Untitled Episode
689 Words
CHAPTER TWO
(Lina’s POV)
The car smelled like leather and gun oil.
I sat beside Adrian in silence, hands folded in my lap, like I was afraid to touch anything. Outside, the city blurred into streaks of light and shadow.
He didn’t look at me.
Not once.
“Do you always pick up strangers from clubs?” I asked quietly.
“No.”
“Then why me?”
“Because you don’t belong there.”
I saw his reflection in the window. “And where do I belong?”
“With me,” he said.
The word landed like a sentence.
His house rose from the dark like a fortress.
The iron gates opened without a sound. Gravel crunched beneath the tires. The building beyond was all sharp angles and glass, lit from within like something awake.
Inside, everything was black and silver and cold.
A woman waited in the hall. Tall. Severe. Her eyes flicked over me like I was a stain.
“This is Irina,” Adrian said. “She runs the house.”
Irina nodded once. “Your room is ready.”
My room.
The words curled around my chest.
She led me upstairs through silent corridors. Paintings lined the walls violent ones. Abstract reds and blacks. No faces. No softness.
Irina stopped at a door and opened it.
The room was too beautiful to be a cage.
White sheets. A desk by the window. A bookshelf filled with leather-bound volumes.
“You will stay here,” she said. “You will not wander.”
“I write,” I said. “I’ll stay.”
Her eyes lingered on me. “Mr. Sokolov doesn’t keep pets long.”
I smiled faintly. “I’m not a pet.”
She left without replying.
I closed the door and leaned against it, breathing slowly.
This was it. Access . Power. Danger.
I touched the desk. The books. I pulled one down. Poetry.
Russian. French. English.
So the rumor was true.
A soft knock sounded.
I straightened.
Adrian entered without waiting.
He stood in the doorway like he owned the air.
“You lied to me,” he said.
My heart lurched. “About what?”
“You’re not just a writer.”
My pulse roared in my ears.
“You’re afraid.”
I swallowed. “Is that a crime?”
“No,” he said. “It’s proof.”
He walked in, stopping a few feet away.
“Why did your family move here?”
“They needed work,” I said. “I wanted to write.”
“What do you write about?”
“Lonely people.”
A pause.
“That sounds personal.”
“I think everything is.”
He studied me again.
“Take off your shoes.”
I hesitated, then slipped them off.
He circled me slowly.
“You don’t look like someone who belongs to anyone.”
“I don’t belong to anyone.”
“Now you do.”
The words should’ve frightened me.
They did.
But they also opened doors.
“You said I could write,” I whispered.
“I will give you time,” he said. “But you will be mine in every way that matters.”
I lowered my eyes. “I don’t know what that means.”
He touched my chin, lifting my face gently.
“It means,” he said quietly, “you don’t lie to me.”
I nodded.
Lie.
“Sleep,” he said. “Tomorrow, I’ll show you what you are to me.”
He turned to leave.
At the door, he paused.
“Poetry is dangerous, Lina.”
“Why?”
“Because it tells the truth in beautiful ways.”
He left.
I stood alone in the room that wasn’t mine.
My reflection stared back at me in the mirror.
I whispered to myself, “Get close.”
That was the mission.
But as I slid into the bed that smelled faintly like him, a new thought crept in:
What if I learned his poetry too well?
And what if, in learning him…
I forgot who I was meant to destroy?
- Writer
