I don’t know which one scares me more.
Hook
The screen flickers with static, but I don’t blink, refuse to miss a single frame. Not when she’s like this.
She’s pacing. Fast. Uneven. One sock missing, her hair a mess of snarled blonde waves, hands knotted into trembling fists that swing too close to the mirror. The bed’s a wreck. The blankets shredded and half-draped across the floor, like they tried to hold her together and failed miserably.
She’s muttering something I can’t quite make out through the audio feed, but her lips are wet with fury. With fire. With something that makes my throat clench like I’m the one suffocating in that room. It’s all unravelling now—she is unravelling—and it’s beautiful in a way that shouldn’t be possible. The kind of beauty that only comes right before something breaks completely.
Her rage isn’t loud anymore. It’s quieter now, like she’s conserving it for something specific. Letting it simmer under her skin, waiting for the next moment to strike with precision. There’s blood on her knuckles. She must’ve punched the wall again. Or maybe the door. Maybe herself.
And God, the sight of her rage—the pure, unfiltered defiance burning in her eyes—it’s divine.
She isn’t crying.
No.
Not Tahlia Fernwynd.
Tears are too easy for someone like her. She’s boiling. She’s splintering. She’s waging war in a cage made of silk and surveillance, and she doesn’t even know that every time she spins, every time she kicks at something, I’m watching her fall apart.
That monitor is my drug, and she’s my sickness spreading through my veins.
My pulse is thunder. My cock is stone.
I want to ruin her all over again. Not gently. Not sweetly.
Violently.
But not with fists or force.
With truths she can’t escape.
With time that stretches until she breaks.
With the ache of knowing she can fight every inch of me and still—still—never be free of what I’ve made her feel.
She hurls the necklace like it bit her, like it burnt her skin.
It arcs through the air—just a glint of silver, a streak of defiance—and then shatters against the mirror with a sound that makes me exhale through my teeth. Not surprise. Not anger. Just satisfaction. Bone-deep, pulse-tight satisfaction that settles in my chest.
I lean closer to the monitor, hand gripping the edge of the desk.
The broken glass rains down in slow motion, catching the light from the chandelier in little slashes of brilliance. Pieces of her reflection scatter across the floor like she’s finally broken the illusion of safety she’d been clinging to. Finally seen the bars for what they are.
And fuck, she’s magnificent.
Chest rising too fast. Hair falling in tangles across her face. That look in her eyes—unhinged, betrayed, furious. Not because she’s here. But because she feels something. And it scares her.
Good.
She should be scared.
She’s mine.
And not because I touched her. Not because I’ve hurt her. Not yet in any permanent way.
But because I know every tick of her pulse, every crack in her voice, every way she pretends she’s fine when she’s coming undone like silk seams ripped open by a blade.
