Chapter 7
Seven
POV: BEATRICE O'brIEN
The previous seventy-two hours without sleep had been worth it.
My bedroom walls had transformed into a tactical display—maps of Ashford Estate, surveillance photos, and guard rotation schedules meticulously colour-coded with blue and red pins.
A pill bottle sat empty on my vanity—not my usual chains that I yearned to leave behind, but something different.
Each sleepless hour brought sharpened senses and focus until I could form ideas and plan outcomes.
As I studied the information pertaining to Alexander Moore, I came alive, my heartbeat sound and determined.
I traced his image in a photograph where he stood alone by a window, unknowingly captured in a rare moment of unguarded contemplation. My fingernail followed the curve of his jaw, the line of his neck, the distinctive crescent scar on his wrist.
"Oh, Alexander," I whispered to his image. "Once I destroy Ronan Flanagan for what he did to me, what shall I do with you?" I laughed. "Maybe we'll get rid of Patrick and rule Ashford together…"
The amphetamines I'd stolen from Patrick's medicine cabinet intensified everything—colours more vibrant, sounds more distinct, thoughts racing brilliantly.
I'd been skipping my lithium for days, letting the mania build, then using Patrick's ADHD medication to sharpen the focus. Dangerous, but necessary.
I arranged the photographs chronologically—Alexander entering Ashford Estate after an early check of the farm just after six in the morning, Alexander in his study reviewing documents about three hours later.
I'd been lucky enough to work out which entrance he used on rainy mornings—northwest, beneath an oak arbour.
I knew which whisky he preferred from other information I'd gathered.
Macallan 18, neat. I knew he favoured sleeping on his left side and kept a gun in his nightstand.
But there were some blank spots inside the house—
"Beatrice?"
Speak of the devil…
I froze at Patrick's voice, for I'd been too consumed in my thoughts to have heard his approach. Too late, I scrambled to gather the photographs, but my husband was already standing in the doorway, his expression shifting from initial confusion to comprehension to cold rage.
"What is this?" He moved forward, lifting a photo where Alexander stood on a balcony clearly after leaving his bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist. The man had no qualms about the cold.
"Research," I replied, my voice steadier than it should have been. "Know your enemy."
Patrick's rage crystallized into something worse than his usual explosions. This wasn't about immediate punishment—this was about permanent correction. The calculating look in his eyes made my blood run cold as he stepped back, studying my work with clinical detachment.
Patrick surveyed my work with disturbing calm, fingers tracing the red threads I'd used to map Alexander's movements through the Ashford lands.
His eyes lingered on the close-ups, on the handwritten notes detailing Alexander's daily patterns, then on the emptied bottle of his Adderall. He picked it up.
'This is mine.' Not a question. 'How did you get this?' His voice carried that dangerous smoothness that preceded his worst moments.
'My lithium dulls my thinking,' I admitted, seeing no point in denying what was obvious. 'I needed clarity for this.'"
I expected the familiar explosion of violence—the backhand across my face, fingers tangled painfully in my hair, perhaps the cigarette pressed against my skin. Instead, Patrick's rage crystallized into something worse: cold calculation.
"Come with me," he said, grasping my arm with deceptive gentleness. "I think it's time you understood certain things about our marriage."
He led me downstairs, past the formal dining room, through the kitchen where staff averted their eyes. We descended the hidden stairs behind what one would assume was a wine cellar door—an area of the house I'd never stepped foot in.
"Patrick, where—"
"Quiet."
We moved deeper beneath the mansion, the air growing increasingly stale and cold. When he finally stopped before a heavy metal door, my pulse quickened with palpable fear.
"Do you know what this is?" he asked, producing a key.
I shook my head, manic energy still surging through my system, yet tempered with terror.
"This is what happens when wives forget their place," he said simply, unlocking the door and shoving me inside.
Complete darkness engulfed me as the door slammed shut. I lunged forward too late, hands colliding with cold metal. I heard the key turn, locks engaging. Then nothing but my own rapid breathing in absolute blackness.
