Chapter 23
The Brid e
F or the next two mornings, I wake to the most delicious aroma curling through the air—bitter, rich, unmistakable. Coffee. Each morning, the hot beverage is placed on a note with just one word. Yesterday it was careful, and today that word is soon. It’s the only sign Jack’s been here.
I don’t get why he didn’t wake me up. Just like I don’t understand why I care. I should be happy he left me alone. Right?
The chain pulls faintly at my ankle as I shift upright. I reach for the mug and take my first sip, moaning at the perfect blend. Damn, that is good.
Not wanting to waste time by staying in bed, I get up and go through my routine of showering and getting dressed. Unlike yesterday and the day before, I don’t dress in my own clothes. Instead, I pick the long sleeved shirt on the floor on Jack’s side of the bed.
I can’t explain why, but even while I’m hurt he left me after what we shared, and is now seemingly ignoring me, I like being surrounded by his scent.
The shirt makes me feel all small and dainty as it reaches my mid-thigh. And paired with a pair of knitted socks that almost reach my knees, it’s practically a complete outfit. Definitel y fine for what I have in mind today.
Since Carolina hinted that I should consider exploring, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. She was here again yesterday, delivering more food and apparently placing some jack-o’-lanterns outside the front door. Not that I can see them.
Willow wasn’t with her that time, but she stayed a couple of hours, talking about how nice it was to be out of the house alone.
Where I thought maybe I’d be able to get some information out of her, she quickly proved that wasn’t happening. Not that I can complain. Not when she tried to reassure me that Jack’s absence was caused by duty. I’m not sure I believe her, but I want to. More than I ought to.
The chain allows me to reach the walk-in closet, a space I’ve glimpsed but never properly explored. I hesitate at the threshold, weighing risk against potential insight. Unable to help my curiosity, I step inside.
The closet is larger than expected, with custom built-in shelving that stretches from floor to ceiling. His clothes hang with military precision—suits on one side, casual wear on the other. Everything in black, grays, occasional navy. Nothing vibrant, nothing that bleeds emotion.
I run my fingers along the sleeve of a jacket, the fabric is expensive beneath my touch. This is how he presents himself to the world—controlled, moneyed, contained. My eyes catalog details with professional efficiency, shoes polished to a mirror sheen, ties arranged by subtle gradations of color.
My attention shifts to the back wall, where the shelving unit doesn’t quite meet the ceiling. There’s a gap there—subtle, easily missed if you weren’t looking for architectural anomalies. I press my palm against the wood, feeling for inconsistencies.
A slight give on the right side suggests a pressure point. I push, and a section of the wall swings inward with a soft click. Behind it, a narrow ladder ascends into darkness. My pulse quickens as I step back, processing this discovery.
I strain my ears, listening for any sound that might indicate Jack’s unexpected return. The house remains silent except for the occasional creak of settling wood. I have time, but not unlimited. Each minute I spend exploring increases the risk of discovery.
My fingers close around one of the ladder’s rungs. The metal is cool and dusty, suggesting infrequent use. I pull myself up one step, testing its strength. It holds firm.
The rational part of my brain—the part trained in risk assessment and survival—warns against proceeding. If Jack returns and finds me here, the consequences could be bad. But it’s not like he’s explicitly told me I can’t go snooping.
In fact, he said nothing. He just left. So… fuck him.
There’s no point in pretending I haven’t already made up my mind. So I place my foot on the bottom rung and begin to climb.
At the end of the ladder is a trapdoor. When I press my palm against it, I feel resistance. It’s not locked, just stuck from disuse. I push harder, and it gives way with a reluctant groan, swinging upward to reveal the darkness beyond.
The attic air is dense with age and secrets, particles of dust hanging suspended from the rafters. I ease myself fully into the space, scanning the shadowed corners with trained precision.
The chain tugs tight by the time I’m halfway through the attic opening. I haven’t reached the end of my shackle, yet. But I’m close. The wind outside rattles against the eaves, creating a hollow moaning that seems to emanate from the wooden beams themselves.
This isn’t a space designed for comfort or display. It’s a repository—a place where memories go to be forgotten, not preserved.
Stacked cardboard boxes line the wall next to me, some sealed with yellowing tape, others open like discarded husks. I move toward them with measured steps, careful not to disturb the thick layer of dust that chronicles neglect.
My fingertips leave evidence of intrusion as I lift the flap of the nearest box. Inside, photo albums rest in funeral arrangement. I extract one, its leather cover cracked with age, and settle cross-legged on the rough wooden planks.
Three children stare back at me—unmistakably the Knight siblings. Nicklas, the tallest, his arm thrown protectively arou nd a younger Jack’s shoulders. Next to them is Ruby, all small and almost pixie-like.
They stand before a lake, squinting against the summer sun, their bodies relaxed in the casual intimacy of siblings who haven’t yet learned to guard themselves from each other.
I study Jack’s face with clinical interest, cataloging differences between this boy and the man who caged me. His smile reaches his eyes, crinkling the corners in genuine mirth. There’s no cruelty in his expression.
