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This restaurant, with no other patrons, felt very quiet, eerily so. It was as if the place had been abandoned, and in a lot of ways, it had—by force. Noah had made sure this was the case by emptying out the place so we could have some sort of "private dinner." He claimed that was all this was, but the reality was much darker than this. I was a prisoner, confined in this elegant cage of sparkling chandeliers and polished silverware, which seemed to mock the horror of my situation.Noah sat opposite me, his demeanour quite calm and collected, in pungent contrast to the turmoil now rising inside of me. His cold, calculating eyes used to be warm and familiar, but now they belonged to a stranger, a man who remained unrecognized to me. He smiled at me, but it was nothing like the real thing. It was that smile of a predator, one pleased with his catch."Isn't this nice?" he asked, his voice smooth and deceptively gentle. "Just the two of us, enjoying a meal together. It's like old times, isn'
I wobbled into the apartment, my legs like lead, my heart heavy from the events of the night. My mind was racing to a degree, trying to get everything that had happened in order, but sheer exhaustion made thinking impossible. All I wanted to do was fall onto the bed, bury myself under the covers, and somehow, magically, wake up from this nightmare. But instantly, as I crossed the threshold, a cold shiver went down my spine at Noah's presence right behind me.The door clicked shut behind me; the apartment became silent. I wanted to scream, to cry out for help even, but I knew it would just be fruitless. Noah had forever been one up on me, forever in control. My conscious struggles against him, my attempts to form some kind of plan out of the situation, now lay as limp as the wall around my body, allowing hopeless despair to choke me."Christie," Noah's voice carried through the hush like a knife, and my heart jumped. With slow dread, I turned until my gaze landed on him. His eyes were t
I looked down at my plate, the food untouched and fast getting cold. The idea of eating turned my stomach over with nausea; appetite was a thing then unfelt. All I wanted was to be left alone, burrow into that tiny corner of my mind where peace still lingered. Noah's presence was impossible to ignore with his eyes, always on me as he sat across the table, waiting—waiting for what?.The only sound in the room was the ticking of a clock somewhere in the distance, detailing by seconds exactly how long I could stand relentlessly in my nightmare. I wouldn't look at him—refused to turn my attention to the man who once held so much importance in my life yet now stood as the reason behind my deepest despair. My eyes rested on a table, beckoning for strength to hold myself together."Christie," Noah's voice cut through the silence, low but penetrating, forcing my unwilling attention. I could feel the confusion, the frustration in the tone, as though he couldn't understand why I wasn't playing a
The days had blurred into a smothering haze. Every morning, I woke up to the same stark, white walls, the same locked doors, the same overwhelming sense of dread. I moved through my days like a ghost, barely aware of the passage of time. Noah was relentless, always watching, always hovering just out of sight, but I had become adept at avoiding him. I knew his daily patterns, knew when he would leave me alone, and clung to those moments of reprieve like a lifeline. In such silent moments, I could almost fool myself into believing that I was free, somewhere else, someone else.But reality never strayed too far; it lurked in every nook of this mansion. I wasn't alone in the house; there were others—staff who came and went, faceless people who moved through the rooms with the same quiet efficiency. But none of them ever looked at me, not really. They were scrupulous, always scrupulous, avoiding my eyes as if they felt that to acknowledge my existence would somehow make them complicit in my
Days went by, each one blending into the next, until I'd lost track of time altogether. Except what marked days was the increasing desperation gnawing at my insides. It had been a week since I got Seth's letter, but while the words had given me hope—hope was beginning to feel like a cruel, fast joke. Nothing had changed. I was still trapped, still at Noah's mercy, and no rescue was in sight. Every morning, I woke with a pit in my stomach; the weight of my situation bearing down upon me until I could hardly breathe.I lay there in bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling the minutes crawl by with agonizing slowness. Seth's letter had always been close at hand, under my pillow or in the pocket of my robe, a reminder of what I once had and what I had lost—the man I loved. As the days turned into weeks, even that small comfort began to fade as the cold, harsh truth seemed to overwhelm me at every turn. Noah would not be swayed, and he was everywhere.He would come to my room every day, always
Despair had settled into my bones, and every day was an eternity. Noah's mansion squeezed me with its walls, letting all hopes out of breath. The letter from Seth had granted me a momentary feeling of purpose, making me feel that perhaps, just perhaps, I could put up with this nightmare until somebody saved me from it. But with every passing day, that hope began to dwindle, replaced by the cold reality that I stood alone in this fight. Alone, but for Martha.Martha was a quiet, unassuming presence in the house. She moved through the mansion like a ghost, performing her duties with a sort of muted efficiency which made her all but invisible to Noah. But she wasn't to me. I could see the look in her eyes—those pitiful, concerned glances. She saw how this imprisonment was getting to me, how Noah's clutches were making me wither away bit by bit. It broke her heart as much as it did mine.At first, I hadn't planned on bringing Martha into my plans. She was just the help, after all. I couldn
The days following my botched escape attempt blurred into a fusion of fear and helplessness. I had been so close to freedom, only for it to be turned upon by Noah's cruel hand. Those cold, merciless eyes of his still haunted my thoughts, as did the echo of the gunshot that had rung through the air as I had fled. But it wasn't the sound of the gun that kept me awake all night, nor the memory of his grip on Martha. It was what followed—the cold, grim silence that fell on the mansion, and then the swift and brutal punishment Noah doled out.I was locked in my room immediately after my escape attempt, the door bolted from the outside like I was nothing more than a wild animal in a cage. Noah didn't visit or utter a word. The hours blurred into one as I lay there, staring at that door, waiting for the inevitable showdown between us. The question was what new torment Noah would contrive to break me. But it wasn't my fate that hung in the balance—it was Martha's.It was two days before I hear
Every subsequent failure in evading Noah buried me deeper in my despair. Days were spent suffocating in a haze of fear and longing to be free as my mind turned over with thoughts of new plans, new ways to break free. To be sure, the tragedy of my friend Martha haunted me, but rather than breaking my spirit, that was the fire which fueled my drive to survive at all costs. I would find a way out of this nightmare, even if it meant risking everything.Weeks passed, and Noah's control over me became as tight as a noose around my neck. I was watched constantly, never allowed a moment of privacy. The guards were always there, lurking in the shadows, their cold eyes following my every move. Even the housemaids seemed to be replaced with some new, chillier staff—women who did not meet my gaze and kept conversations to a minimum. It was obvious that Noah had tightened his security; now the walls of my prison stood higher than ever.But I refused to give up. I couldn't. Knowing what was at stake