"Patrick!" I pounded against the door, panic overriding sanity. "Patrick, open this door!"
Silence answered.
Hours passed—or was it days?—in complete darkness. Time lost meaning. I explored my prison by touch—a room approximately twelve by fourteen feet with concrete floors and walls. A metal frame bed bolted to the floor in one corner. A bucket in another. Nothing else.
I hadn't ventured to this place beneath our home. A room constructed specifically for Patrick's business—or his darkest impulses.
Without food or water, my body weakened while my mind fragmented.
The darkness became a canvas for my obsession, populated by hallucinations born of my condition and dehydration.
Alexander materialized from memory, sometimes speaking with cruel detachment, sometimes with the hushed intimacy I remembered from the maze.
"You're pathetic," hallucination-Alexander observed from somewhere in the darkness. "Look at you, imprisoned by a husband who treats you like property, and you sit there fantasizing about me."
"I'm not fantasizing," I argued, voice raw from earlier screaming. "I'm planning."
"Planning what, exactly? To escape one monster by capturing another?"
I laughed, the sound echoing strangely in the darkness. "You're not a monster, Alexander. You simply understand the beauty of controlled violence, of dominance earned rather than simply taken." I wasn't sure if I was speaking out loud or in my head. It didn't matter, anyway.
My fingertips traced the walls again and again, mapping every centimetre, memorising the layout.
Even in captivity, I refused to surrender my purpose.
Three drainage holes in the floor drew my attention, precisely arranged, and two metal rings were embedded in the wall above the bed.
The only ventilation shaft was too small for escape but allowed just enough air to prevent suffocation.
"He's breaking you," hallucination-Alexander noted dispassionately.
"He's trying," I corrected, my throat hurting. "There's a difference."
By what I estimated to be the third day—if my internal clock could be trusted in this darkness—my thoughts had become conversation partners, Alexander's voice and touch materialising with terrifying realism.
Without a drop to drink, I should be dead.
Indeed, I could barely move. It proved a challenge to remain anchored to reality whilst my body screamed for water and my mind spiralled through increasingly chaotic patterns.
When the door finally opened, a shaft of light stabbed my eyes, blinding me temporarily. I slowly curled into myself, arms shielding my eyes.
"Three days and not a drop to drink," Patrick's voice observed clinically. "Most would be barely breathing by now."
I remained silent, squinting against the painful brightness. Hunger and thirst had become a dull constant. My skin felt filthy, hair matted against my scalp.
Patrick set something on the floor—a tray, I realised as my vision adjusted. A glass of water. A small plate of food. His immaculate appearance contrasted obscenely with my degradation.
"Are you thirsty, Beatrice?" he asked, voice gentle as though speaking to a child.
I refused to answer despite my body's desperate craving.
"You may have water," he continued in that same disturbing gentleness, "when you say: 'I belong to Patrick O'Brien, body and soul.'"
I stared at the glass, calculating how long before severe dehydration caused organ failure. Not much longer in my current condition.
"I belong to Patrick O'Brien, body and soul," I recited, each word bitter ash on my tongue.
He nodded approvingly, lifting the glass to my lips but allowing only a small sip before withdrawing it. "Now: 'Alexander Moore means nothing to me.'"
I hesitated, weighing physical need against something deeper.
Patrick's expression hardened. "Say it, or the water leaves with me."
"Alexander Moore means nothing to me," I lied, the words hollow.
He rewarded me with another sip, the water going down painfully past my parched throat.
Thus began a grotesque training session—water and food provided in tiny increments, each morsel requiring a specific phrase of submission, each phrase designed to break my will more thoroughly than any physical violence.
After providing just enough sustenance to keep me conscious, Patrick produced silk ropes from his pocket—Hermès scarves—my scarves—tied together, I noted distantly, recognising the distinctive orange-red shade even in the dim light.
The expensive material contrasted obscenely with the filth on my body as he bound my wrists behind my back.
He forced me on my knees on the bed, and it was tough to stay in my position because all I wanted to do was keel over.
