Chapter 1
Author's Note: Reader discretion is advised. First and final notice: No further trigger warnings will be included from this point onward.
Everything blurs around her as the security guard leads her through the tunnels and out of the building. She knows the pattern of her own behaviour — how it started, how one small interaction became something more. She knows exactly where she went wrong. And she knows what Christian will do next.
After two years under his control, she had finally been allowed to leave the mansion. But it doesn’t matter. The consequences were already waiting for her.
The car waits when Selene steps outside—black paint, engine running, no visible driver until the moment the door opens, as if the vehicle exists only when it is needed.
Selene pauses, not because she believes she can run, but because she always checks. Once, it was survival. Now, it feels like conditioning.
“Good evening,” the driver says, refusing to meet her eyes. She steps inside, and the door closes behind her with a soft, final click.
The world outside disappears.
Rain begins before they move. At first, it is nothing more than a light tapping against the windows — a reminder that the outside world still exists, even if she can no longer reach it. Then the car pulls away, and Christian is already there.
She no longer perceives him visibly or immediately, but she senses him as she always does — not as a mere presence, but as focused attention.
When she finally looks, he’s leaning back like he owns the space without needing to prove it. His dark suit is perfectly cut, not a wrinkle anywhere even in this weather — the kind of fabric that doesn’t crease because it’s never worn long enough to. His face is the kind people fall for too quickly: clean lines, a symmetry that feels intentional rather than genetic, a sharp jaw softened just enough by the low light. His hair is still in place despite the rain outside. Of course it is.
“You look absolutely... beautiful tonight.” Christian's voice is warm in a way that doesn’t belong to the weather. In another life, she might have mistaken it for affection.
Christian leans in slightly so that his lips graze her cheek. Up close, he smells expensive, but never overwhelming — something understated and deliberate, the kind of scent that assumes proximity is inevitable.
Selene doesn’t move. She has learned what movement gives him.
Outside, rain sharpens against the windows as lightning fractures the sky in uneven pulses, turning his face into something temporary — present one second, gone the next. She focuses on the rhythm instead of him: distance, timing, control. The mantra had once been something she used to calm herself. Now it only helps her remain still.
His hand finds hers with the deliberate ease of someone selecting what belongs to him, and her fingers tense before she forces them to relax.
“Who was he?” Christian murmurs. “To you?” The question is almost unnecessary. Of course he knows — he must already know.
Selene remains silent, afraid that answering too quickly will betray her and that waiting too long will only make things worse.
Christian notices everything — the urgency, the hesitation, the smallest space between them. His fingers move along her thigh, slow and deliberate, not rushed, not careless. Testing.
Her pulse reacts before she can control it. His head tilts slightly, listening — not to her words, but to her body.
“I—I don’t...”
The past returns in fragments that refuse to fit together: a face, a name Selene has not spoken in years, camera flashes that burn too brightly, and laughter from a life she no longer recognises. She reaches for the memory, but it vanishes before she can make sense of it, and the lie she meant to tell collapses before she can speak. Christian does not react, which makes it worse.
“I don’t remember…”
It is the truth, even if it is not the whole truth. The names never stay with her, and she cannot hold the faces in her mind long enough to be certain of them. Every time she reaches for a memory, it slips away.
Christian studies her without anger or disappointment. She sees him reconsider something, and then amusement touches his face.
“Is that right?” His voice is soft, but Selene hears the edge beneath it. Her breathing grows shallow as she remembers what happens when she gives him an answer he does not want.
Lightning flashes across the window, illuminating his face. For an instant, his eyes are so clear that she has the unsettling feeling he knows exactly what she is trying to remember.
“The night is still young,” he says. “Why don’t we play a game?”
Cold spreads through her. She knows what he means before he says another word.
“Please, no. I behaved. I was good. I—”
Christian laughs, and the sound cuts off the rest of her plea. The car slows, but Selene barely notices until it stops and the door swings open. Rain blows into the cabin, bringing with it the smell of wet earth and the forest beyond.
She turns towards the open door. Trees stretch into the darkness, their outlines fading into the storm. She cannot see where the forest ends or where she is supposed to go.
Christian lets go of her hand and waits for her to move.
“Go.” He says it so gently that, for a moment, she can only stare at him. Then she remembers the last time he let her run, and her body goes rigid.
He has brought her here because he wants her to try again.
