“You’ve been quiet,” I say, closing the door behind me with a soft click that sounds final in the stillness. “Trying something new, or are we mourning your pride?”
She doesn’t look at me directly.
Smart girl, learning the rules.
But not smart enough to save herself.
I take my time moving towards her, watching her eyes track me in the mirror’s reflection on the far wall. She still thinks she has some kind of advantage in silence, some power in withholding her voice. But the silence is mine to command. I invented it. I weaponised it. I feed her silence like a starving dog gets scraps, then make her beg when the sound finally returns.
“Tahlia,” I murmur, letting her name melt off my tongue like something sacred and venomous simultaneously, like prayer and poison. “You’ve cost me two chairs, a glass decanter, and one of my favourite shirts. I hope it was worth it.”
Still nothing from her, no response.
Her shoulders are tense beneath the thin fabric of whatever she’s wearing, but I see the rise and fall of her chest pick up pace—small, quick flares of breath that betray her apparent calm.
She’s waiting for something.
For pain to arrive.
For unexpected kindness.
For something she can use to keep hating me, to fuel the fire.
So I give her what she doesn’t expect, what will unsettle her more than violence.
I sit down slowly.
Right on the edge of the mattress, not touching her, not leaning in, just letting the heat of my presence soak into the air like smoke from a fire that’s been burning for years. I rest my elbow on my knee, tilt my head slightly, and watch her with the patience of something that’s already won.
“You think silence keeps you strong,” I say, voice low, amused by her strategy. “But it only makes me louder in your head, doesn’t it? My voice filling all the spaces you’re trying to keep empty.”
She turns then, finally, and those eyes of hers—sharp and bruised and blood-hot with rage—meet mine without flinching.
And god, the fire is still there burning.
But underneath it now, visible if you know what to look for…
A question forming.
Not spoken. Not yet fully formed into words.
But felt, pulsing beneath the surface.
Why me?
Why her specifically?
I almost laugh at the absurdity of the question she doesn’t know how to ask because if I told her the truth—that I saw her years ago, before the lipstick and the knives, when she was still trying to smile like the world hadn’t already chewed her into something jagged and dangerous?—
She’d never believe me, would call me a liar.
She’d call me insane for the obsession.
And maybe I am insane, maybe that’s the only honest assessment but she’s mine now regardless.
Not because I said so and demanded it.
Not because I locked the doors and removed her choices but because somewhere between the hate and the hunger, she started needing it, started craving what I do to her.
