CHAPTER TWO: Before the Devil Knew Her Name

She dreamed in pieces. It didn’t come in stories or memories.It was more like deadly echoes.

Sunlight through lace curtains. Dust floating in golden beams. Her mother’s voice - soft, tired, humming some song Evelyn had never known the name of. A kitchen that always smelled like vanilla and burnt toast. The floorboards creaked in the same spots they always had. The kettle screamed every morning at 7:02.

The world was small. Gentle. Predictable.

Evelyn used to braid her hair in front of the mirror, not because it needed it, but because it gave her something to do with her hands. She loved lavender soap. She hated thunderstorms. She whispered secrets to the cat who slept by her window and believed the moon listened when she cried.

She had dreams, once. Small ones.

The kind that never seemed important until they were gone. Like buying her mother a new coat. Like planting a garden. Like reading every book in the little library by the hill. None of them included being sold.

She remembered the moment everything changed with startling clarity. The sound of her father’s voice, raised for the first time. The way her mother stopped talking after that. The suitcase that appeared by the door looked like a threat. The silence during dinner. The way Evelyn learned to shrink, to fold herself smaller and smaller, as though if she took up less space, maybe the tension in the house wouldn’t crack so loudly. But it did.

It cracked in the form of men in suits. Cold hands shaking her father’s hand. A check being passed across a kitchen table that once held birthday cakes and spilled tea.

She wasn’t told the truth. Not directly. But she heard things.

“She’s just a girl.”

“There’s no choice.”

“He said he’d take care of it.”

“She’ll live in luxury.”

Luxury. As if that word could drown out everything else.

The night they took her, it was raining. Hard. The kind of rain that makes the world blur at the edges.

They didn’t hurt her. That would’ve been easier.

They just took her. Calmly. Quietly. As if she was luggage being moved, not a girl being lost. She was placed in a car with dark windows and soft leather seats. No one looked at her. No one spoke to her. And for a while, she thought maybe it was a mistake.

Until they reached the place with the velvet curtains and the painted girls and the whispers that bled through the walls.

Until she realized she wasn’t a person anymore.

She was a prize. A thing to be bought. A fantasy with a price tag.

She shifted in the silk sheets now, still asleep, her brow furrowed. The fireplace crackled. Outside the windows, the night pressed in like a hand over her mouth.

Evelyn dreamed of her mother’s laugh. Her own hands were covered in dirt from planting flowers that never grew. The feeling of warm bread in winter. Wind through open windows.

She dreamed of safety and softness. But even in dreams, it didn’t last.

Lucien’s shadow lurked at the edge of every scene. Watching. Waiting. A presence without form. A heat behind her. A breath on her neck.

The dream splintered into sharp edges. And Evelyn woke with a gasp, her heart pounding.

The room was too quiet. The silence was too heavy.

And she remembered, too clearly - that she was no longer a girl who belonged to herself.

She was a possession. She was property. She was a beauty wrapped in fear. And she was no longer dreaming.

Her chest rose and fell in a shallow rhythm, like her body was still unsure if it was allowed to breathe freely.

The room hadn’t changed. Neither had the cold.

But she had.

Sleep had peeled her open. Dreaming had made her remember who she used to be and waking reminded her that the girl was gone. Erased. Replaced with someone quieter. Still. Someone whose silence was more valuable than her voice.

She sat up slowly, the sheets whispering around her like old ghosts.

The fire had died again.

The moon had moved.

Time passed differently here, warped by the stillness of captivity and the weight of unseen eyes. Evelyn didn’t know what hour it was, only that morning hadn’t come and that if Lucien had wanted her, he would’ve come for her already.

And yet, that didn’t comfort her.

His absence was worse than his presence. Because it wasn’t safety, it was strategy.

She rose, legs weak beneath her, and crossed the room to the windows. The curtains resisted her hands, but she pulled them open anyway, desperate for something real.

But outside, there was nothing.

No lights. No roads. Just trees. Dark, jagged, endless. They crowded the horizon like soldiers, their branches clawing at the sky. Even the stars refused to look down.

She pressed her palm to the cold glass.

This wasn’t a home. It wasn’t a palace.

It was a holding cell carved from luxury.

And she was the thing on display - waiting for the moment the monster remembered he owned her.

The door behind her creaked, soft but deliberate.

She didn’t turn.

She didn’t flinch.

She just stared at the trees.

Waiting.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

The voice wasn’t Lucien’s.

It was a woman’s. Familiar, flat, the same one in black gloves who had bathed her like a broken object.

Evelyn turned her head slowly.

The woman stood in the doorway, holding a silver tray. Tea, untouched. A plate of something delicate and sweet. And beside it, a folded note sealed with black wax.

She didn’t speak again. She just set the tray down, nodded once, and left as quietly as she came.

Evelyn didn’t touch the tea. She didn’t open the note.

She only stared at it.

Because somehow, without reading a word, she already knew who it was from.

Lucien didn’t need to knock.

He didn’t need to enter the room.

He had found new ways to invade her silence. To haunt her hours.

And Evelyn understood, with a deep chill in her bones.

The games had begun.