw her walking past. Hated the tightness in his chest when she didn’t speak.

Hated the guilt.

Because she hadn’t deserved this.

But she had to be taught.

Because he was not a savior.

He was a weapon.

And Emilia Brown was not the girl who would tame him. She couldn’t be. Because the moment she got too close, she’d see what he truly was.

And then she’d run.

Or worse, she wouldn’t.

He couldn’t allow either.

So he locked the doors.

Closed the distance.

Spoke to her only through orders, when absolutely necessary.

And when she stopped looking at him at all, when her spirit finally started to dull, something inside him whispered: Good.

But another voice, buried far deeper, hissed: Coward.

Lucien shoved it down.

He had made his choice.

He would be the monster she believed in now. Because that was the only way to protect her, from him.

And the worst part?

He didn’t even know if he could protect himself anymore.