When I surfaced from the dark, it wasn't like waking, it was like being dragged up through ice. My eyelids felt glued together, heavy and uncoordinated, and every part of my body pulsed with a dull, electric ache. For a few seconds, I didn't know if I was dreaming, dead, or somewhere in between.
The room came into focus in fragments.
The ceiling above me was dark, matte black with a faint sheen, like polished stone hidden beneath shadows. Subtle recessed lights glowed from the corners, casting low amber halos that didn't quite reach the center of the room, leaving most of the space in half shadow.
I tried to move. Pain surged across my arms and legs, sharp and burning, like hot wires tightening beneath my skin. Even breathing felt wrong, like my ribs were arguing with the air.
The bed beneath me was too soft, too expensive. The sheets were smooth, heavy, and cold against my skin, silk or something close. The scent lingering in them was unfamiliar, clean, but not sterile, notes of oud, smoke, and something metallic.
The air itself felt curated, conditioned, filtered, silent. No hum of traffic, no creak of old walls. Just darkness dressed in money.
And then I saw him.
Edward sat in a wooden chair near the corner of the room, elbows resting on his knees, eyes fixed on me with a stillness that didn't belong to anyone sane. A small lamp behind him cast a weak light that carved shadows across his face, exaggerating every sharp angle until he looked like a sketch of himself, unfinished and dangerous.
He didn't blink.
"Don't move," he said, his tone flat and unimpressed, as if I were the one inconveniencing him. "You'll hurt yourself. Your body is still numb."
The words slithered over my skin. My lips felt cracked, my throat scraped raw, but I forced them apart.
"What… what did you give me?"
My voice barely sounded human, hoarse, shredded, like it had clawed its way out.
He leaned back in the chair, studying me with the slow patience of someone appraising an object he already owned. "It's your new home. Your new room." He said it like he was listing facts, not severing my life. "You are not allowed to go back. You're going to live here, with me."
The words didn't register at first. They floated in the air, absurd and cold, until they smashed against the truth of where I was.
"No," I rasped. The effort scraped fire along my vocal cords. "I am not your---- ..Why would I follow your orders? Who are you? You mean nothing to me!"
The panic surged then, sharp and dizzying. I tried pushing up on my arms to sit properly, but my muscles quivered and gave out. The room lurched sideways and then back, and I had to grab the edge of the mattress to stay grounded.
"Because I want you to stay here with me," he said, as though desire outweighed autonomy, fear, reality. "So stop asking these silly questions."
"No." I tried again, the word more breath than sound but edged with every scrap of resistance I had left. "I won't."
His lips stretched into something that might have been a smile if anything human was behind it. Instead, it was empty, like a mask that forgot how expressions truly worked. He chuckled, a hollow, echoing sound, the kind people use when they don't understand why something isn't funny.
Something tightened low in my stomach, a terrible certainty that this was only the beginning.
"You like it or not, Anna, you're going to live here," he said. His jaw was set, but his voice carried a calm so controlled it felt rehearsed. He stood and came toward me, not with violence this time, but with an eerie, practiced tenderness. He helped me sit upright and slid a pillow behind my back, his fingers brushing my shoulder as if we were sharing a morning, not a nightmare.
The intimacy made my skin crawl.
"Edward, everything between us is over," I said, each word shaking but carved from what little strength I had left. "Let me live in peace."
For a moment, he just watched me. His expression shifted, hurt, anger, disbelief, something else I couldn't name. His mouth parted, ready to argue, when the door creaked open without warning.
"Julian woke up," a voice said from the hall.
Edward didn't turn his head right away. His eyes slid toward the door with a slow, razor edged calm. "Who gave you permission to enter?" he asked, voice so quiet it was worse than a shout.
The man standing half in the doorway froze. "Sorry, sir," he said quickly, backing away as if the air itself had teeth.
Edward exhaled once, then looked at me again. The change was instant, he smoothed his expression and offered a faint, almost affectionate smile. "Stay here. I'll be back soon."
My pulse hammered so hard it blurred my hearing. Boss? Julian? The words tangled in my head. None of this made sense, until it did.
When Edward stepped out, I shifted, wincing as dull pain rippled through my body. The room's door wasn't fully shut. Through a sliver of space I could see the next room, dim, industrial, colder.
Julian George.
Tied to a chair.
The same Julian who'd gone missing just a day ago.
