"Good girl," I murmur, shutting down the monitor.
I don’t need to just watch anymore. The isolation I’ve built around her is complete now. Lucy is gone, the police are out of the game for now, and Madeline is in a deep, induced sleep, ready for me to claim her.
I step out of the car into the cold rain.
I know that when she wakes up, she will be afraid. She will hate me. But she will be mine. And this time, I won’t let anyone stand between us. Not her annoying friend, and definitely not the man who gave me life.
I don't use the front entrance; I move through the service stairs, a ghost in the machine of this building. My heart is a heavy, rhythmic drum behind my ribs as I reach her floor.
The lock clicks open. A final, satisfied sigh from the door, and I am inside.
The apartment is silent, save for the hum of the refrigerator and the soft, rhythmic sound of her breathing. I find her on the sofa, exactly where I watched her fall. In the pale moonlight, she looks like a fallen saint, her hair fanned out against the cushions, her skin translucent.
I want the first thing she experiences when her consciousness returns to be my world, not hers, so I lean down and slide one arm beneath her knees and the other behind her back. She is light, almost weightless, as I lift her.
Her head lolls against my shoulder, her breath warm and shallow against the column of my neck. The contact sends a jolt of arousal through me, a possessive heat that nearly makes me lose my focus.
"You're finally coming home, Madeline," I whisper, my voice a dark rasp in the empty room.
I carry her out, moving with a predator’s silence. I avoid the cameras I haven't already looped and I place her in the back of my car, draped across the leather seat like a priceless, broken thing.
The drive back to my apartment is a blur of adrenaline. When the doors slide open, the air is exactly 18°C, filtered and sterile. I carry her straight into the chamber I’ve prepared. A space where the walls are lined with the archives of the Vane legacy, the very "truth" she drank for.
I lay her down on the bed, her platinum hair stark against the white silk sheets. I stand back for a moment, my hands trembling slightly as I pull off my gloves. The hunger is stillthere, pulsing, but it’s tempered now by a sense of absolute triumph.
I sit in the armchair in the corner of the room, draped in shadows, and wait. I watch the rise and fall of her chest, savoring the silence. I want to see the exact second the drug clears and she realizes that the four walls of her life have shrunk down to this single, sterile room, and me.
On the bed, Madeline begins to fracture the stillness. Her fingers twitch against the silk sheets first. A blind, searching movement. Then comes a soft, broken moan that vibrates in the air between us. I watch with a clinical, hungry intensity as her eyelids flutter, struggling against the heavy residue of the sedative.
When her eyes finally snap open, they are unfocused, clouded with a chemical haze. She hasn't seen me yet. She sees the ceiling, the sharp, geometric lines of my sanctuary, and she freezes. The realization that she isn't in her own bed, that the air is too cold and the light is too sterile, hits her like a physical blow.
She tries to bolt upright, but her muscles are still like lead. She manages to prop herself up on her elbows, her breath coming in shallow, panicked gasps.
"Where..." she rasps, her voice a wrecked whisper.
"Where am I?"
She looks around the room, her gaze darting from the floor-to-ceiling glass to the archives of the Vane family lining the far wall. Then, her eyes land on the bedside table. On a silver cross.
I see the shock register in the way her pupils dilate. She recognizes it. The confusion in her eyes starts to sharpen into terror.
"I told you the truth was at the bottom of the glass, Madeline," I say, my voice a low, resonant vibration.
She flinches so violently she nearly falls back against the pillows. She pulls the silk sheet up to her chest, a useless barrier against the man who just carried her through the city.
"Deimos," she breathes, the name sounding like a curse. Her head drops for a second, a wave of nausea or dizziness clearly hitting her.
"What... what did you do to me? My head... I can't think..."
"I gave you silence," I murmur, finally standing up and stepping into the dim light, moving slowly.
"I stopped the noise of your guilt, your anchors, and your lies. You’re in the center of the design now."
The arousal flares in my gut as I see the tears of frustration and fear welling in her eyes. She’s so beautifully broken in this moment, trapped between the drug's lingering fog and the nightmare of her new reality.
"You kidnapped me," she spits, though her voice lacks its usual iron. She tries to swing her legs over the edge of the bed, but she sways, her balance completely compromised.
"You drugged me and took me... why?"
