The Mirror
The mirror blurred long before the steam should have reached it. She stayed under the spray until the glass ran with water, until her skin flushed red and her lungs ached. When she surfaced, her hair clung in heavy ropes, eyes hollowed out in the reflection.
For a moment she didn't look like herself at all.
She touched her throat where the bruise hid beneath silk, but her hand slipped on wet skin. Her body felt like a ghost she lived inside, an outline she wasn't sure belonged to her.
She shut the water off. Silence rushed in, louder than the spray.
The Table
At dinner, Ethan asked nothing. That was worse than questions. His silence pressed, steady, a vice around the air.
She wore sleeves long enough to cover the faint bruises that weren't his to see. He didn't look at her wrists, but she knew he could feel something pulling at the edges.
When she reached for her wine, her hand trembled. The glass clicked against the stem. His eyes followed it once, then looked away as if the proof wasn't worth the words.
"Long day," she said. It was all she could offer.
The lie tasted like ash.
The Message
Julian's message came at midnight.
Report.
She typed: Steady. Green.
But her hand shook when she sent it, and the truth pressed like water at her ribs. She set the phone aside, then picked it up again, desperate for his reply, needing the tether he gave her.
When it came, it wasn't enough.
Good. Hold.
She curled into herself, his shirt against her skin, the scent faded but not gone. She wanted to believe in its promise, that she was still his to anchor. But when she closed her eyes, the water dragged her under again, silence swallowing the scream she never let out.
The Office
The next morning she walked into his office, immaculate in black. He dismissed his assistant without looking.
"Close the door."
She did. But when she turned back, she didn't speak.
Julian studied her. The tight set of her jaw. The glass-bright sheen in her eyes. The faint pallor under her skin that no makeup could mask.
"Report," he said.
Nothing.
Her silence wasn't obedience this time. It was absence.
He crossed to her, the deliberate stillness of a man who never lost control. His hand hovered at her jaw. Her body didn't flinch, didn't lean in, didn't move at all.
"Lena."
The name broke against her like a wave. Still she said nothing.
And for the first time, Julian felt it: fear. Not of losing control, but of losing her.
The Waterline
He took her wrists gently, lifted her hands where silk had once bound them. They hung limp in his grip. He searched her eyes and found nothing there but the reflection of his own.
"Color," he demanded, voice rawer than he intended.
She opened her mouth. Closed it.
Nothing.
It was worse than red, worse than breaking. It was silence.
He pulled her against him, coat around her shoulders, holding her like a man anchoring someone already halfway drowned. Her head fell against his chest, hair damp from a shower that had gone on too long.
For once, he didn't order. He begged, though the word never left his mouth. His arms tightened, fierce and terrified.
Her silence disarmed him more than disobedience ever had.