Chapter 5
982 Words
As Xochi sat motionless, her heart a heavy weight in her chest, Chris’s gaze never wavered. The silence stretched between them like an unspoken threat, thick and suffocating, wrapping around her like invisible chains. Even the air in the room felt different—thicker, sharper, as though it had turned to glass, ready to shatter with one wrong move.
She finally lifted her eyes to meet his, the effort like dragging her limbs through wet cement. "What do you want from me, Chris?"
He didn’t answer at first. He just stared at her, unmoving, his eyes colder than before—like glacial ice cracking under pressure. That gaze pierced through her, as if stripping her bare, peeling away the last remnants of her defenses. Then, with a slight tilt of his head, he said, almost too casually, “I want you to stop pretending.”
“Pretending?” Her voice cracked, hoarse with disbelief. “I’m not pretending.”
He smiled then. Not with his lips—but with something darker. Something cruel that flickered across his face like a shadow. “Oh, you are. You’re pretending that you don’t belong here. Pretending you’re still fighting. Pretending you still have a choice.” He stepped closer, slow and deliberate, like a predator circling prey. “But the truth is... you’ve already given up. You’ve already lost.”
The words hit her harder than she expected. Each syllable a blade against her pride. Her lungs refused to cooperate, and for a moment, she forgot how to breathe. The chandelier overhead cast fractured patterns of light across the marble floor, and her eyes clung to them—anything to distract from the man standing before her, dismantling her with his voice alone.
She hated how calm he sounded. How sure. As if her fate was something he’d already signed off on.
The air thickened with tension as Chris took another step forward. Closer. Closer.
“You’ll eat when I say you will,” he murmured. His voice, quiet as it was, reverberated like thunder in her chest. “And you’ll behave. Because if you don’t, there’s nothing left for you to hold onto.”
Xochi clenched her fists in her lap. Her nails bit into her palms, grounding her, but barely. She wanted to scream at him, to shove him away, to break something just to remind herself she was still real, still human. But her body betrayed her. Still. Frozen. Afraid.
His presence was like gravity, pulling everything down with it—her hope, her courage, her will. She was shrinking inside herself, folding inwards like a flower denied the sun.
Her eyes dropped to the untouched food again. The bread, the soup, the neatly cut fruit—each detail screamed of comfort, of care, but none of it felt real. None of it belonged to her. It was just another illusion. Another leash.
She didn’t hear him move.
But suddenly, his hand was on her chin, fingers pressing into her skin with bruising precision, jerking her face up to meet his.
"You're mine," he said, the words cutting through her like a serrated edge. "And you’ll do as you're told. Or I'll make sure there’s nothing left of you."
His voice was ice and fire at once—cold in tone, but searing in its implications. There was no room for doubt, no opening to slip through. He wasn’t threatening her.
He was warning her.
The coldness in his eyes froze her in place. There was no humanity in them. No flicker of warmth. Just a pit of black, bottomless and consuming. His grip hurt, but she didn’t pull away. Couldn't. Not because she was weak, but because she understood something in that moment:
He wasn’t bluffing.
She opened her mouth to respond, to deny him the satisfaction of her silence, but the words tangled in her throat. She wasn’t just caught in his grip—she was unraveling beneath it.
Chris stared at her a second longer before letting her go.
She gasped softly, reaching up to touch her chin where his fingers had been. Her skin felt scorched, even though his hand had been ice.
He stepped back, taking her in like a man who’d already won a war. “Now eat,” he said simply, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Or don’t. But know this—you will eventually. You’ll beg for it.”
His words slithered into her ears and coiled there, hissing. He turned toward the door without looking back, his footsteps a steady rhythm against the polished floor.
But just before he disappeared, he paused, one hand on the handle. The silence stretched again, stretched and pulled until it hurt.
“I’m not asking anymore,” he said, his voice so calm it was terrifying. “Next time, you won’t have a choice.”
The door clicked shut behind him.
And Xochi was left alone.
Again.
The silence returned, but now it wasn’t just silence—it was a scream with no sound. A void that threatened to eat her alive. She doubled over, her elbows on her knees, face buried in her hands. Her breaths came in shallow, shaking bursts.
She wanted to cry.
She wanted to run.
She wanted someone—anyone—to come in and tell her this wasn’t real. That this was all a terrible dream and she was about to wake up in her old room, cramped and messy, but safe.
But no one came.
And nothing changed.
The untouched tray sat beside her, its scent growing stronger, richer, more suffocating with every breath. Her stomach churned. She couldn’t tell if it was from hunger or nausea anymore.
She forced herself to look up, to stare at the chandelier.
The crystals didn’t look like fireworks anymore.
They looked like glass shards.
Waiting to fall.
- Writer
