Chapter4
1046 Words
Chapter 4 – Trapped in Luxury
Elara didn’t remember how she got back to her bedroom.
She didn’t remember shutting the hidden door, tiptoeing past the guards, or crawling beneath the pristine sheets of the penthouse guest suite.
All she remembered was the footage.
Her face on that screen.
Damian’s voice.
“Delete the girl’s file. She’s the perfect candidate. She won’t ask questions. Not if her sister’s dying.”
The words kept playing on a loop in her head, more toxic than any lie he’d told her to her face.
He hadn’t just known about her.
He’d orchestrated this.
Months ago.
Before the cancer worsened. Before her desperation. Before any of it.
She wasn’t a wife.
She was a calculated decision. A pawn. A move in a game she didn’t even know was being played.
By the time morning arrived, Elara was done pretending.
She walked into the kitchen to find Kara prepping a protein shake and Damian reading emails at the bar like nothing had happened.
He glanced up. “Good morning.”
“You planned this,” she said without preamble. “You found me months before I knew you existed.”
Kara’s hand paused mid-air. Damian didn’t even flinch.
“I did,” he replied coolly. “Sit. Eat something.”
“Don’t tell me to eat like this is normal.” Her voice trembled. “You stalked me. Manipulated my sister’s treatment. Lied to my face.”
“I never lied,” Damian said. “I curated.”
“You’re insane.”
“I’m strategic.”
She stared at him, shaking with fury. “You could’ve offered me a job. A loan. A choice.”
“You wouldn’t have taken it. Not from me. Not if I told you who I was.”
He was right. And that made it worse.
She took a step forward. “I want the truth. All of it. Why me? Why go through this circus? What the hell do you really want from me?”
Damian looked at Kara. “Leave us.”
Kara didn’t hesitate.
Once they were alone, he rose from his stool and walked to the window, his back to her.
“For ten years, I was the sole heir to a company I helped build from the ground up,” he said. “Then my father died. And in his will, he put a clause I never saw coming.”
“What clause?”
“I had to marry. Within one year. To receive controlling shares.”
She blinked. “So marry a model. A celebrity. One of your board’s daughters—”
“Exactly. That’s what they all expected.” He turned to her, eyes unreadable. “But that’s why I chose someone else. Someone real. Someone no one would see coming.”
She swallowed. “And someone desperate enough to accept it.”
His silence said everything.
“You’re disgusting,” she whispered.
“You’re alive. And so is your sister. That wasn’t going to happen without me.”
She hated that he was right. Hated that her rage was tangled in gratitude, shame, and exhaustion.
“You planned everything,” she said. “Even this child.”
That flicker of emotion—guilt? confusion?—briefly crossed his face. It was gone in an instant.
“No,” he said. “That part… wasn’t planned.”
He looked away, and for the first time, she saw something human in him.
“Does it bother you?” she asked quietly. “That your child came from something imperfect?”
He didn’t answer.
Which meant yes.
Later that day, the publicist called. Elara didn’t answer.
Vivienne texted instead:
Interview is confirmed for Friday. Wear something bold. Don’t sound bitter. The world eats that alive.
She wanted to throw the phone off the balcony.
Instead, she went for a walk through the penthouse’s private gallery.
Damian owned original works from Frida Kahlo, Basquiat, and Van Gogh. All of it sealed behind glass, climate-controlled, untouched.
Even his art was imprisoned.
She paused in front of a painting she didn’t recognize—a charcoal sketch of a boy, no older than eight, sitting on a rooftop in the rain.
There was no plaque. No signature.
She reached for it. The frame wasn’t locked.
Behind her, Damian’s voice cut through the quiet.
“That was the only thing my father ever drew.”
Elara froze. “Your father was an artist?”
“Before he became something worse.”
She turned to face him. “Why keep it, then?”
“To remember what could’ve been.”
They stared at each other for a long moment.
And then he said, quietly, “My mother died when I was ten. He changed after that.”
There was something fragile in his voice that she hadn’t heard before. Not weakness—just history.
“Was she kind?” she asked before she could stop herself.
Damian looked away. “Yes. Which is why he hated her in the end.”
Silence hung heavy between them.
“You don’t have to become him,” Elara said softly.
“I already have.”
That night, she dreamed of fire.
A burning contract. A cradle made of smoke. A child with her eyes and Damian’s voice whispering, He’s not what he seems.
She woke up gasping, drenched in sweat.
At first, she thought the faint thudding sound was in her head.
But then she realized—it was real.
Knocking.
From inside the walls.
Elara slipped out of bed, barefoot on cold marble.
The noise was coming from the hallway. Steady. Hollow. Knock. Knock. Pause.
She followed the sound toward the far end of the corridor, past the guest suite, until she reached the door to a sealed closet.
She opened it.
Empty.
Except for the panel in the back.
A removable wall section.
The knock sounded again. Closer this time.
Elara’s heart pounded. She stepped forward—and found a small, almost imperceptible fingerprint on the panel’s surface.
Not adult-sized.
Child-sized.
As Elara reaches toward the panel, a whisper leaks through the gap in the wall.
A voice—young. Trembling.
“Help me.”
And suddenly Elara realizes…
She isn’t the only one trapped in this penthouse.
- Writer
