CHAPTER THREE: The Devil Comes in the Morning

The morning didn’t come with sunlight. It came with silence.

The kind that presses against your skin like water just before you drown. Evelyn sat on the edge of the bed, still in the silk nightgown, still barefoot. She hadn’t touched the food left for her. She didn’t trust it. She didn’t trust anything in this place that looked like a dream and breathed like a nightmare.

She had counted the hours. She thought that maybe if she could survive the first night, maybe he would lose interest.

But Lucien Saint-Croix wasn’t a man who lost interest. He studied it. He fed it.

He was the kind of man who liked to watch the wings come off slowly.

So when the door opened without warning, without a knock, she wasn’t surprised. But she was still terrified.

He didn’t speak at first. Just stood there in the doorway, dressed in a black tailored shirt, collar loose, sleeves rolled. He moved like a man who had never been told “no” in his life. Everything about him was too still, too sharp. His presence swallowed the room.

And Evelyn… She forgot how to breathe. He didn’t look at her like she was a person. He looked at her like she was his.

Lucien’s voice, when it came, was low. Almost lazy. But every word dripped with intention.

“You didn’t eat.”

She said nothing.

He walked forward, slow and deliberate, and for every step he took, her pulse sped up. When he stopped in front of her, she couldn’t meet his eyes. She stared at the floor, her hands clenched in her lap.

“You think I would  poison what I paid ten million dollars for?”

Still, she said nothing.

A small, cold smile curved his mouth. He knelt in front of her. The type of kneeling that wasn’t kind. It was predatory. He took her chin in two fingers and lifted her face until her eyes were forced to meet his.

“You’re quiet,” he murmured. “They said you were sweet. Fragile. Timid. Pure.” His thumb brushed the corner of her mouth. Not lovingly. Curiously. Like he was inspecting merchandise. “I think they were wrong. At first glance, I thought you might be brave.”

Evelyn finally spoke. Soft. Barely a whisper.

“I’m not brave.”

“No,” Lucien said, his voice dark with amusement. “You’re not. You’re something worse.”

She blinked.

“You’re tempting.”

His eyes darkened with something she couldn’t name - something dangerous, something hungry. He let go of her face and stood, turning away for a moment.

“You were made to be ruined,” he said, almost to himself. “And I have never in my life wanted to ruin something more.”

There was no lust in his voice. No rush. No heat. Just that cold, slow cruelty, the kind that takes its time.

Lucien walked to the window and pulled back the curtain. Light poured in, striking his profile like it was trying to make him human.

It failed.

“I’m not going to touch you today,” he said.

Relief surged through her.

“But I want you to understand something, Evelyn.”

He turned back to her, and this time, his gaze was like ice melting into a blade.

“You’re not here to survive. You’re not here to be loved. You’re here to be mine. Every breath. Every fear. Every tear. I want all of it.”

She swallowed, hard.

He took a step closer.

“And I want you to break in a way no one else ever will again.”

He had almost reached the door when he paused, hand resting on the dark wood.

“Oh,” he said, turning his head slightly, like he had nearly forgotten. “One more thing.”

Evelyn stiffened.

He faced her again, a lazy cruelty dancing in his eyes. “I don’t like the name Evelyn.”

The words cut sharper than she expected. Her name had always been hers. A connection to something real. Something she owned before this life. The sound of her mother’s voice calling her in from the garden. The softness in her father’s eyes, before the world soured him.

Lucien saw the flicker of pain on her face.

And he smiled.

“Evelyn is… gentle,” he mused. “Innocent. It sounds like spring flowers and shy glances. But I didn’t buy spring, little dove.”

Her lips parted - just slightly - as if to speak. But he cut her off with a whisper, low and decisive.

“I bought ash.”

He walked toward her again, slower this time, like he was savoring every step. Her hands clenched tighter in her lap.

“I think I’ll call you Kali.”

The name echoed in the space like a spell. Foreign. Wrong. Like a dress tailored for someone else being forced over her skin.

“You can hate it,” Lucien said. “But you’ll answer it. You’ll breathe it. You’ll learn to break it with your mouth.”

He leaned in close, so close she could feel his breath at the edge of her jaw.

“Because Evelyn belongs to the girl you used to be.”

Then he straightened, brushed invisible dust from his sleeve, and delivered the final blow with a smirk.

“And she doesn’t exist anymore.”

He left her with that.

A name that wasn’t hers.

A silence that screamed.

And the terrifying truth that the man who owned her body was now reaching into the marrow of herself - undoing her, not with rage, but with precision.

She whispered her old name into the pillow long after he left.

Just to remember how it sounded. Just to remind herself that Evelyn had meant something once.

Even if Kali was the only name the Devil would ever speak again.

She didn’t cry.

Not when he renamed her.

Not even when the door closed behind him with the soft finality of a coffin lid.

She just sat there, still, silent, hollow.

Kali.

The name curled inside her like smoke, like something burning beneath her ribs. It wasn’t just a theft - it was a rewriting. A reborn of her body, her voice, her past. Evelyn had been a whisper of innocence. Kali felt like a weapon waiting to be used.

And maybe that was the point.

She moved slowly, legs trembling as she stood. Her reflection in the mirror across the room caught her off-guard. The girl who stared back wore silk and shadows. She didn’t look like someone who’d once braided her hair and dreamed of gardens. She looked like someone surviving a war no one else could see.

Evelyn reached out, pressed her fingers to the glass.

“Say it,” she whispered. Not to the mirror. To herself.

Her throat closed.

She couldn’t.

Not yet.

But she knew - sooner or later - she would have to.

Because that was the game.

And Lucien didn’t just want her body.

He wanted her to say it. To mean it. To wear the name like a collar.

Kali.

She curled back onto the bed and pulled the sheets tight around her, not for warmth, but to feel something hold her. Her lips moved again, but no sound came. She wasn’t Evelyn anymore. And the silence that followed that thought wasn’t empty.

It was mourning.