Chapter 6
1222 Words
There was no clock in the room.
No windows.
No sense of time at all.
Only the quiet hum of electricity behind the walls. The soft hiss of air through hidden vents. The gentle swish of surveillance cameras repositioning when she moved.
Bella knew she wasn’t just being watched. She was being studied.
Observed like prey.
The room was beautiful—ornate walls lined with gold filigree, marble floors so polished she could see her own pale reflection in them. The canopy bed was dressed in velvet sheets, fresh flowers were placed in crystal vases. Even the food was brought to her on silver platters.
But it was all wrong.
Too elegant. Too still.
A coffin disguised as a palace.
---
Bella didn’t touch the food for the first day. She drank only water from the bathroom faucet, refusing to eat anything he sent in.
The second day, she broke.
Her hands shook as she picked up the porcelain plate of roasted chicken and rice. The scent made her stomach clench with need and nausea all at once.
She hated herself for it.
She hated him for it.
---
On the third day, she tried the door.
Not the main one—it was locked, obviously. But the closet door was different. It led into a walk-in wardrobe, filled with luxury clothes. Dresses, silk lingerie, satin robes. Not a single thing she’d ever wear.
Not a single thing she could use to escape.
But she noticed the hidden camera tucked into the top corner. Red light blinking. Watching.
She stared into it.
Then slowly, deliberately—she pulled one of the satin dresses off the hanger and ripped it in half.
The camera twitched.
“Good,” she muttered. “Let him watch.”
---
Xavier was, in fact, watching.
From a private room deep inside the mansion, surrounded by screens showing every angle of Bella’s space.
He saw her rage.
He saw her despair.
He saw the fire.
And it only fed his obsession.
“She’s not like the others,” Damien said behind him, arms folded. “They cried. Begged. She… fights.”
Xavier smiled, slow and dark. “I know.”
---
That night, the door opened.
Bella stood up instantly, blood pounding in her ears. She didn’t expect it to be him.
But there he was—tall, composed, dressed in a dark silk shirt and slacks, as if this were a dinner party, not a prison.
Xavier didn’t speak right away. He walked in slowly, looking around the room like a man surveying his domain.
Bella backed up until her legs hit the bedframe.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
Xavier turned his eyes to her—sharp, unblinking, quiet. “How are you sleeping?”
She stared at him. “Do you want small talk now? After kidnapping me?”
“I want to know how you’re feeling.”
“Why?”
“Because you matter to me.”
Bella laughed—a broken, bitter sound. “You don’t know me.”
“I know more than you think.”
He took another step toward her. “I know how your voice sounds when you’re scared. I know how your body tenses before you lie. I know how your breath hitches when you're trying not to cry.”
She slapped him.
Hard.
The sound echoed in the room like a gunshot.
Xavier didn’t move. His head stayed tilted, cheek reddening. But his expression didn’t flicker.
Bella trembled, chest heaving.
And then he did something she didn’t expect.
He smiled.
“Good,” he murmured. “Keep that fire. It’ll make it more satisfying when I own it.”
---
He didn’t touch her that night. Or the next.
But every day, he came back.
Sometimes with books. Sometimes with new dresses. Sometimes just to sit and watch her like she was a painting he was slowly trying to interpret.
She refused to speak to him most days.
Sometimes, she screamed.
Sometimes, she wept into her pillow when she was sure the cameras weren’t watching.
But they always were.
---
Elsewhere in the mansion, deep in a soundproof basement, Steven Knight lay in chains.
His face was bruised. His wrists were raw. But his eyes burned.
He’d been there since the second day of Bella’s disappearance. Kidnapped by Xavier’s men, drugged, and dragged into the mansion with brutal precision.
He didn’t know where Bella was—but he could feel her.
Somewhere above. Somewhere near.
And still out of reach.
Steven didn’t cry. Didn’t scream.
He waited.
Because he knew something Xavier didn’t.
Bella wouldn’t break.
And she would come for him.
---
On the fifth night, Bella found a hidden panel behind a shelf in the wardrobe.
Inside it: a narrow passage, lined with metal stairs leading downward.
She stared at it for ten whole minutes, unsure if it was real—or another test.
But something in her blood whispered: Go.
---
She didn’t take the camera out. That would be too obvious. Instead, she folded a black dress over the lens and left the wardrobe door slightly ajar.
Then she moved.
Carefully. Silently.
Step by step down the cold metal stairs.
The air grew heavier the deeper she went. The silence, thicker. The scent—damp earth, sweat, rust.
Then she heard it.
A groan. Soft. Pained.
She turned the corner.
And there he was.
Steven.
Chained. Beaten. Half-conscious.
“Steven,” she choked, rushing forward.
He blinked, dazed. Then—
“Bella?”
Her hands were already on the shackles. “I’m here. I’m going to get you out.”
“Don’t—he’ll know—Bella, you can’t—”
But she was already working the lock with a sharp piece of hairpin she’d stolen earlier.
A click. Then another.
Then—freedom.
Steven collapsed into her arms, sobbing against her shoulder. “You came for me.”
“I always will.”
They didn’t run. Not yet.
They waited until midnight. Until the cameras went quiet. Until she was sure the guards were rotated.
Then together, they moved like shadows through the corridors.
Through the garden.
Through the gates.
Into the dark forest beyond the mansion walls.
Free.
Breathless.
Alive.
---
But Xavier had always known.
The entire thing was designed to give them hope.
To let Bella believe she was escaping.
To let her feel freedom.
So when it was taken again, it would hurt tenfold more.
---
They made it three miles before the gunshot rang out.
Steven shoved her behind a tree. “Run!”
She didn’t.
She grabbed his hand and pulled.
But the men found them.
Three. Then five. Then ten.
All masked. All silent.
Xavier appeared last—unmasked, elegant, untouched.
His eyes glowed under the moonlight.
“You broke my trust,” he told Bella. “Now I’ll break you.”
---
Back in the mansion, Bella was dragged back to her room.
Steven was dragged somewhere worse.
Bella screamed.
Kicked. Bit. Fought like a woman with nothing left to lose.
But Xavier only looked at her with that same cold, cruel admiration.
“You’re finally beginning to understand,” he whispered, brushing his blood-stained knuckles across her cheek. “Love is a weakness. And I will make you stronger.”
---
- Writer