The boy in the photo still had softness to him—rounded cheeks, a hint of sunburn across his nose. But now? Jack is all harsh lines and haunted hollows. That bone-cut jaw, those sharply carved cheekbones—he’s the kind of beautiful that hurts to look at.
He looks like something sculpted under pressure, like the world carved him out of bone and fury. It’s obscene how good he looks for someone who should terrify me.
As I flip through pages, watching time carve away at innocence, something shifts. The smiles tighten. Spaces appear between bodies once pressed close. Jack’s eyes gain a wariness, a calculation.
I recognize the birth of the man I know—the one who plans, who measures, who never reveals more than necessary.
When I’m done looking through the fifth or sixth photo album, a small Polaroid falls from the pages. It’s of a woman holding a baby. I pick up the small photo and turn it over. The date and names are written on the back. Jack and Mom.
After tucking the Polaroid back inside the album, I set it aside and turn to a long cardboard tube tucked between boxes. The end cap comes loose with a soft pop, releasing the scent of oils. I slide out a roll of what appears to be paintings, unfurling them carefully across the dusty floor.
A landscape unfurls before me—a shoreline at dusk, waves frozen in violent motion against jagged rocks. The technique is amateur, but the emotion is undeniable. Rage captured in brushstrokes, the sea a churning representation of an internal storm.
The next painting shows a woman I immediately recognize as Sienna Knight from the photographs—Jack’s mother.
Her face is rendered with painful precision, each l ine a reverent documentation of memory fighting against the erosion of time.
There’s something hauntingly beautiful and powerful about sensing the hunger for connection in the brushstrokes. Yet it’s also frustrating. I shouldn’t feel anything, let alone sympathy, for the man who’s chained me.
Yet I feel the pull all the way down to my soul. Like if I just touched his cheek, I could trace the origin of every fracture.
Banishing those thoughts, I unfurl more canvases, each revealing a new facet of what must be Jack’s inner landscape. A child’s bedroom, empty but for rumpled sheets. A pumpkin patch at night, orange globes glowing like embers against black soil.
“Subject displays unexpected depth of emotional processing,” I murmur to myself, falling into the clinical assessment that helps me maintain distance. “Artistic expression indicates a repressed trauma response.”
But the professional veneer feels hollow against the raw humanity captured in these images. If Jack painted these—and the evidence strongly suggests he did—then the man who locked me in a cage contains multitudes I haven’t accounted for.
The predator houses vulnerability beneath his armor, and I’m not sure if that makes him more or less dangerous.
As I carefully re-roll the canvases and begin studying others, I start noticing something that gives me pause. Before I know what my brain has picked up on, I carefully lay the canvases out on the dusty floor, arranging and rearranging them until they make sense.
“Holy shit,” I breathe when a pattern emerges.
Jack’s cleverly hidden words inside the paintings, and now that I have them side-by-side, they’re starting to make sense.
Three children born, only one survives.
This is the Knight pattern, the inheritance we cannot escape.
Mom died bringing Ruby into the world. First sacrifice.
Who will be second ?
The devil always collects.
My brain immediately categorizes this magical thinking as another trauma response. The belief in a predetermined pattern of loss creates an illusion of order in chaos.
If deaths are fated, then no one bears responsibility. If sacrifice is inevitable, grief becomes a ritual rather than rupture.
As I try to process it all, the human part of me recognizes something deeper. Jack isn’t just cruel, he’s haunted. Death isn’t abstract to him—it’s familial.
The thoughts hidden in paint reveal a man grappling with mortality in the most intimate terms, a man who has felt his own heart stop and restart. Such an experience would fundamentally alter anyone’s relationship with mortality, with time itself.
Each day becomes borrowed. Each breath, a theft from whatever claimed you temporarily.
His obsession with me makes more sense viewed through this lens. I’m not just the woman who failed to save his sister—I’m the witness who chose not to intervene in death’s design.
In Jack’s fractured logic, I’m complicit. I don’t feel sorry for him. Understanding the architecture of someone’s pain doesn’t excuse the suffering they inflict.
But still, something in me itches to reach for him. Not to comfort, but to press harder, to provoke the ghost behind those predator eyes. Attraction isn’t supposed to feel this much like sabotage, is it?
As I gather the canvases, carefully rolling them up, I wonder if revealing my own past will help me reach the man hiding beneath the monster. If he thinks he has me figured out, he’s dead wrong.
My dad couldn’t ever figure me out, and most of the time, I don’t even feel like I fully know myself. Jack’s no different. I showed him pieces of me no one else has ever seen, and he still walked away. And why the fuck does it bother me that he left?
Finishing up, I wonder what Jack would do if he kne w I’d seen this evidence of his humanity. Would he rage against the exposure? Or would part of him be relieved to be seen, finally, as something more complex than a monster?
The wind picks up outside, howling against the eaves like a creature denied entry. I replace everything exactly as I found it, erasing evidence of my investigation. Knowledge is power, especially when your opponent doesn’t realize you possess it.
I move toward the trapdoor; the chain scrapes ominously against the floor. My mind’s heavy with contradictions.
The Jack Knight who painted his dead mom’s eyes with such tenderness is the same man who marked me as property, who used my body to punish my mind.
Both versions are real. Both must be accounted for in whatever strategy I craft next.