His wrists were bound so tightly the skin had gone dark, and his mouth was gagged with cloth. His chest heaved with silent, broken panic. Another man stood nearby, maybe an assistant, maybe another monster. Metal tools were laid out across a table beside them, hooks, clamps, blades, instruments meant to end someone slowly.
My lungs forgot how to function. I didn't even realize I'd stopped breathing until my vision blurred.
Edward appeared in my line of sight like he'd been there all along.
He looked at Julian.
"So," he said casually, as though he were discussing weekend plans, "you asked her to be your date?"
Julian's voice shook, even muffled. "I-- I'm s-sorry. I didn't know she was yours--" he stuttered, as if the right words might buy him time.
Edward tilted his head, the movement slow and deliberate. His eyes stayed calm, but there was nothing alive behind them. "Punishment," he said softly, "is punishment."
He raised the gun like it was nothing heavier than a pen.
Then he pulled the trigger.
The sound wasn't the dramatic crack you hear in movies, it was a wet, close, startling pop that punched the air from my lungs. Julian's body went slack in the chair.
A scream tore out of me, a raw, ragged explosion that scraped my throat on the way out. I slammed the door with a force as I couldn't watch it. I closed the door before I could see any blood coming out of Julian's body.
I didn't know I had and stumbled backward, nearly tripping over my own legs as I fled into the hallway. My heartbeat thundered, frantic, feral.
But I didn't get far.
Edward's hand clamped around my wrist before I even heard him follow. His breath brushed the shell of my ear when he spoke.
"You saw everything, didn't you, Anna?"
"Leave me!" I cried, twisting hard enough to make my shoulder burn.
He laughed seeing me scared.
I tore myself free and ran, slamming the first door I could reach behind me. I collapsed against it, knees buckling, my back sliding down the wood.
Sobs wracked my chest in brutal, breathless hiccups. Faces, neighbors, strangers, people who'd smiled at me, flashed in my head. People who had disappeared. People whose only mistake was proximity to me.
And now Julian.
Because of me.
Because he'd asked me out.
Because Edward had seen.
Edward's fists slammed against the door. "Open it, Anna!" he snarled. The controlled tone was gone now, this voice was raw, violent, erupting. "Open this right now, or I swear I'll make you regret it."
I staggered to my feet on shaking legs, eyes darting around for anything heavy, anything sharp, anything to put between us. Then, sudden silence. The pounding stopped.
For a few seconds, the quiet was worse than his rage.
Then, click.
The lock turned.
The door opened with a slow, deliberate swing.
"I warned you," Edward said as he stepped inside. His body was coiled, jaw flexing with barely suppressed fury. He didn't need to shout. The threat was in every tight line of his frame. "Didn't I?"
"Stay away!" I screamed, the words splitting in my throat. "You killed him!" He scoffed in disbelief. "So why are you crying for him?" He closed the door while continuing.
"He deserved that, no he deserves the worst." Edward replied, voice icy and detached, like someone stating the weather.
I didn't think. I lunged.
My hand closed around the nearest object, a ceramic vase on the side table. I swung with everything panic could give me.
Edward caught both my wrists in one movement, his reflexes frighteningly fast. The vase slipped from my fingers and shattered on the floor in a spray of glittering shards.
Something inside me broke with it.
"Enough."
His voice was calm, too calm, but the sharp undercurrent in his tone sliced through the air and made my stomach twist. The silence that followed was worse than yelling. His eyes lingered on me with a kind of cold amusement, like he was already imagining what came next. "I think you need punishment."
A bitter laugh scraped up my throat before I could stop it. "Living here is punishment itself," I spat, my chest rising and falling with anger I barely understood anymore.
For a moment, he didn't respond. The quiet stretched, thick and hostile. Then, with a slow and deliberate motion, he stepped forward. His hand pressed against my shoulder, not hard, just firm enough to send a warning, and he guided me back until the mattress caught me behind the knees. I stumbled and landed on the bed, heart pounding against my ribs like it wanted out.
He didn't rush. That was the worst part. He stood over me, fingers moving to the top button of his shirt. One click. Then another. The sound was small, but it echoed in my skull like a countdown. His lips curled into a smirk, one that didn't quite reach his eyes. There was something unreadable there, anticipation, cruelty, control. I couldn't tell.
"This is only the begining, Anna," he said at last.
It wasn't just a statement. It was a promise… or a threat. And I didn't know which terrified me more.
To be continued