Chapter 21
The Flame
Once again, time seemed to slip away as we fell into a new routine. One that looked like our old one from the outside, but with subtle differences only Silas and I recognised.
He lingered more than he used to. Our interactions were no longer him taking care of my essential needs. Especially now that all of my bruises and cuts were healed.
In some ways, he still unnerved me—he never sat down, he never relaxed, and everything about him was so intense. But he was present more often now. Physically present, where I could actually see him—the cameras guaranteed he was always present one way or another and could always see me.
He was evening out the playing field a little by being here, rather than observing me from afar. And though sometimes I was still slightly uncomfortable—especially when I remembered who he was and the reputation he had—I appreciated him being here more than I realised I would.
Which maybe should have disturbed me more than it did. But I was starting to understand that the world wasn’t always black and white. A bad man could do good things. Just as a good man could do bad things. A bad man could also bring comfort, even though he was responsible for the harm.
Two things could be true at once. And in this case, it was that Silas both scared me and soothed me. It didn’t matter who understood that. It mattered that it made the days for me more bearable.
Before long, the rose he gave me began to wilt. Once he realised, he’d taken to replacing it every single day. Sometimes another rose, sometimes a lily, sometimes a sunflower. It was different every day, and it became a nice surprise, and something to look forward to.
Somewhere along the way, I had stopped counting the flowers as gifts from my captor and started treating them like part of my day.
The best part, really.
Which really went to show how small my world had grown in just a few weeks.
One day the flower was accompanied by a silver choker, covered in diamonds that sparkled brightly, even in this dim and dark basement. It was pretty easy to guess that my twenty-first birthday had been and gone, and this was my gift from Silas.
It was a stunning piece of jewellery, and it looked so out of place down here where things came to rot.
So much so that I didn’t wear it. It didn’t feel right to expose something so beautiful to something so ugly.
Silas reappeared to bring my evening meal, and when he noticed the choker still in its velvet box, I saw the discreet clench of his gloved fists before he turned and presented my food to me.
I put it on when he left, and when he came back the next day with breakfast, his mask looked straight at the box, tilting to the side when he noticed the choker was missing. For the remainder of his visit, his eyes remained glued to my throat, glittering with an emotion I couldn’t decipher.
We were learning each other, even without verbally communicating. And it got me thinking, what else had he tried to tell me that I hadn’t paid attention to?
That’s what led me to requesting pens and paper during his next visit.
His head had tilted in confusion, but the next time he visited, it was with a huge box filled with blank paper, coloured pens, glitter pens, gel pens, felt tips, as well as supplies upon supplies of materials to begin scrapbooking.
I really had just been asking for blank paper and a biro, but I bestowed a beaming smile on him and gushed my thanks anyway, praising him endlessly—probably a little over the top, actually, especially since he had stiffened for a second under my enthusiastic gratitude.
But then he inclined his head at me, his entire body seeming to deflate as his posture relaxed more than I had ever seen.
I had made the right choice.
From there, I picked up right where my spreadsheets on my laptop had left off.
I began to research.
If Luca had taught me anything, it was to pay attention to my surroundings. Pay attention to what people do, not what they say. Silas was the perfect person to observe because he never said anything at all.
That was another thing I had started noticing. He never forced interaction from me. He waited. Watched. Rewarded. But every choice to engage with him had ultimately been mine.
Which was dangerous in its own right.
My entire life, the people around me had benefited from me staying soft, sheltered, and easy to direct. My mother wanted me beautiful. My father wanted me obedient. Adrien wanted me smiling beside him and saying very little.
Silas, somehow, seemed to become more engaged the more I observed.
One of my first major interactions with Silas—minus my birthday party—had been in my father’s office, right after I had left the secret room.
And the more I thought about it, the more I remembered that he had deliberately chosen to stand in front of the bookcase that was concealing the secrets.
At the time, I had assumed it was so he could intimidate me, letting me know he knew where I was hiding.
And whilst I still believed that to be true, I also believed he was trying to tell me something.
This room had not been hastily thrown together. And Silas moved with intention. If he had planned in advance to take me, had he also planned subtle ways to show me what I’d need to do to escape?
When I first entered here, the bookcase had been empty. My very first reward was books. Which he had organised onto the shelf whilst I’d been sleeping.
I began making notes on these books. Some were romance, some true crime, and some horror stories. But the more I read them, and the more I annotated, the more I began to realise that these were deliberate choices. He was trying to tell me something with these titles.
I just wasn’t quite sure what. And that was the most frustrating thing in the entire world. The answers were right there, but still so far away.
At first, I thought I was imagining the patterns woven throughout the books.
But the more I read, the more similarities began to stand out to me.
Women trapped by their families. Monsters mistaken for men.
Obsessive love twisted into devotion. Survival.
Revenge. Identity. The themes repeated themselves over and over again, hidden beneath different genres and different characters, until eventually it became impossible to ignore the feeling that the books had been chosen deliberately.
Some had folded corners marking certain pages. Others had sentences lightly underlined in pencil, subtle enough that I hadn’t noticed them at first. Not enough to stand out unless you were actively searching for something hidden beneath the surface.
And now I was.
One line in particular had stayed with me all day.
When you cannot control the cage, learn the creature keeping you inside it.
I stared down at the sentence again, lightly chewing the inside of my cheek as my thoughts spiralled.
“Is that what you’re doing?” I murmured quietly into the empty room. “Teaching me?”
The cameras watched silently from the corners, their tiny blinking lights suddenly feeling far more significant than they had before.
For the first time since being dragged into this basement, my brain felt awake again. Not trapped beneath panic or grief or fear, but searching. Thinking. Pulling at threads.
And the more I thought about it, the more certain things began shifting into place inside my mind.
Luca had never simply handed me answers either.
Not once. Whenever I asked him something important, he redirected me instead.
Guided me towards conclusions without ever fully explaining them himself.
Even in my father’s office, he hadn’t outright told me where the hidden room was.
He had nudged me in the right direction and waited for me to work it out on my own.
Just like this.
My eyes slowly lifted towards the bookshelf again, my father’s office forming behind my eyes with startling clarity.
“You’re showing me something, I know it,” I muttered out loud. My hand crept to the choker on my throat. “You give me gifts. But this has been the first luxurious present. You gave me books first…”
The books.
Observe.
Learn.
Look deeper.
My pulse began to quicken as I slid off the bed and crossed the room properly this time.
I crouched in front of the shelves, running my fingers slowly along the spines, paying attention to details instead of simply titles.
Some looked pristine, untouched entirely, whilst others were visibly worn from repeated reading.
One in particular caught my attention almost immediately. It sat slightly uneven compared to the others, protruding only the smallest amount from the shelf.
A disbelieving laugh almost escaped me.
“No way. No fucking way.”
Slowly, cautiously, I pulled the book forward.
Nothing happened.
I sat back slightly with a quiet breath, shaking my head at myself. “Okay, Isabelle. You’ve officially lost your mind.”
And yet the uneasy feeling remained.
My gaze narrowed on the shelf again as I shifted closer. The wood behind that particular book looked newer somehow, cleaner than the surrounding area. Less dust gathered there.
My fingers moved lower, tracing lightly along the underside of the shelf instead.
Then stopped.
There.
The tiniest indentation pressed into the wood, barely noticeable unless someone was actively searching for imperfections.
My heartbeat kicked harder against my ribs as I stared at it.
Silas wanted me to observe.
And maybe it was finally time I started paying attention properly.