Chapter 2

The next day, a black car pulled up to my apartment building. A man in a suit got out and handed me an envelope. It wasn't cash. It was an eviction notice and a bill for Leo' s current hospital stay, a bill marked "Paid in Full by Vance Corporation." Attached was a one-way ticket and a key. An address was scrawled on the back. It was Julian' s address. It wasn't an offer. It was a command.

He had bought my silence, bought my freedom, and now he was putting me in a cage. A gilded one, perhaps, but a cage nonetheless. I had no choice. With Leo' s life hanging in the balance, I packed a small bag, left my dusty canvases behind, and was driven to Julian' s sprawling mansion.

It wasn't a room they gave me. It was a closet. A small, windowless space in the staff quarters, barely big enough for a narrow bed and a small dresser. The air was stale and suffocating. It was a world away from the sunlit rooms and soaring ceilings of the rest of the house, a constant, physical reminder of my new, lowly status.

The next morning, I was woken by a sharp rap on the door. It was the woman from the party, the one with the diamond necklace. Her name was Isabella. She was even more beautiful up close, but her eyes were as hard and cold as her jewelry.

"Julian is expecting his coffee," she said, her voice dripping with condescending sweetness. "Black, two sugars. And he needs his shoes polished. The brown ones. Don't be slow."

She looked me up and down, a faint smirk playing on her lips. "It's so generous of Julian to take you in, Amelia. You should be very grateful. We' ll find plenty for you to do to earn your keep."

I spent the day on my hands and knees, scrubbing floors and polishing silver, the harsh smell of cleaning chemicals burning my nose. Every task was a new humiliation, designed to remind me of my place. Isabella would drift by periodically, a silk robe flowing behind her, offering "helpful" suggestions that were thinly veiled criticisms.

"Oh, dear, you missed a spot," she' d say, pointing a perfectly manicured finger at an imaginary speck of dust. "We have certain standards here." Her words were light, almost playful, but her intent was sharp and malicious. She was enjoying this, enjoying my degradation.

That evening, Julian came home late. He walked into the kitchen where I was washing dishes, his face a thunderous mask. He barely glanced at me. He was on the phone, his voice tight with anger. "I don't care what it costs, just fix it!" he snapped, before ending the call and slamming his phone down on the marble countertop.

He turned, and his eyes landed on a small, framed photo on a side table. It was a picture of him and my father, years ago, smiling over a set of blueprints. He stared at it for a long moment, his jaw tight. Then, with a sudden, violent movement, he swept it off the table. The frame hit the floor and shattered, glass skittering across the tiles.

"Clean that up," he snarled at me, his voice raw with a fury that had nothing and everything to do with me. The command was brutal, absolute.

I flinched but said nothing. I knelt, my hands shaking as I picked up the larger pieces of the broken frame. The shards of glass were sharp, and I knew I had to be careful. My gaze fell upon the photograph, now freed from its frame, lying amidst the debris. It showed a younger Julian, his smile genuine, his eyes bright with admiration as he looked at my father.

As I began to gather the glass, my hands trembling, Julian spoke again, his voice low and dangerous. "On your knees. All of it."

I froze, the humiliation a cold wave washing over me. But I complied. I got down on my hands and knees and began to collect the tiny, glittering fragments of glass, my dignity shattering with every piece I picked up. The world narrowed to the cold floor, the broken glass, and his looming presence.

Then it happened again. That strange, internal whisper, a torrent of self-loathing that seemed to emanate from him. Monster. You're a monster. Just like him. You promised you wouldn't be. The voice was filled with a pain so profound it momentarily silenced my own. I looked up at him, startled. His face was a mask of cold rage, but his eyes were haunted, lost in some private hell. The disconnect was jarring, a crack in his formidable facade.

The pain in my chest, a dull, constant ache, sharpened. I pressed a hand to my side, trying to breathe through it, trying to hide my weakness. I finished cleaning, my movements stiff and robotic, and stood to leave.

Julian turned his back on me, grabbing a bottle of whiskey from the bar and pouring a glass. "Get out," he said, not looking at me. He dismissed me as if I were a piece of furniture, his coldness a deliberate, calculated cruelty.

As I walked away, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had seen something I wasn't supposed to see. I had heard his inner demons. It wasn't a comfort. It was terrifying. It meant the man who held my life in his hands was not just cruel, but also unstable, his actions driven by a war raging inside his own mind.

I closed the door to my tiny room, leaning against it in the dark. Isabella was standing in the hallway, a satisfied smile on her face. "You see," she said softly, her voice a poisonous whisper. "He just has a temper. It's best not to upset him. I'd be very, very careful if I were you." She straightened the lapel of her silk robe and glided away, leaving me alone with the silence and the growing certainty that I had traded one kind of prison for another, far more dangerous one.