Patrick sensed this and grabbed my arm, squeezing, which was the only thing holding me up. A touch to lean on, a touch that wrecked me.
My mind detached from my body because I knew Patrick was far from done with me. He knew how weak I was still, so he held back… but still he wouldn't leave me alone. I was forced to play the game from the depths of my humiliation.
"Say his name," Patrick demanded, his voice strained with exertion.
I remained silent.
His hand closed around my throat, pressure increasing until spots danced in my vision. "Say his name," he repeated.
"Alexander," I whispered.
"Again."
"Alexander."
With each utterance of Alexander's name, Patrick tore the clothes from my body while still holding me by the neck with one hand.
He destroyed item by item, until I was naked, surrounded by tatters of expensive designer wear.
Meanwhile, he described in methodical detail how he would mutilate Alexander if we were ever caught together, his voice flat, even, in contrast with the grotesque imagery.
What Patrick couldn't understand: my repeated saying of Alexander's name wasn't breaking my obsession but sanctifying it. Each utterance transformed it into something beyond the bastard's comprehension—not mere fixation but sacred purpose.
Naked and more vulnerable than ever, my resolve strengthened. I would destroy the Flanagan's business at Ashford, and I would make Alexander mine.
Blessedly, Patrick thought me too pathetic to fuck right then. I'd lost some weight in three days, and he wanted me completely lucid when he broke me over and over. So he released me with a smirk and let me fall back on the bed.
"Pathetic bitch. I'll visit again when I'm ready. Tonight, I might get myself a couple of whores to do what you cannot."
I wished he'd bloody well choke on his dinner and die tonight, but I did not react for that would be the stupidest thing ever.
When he finally left, his expression held the satisfied certainty that he'd broken me at last. The door closed, locks engaged.
I remained motionless, allowing my expression to maintain the vacant surrender he expected until his footsteps faded completely.
Only then did I move, my hatred rising to the surface.
Patrick's arrogance had finally enabled a fatal error.
In his arrogance, Patrick had grown careless.
The phone had slipped from his pocket during his assault, sliding partially under the bed's metal frame.
His satisfaction with my apparent surrender blinded him to his mistake as he left, convinced I was too broken to notice anything beyond my own misery.
I slipped from the bed, gathering the device with trembling fingers, and quickly tapped on the screen.
The phone's screen illuminated my gaunt face, the battery at forty-three percent.
Enough. I put in the code, which I'd seen him use countless times, and navigated to the search engine.
Logging into my email, I typed the first letters of an address I luckily remembered by heart even though I usually texted this person.
I began typing a message, my fingers leaving dirty smudges on the screen:
I know how the security codes on the Ashford estate work and where you can find the new ones.
Most likely, after your capture, they've all been changed.
I can help you get back in without being caught.
I know Alexander Moore's morning routine down to the minute, as well as the security blind spots on the estate.
Meet me where we last spoke a week from today, same time, if you want revenge against the men who destroyed us both. — B. O'Brien
I was bluffing a bit, but my ace was to get Patrick to aid Aoife in her mission.
If I could convince him I wanted to destroy the Flanagans and Alexander with them with her help, then he might give me some grace.
I just had to play the game well. The trick would be to get to my goal before they razed everything to the ground.
I sent the message to Aoife O'Malley, hoping she was still actively working against the Flanagans and would check this email account.
Based on my surveillance, she'd been operating independently—exactly what I needed.
A calculated risk, but after three days in darkness followed by Patrick's attempts at breaking me further, risk had become irrelevant.
I deleted the message from the sent folder, cleared the cache, and returned the phone precisely where Patrick had left it. Then I lay down, my mind racing with renewed clarity while I longed to take a shower and wash Patrick's brutal touch off my body.
I returned to the bed, arranging myself in the posture of defeat Patrick expected to find upon his return.
All I could think of was Alexander's face, his touch, and how I would escape this prison.
I would find Alexander Moore, seek his touch, and he'd finally claim me as the woman meant to be with him forever. ..
"Soon," I whispered, curling into myself, my eyes on the prize.