chapter 24
Matleon
My eyes open at their usual hour. She’s lying with her back pressed to my chest, my body curved around hers, spooning her in sleep.
I hadn’t understood the full extent of her hurt before. I had estimated it, assumed I grasped it. But last night, I saw it clearly. I’ve caused damage so deep I don’t even know if it can be repaired. Still, I won’t stop trying. I’ll keep trying until the day I die.
I press a kiss to the back of her head. She stirs against me.
I slowly remove my arm from around her stomach.
She turns onto her back and looks up at me.
It takes me only a few seconds to realize it—how much I love this moment, how much I wait for it.
Her shining ocean-blue eyes meeting mine every morning.
“Good morning, Angel.”
She nods, then looks away.
I get out of bed. “Come with me. I have something to show you.”
She raises a brow. I chuckle. “I wanted to show you last night, but you decided to play run, run.”
A soft tint of red blooms across her skin. She climbs out of bed and follows me without a word. I lead her toward my study and open the door beside it. Her mouth falls open as she takes in the sight. I had recreated her laboratory here, an exact replica, down to the smallest detail.
She walks around slowly, taking it in, touching nothing at first, just looking. When she finally turns to me, her eyes search my face.
“Who told you all these details?”
“Your father.”
A ghost of a smile touches her lips as she nods. “Thank you.”
I take two steps closer. Her body goes instantly rigid.
“You’re my wife,” I murmur, my voice low. “It’s my responsibility to take care of your needs.”
She stares at me.
“Whether it’s related to your work or your body.”
She narrows her eyes. “No need to take care of my body. I can take very good care of myself.”
I take two more steps closer. “I could prove that I can take even better care of your…” My eyes roam over her full breasts, slim waist, and down her milky thighs. “…beautiful body.” I lift my gaze back to her flushed face.
“I don’t want you to.”
I sigh, exhaling through my mouth. “That’s very unfortunate for you.” I grin. “But I’m just one call away if you change your mind in the near future.”
She purses her lips. I lift my hand, she goes completely rigid. I glide my fingertips along her soft cheek. “I want to keep my promise of not touching you, but it’s very difficult. When you come in front of me, all I can think about are ways of fucking you.”
I let my hand fall and shove both hands into the pockets of my sweatpants. “Like right now, I want to spread you open on…” I point with my chin toward her table. “That table. I checked its sturdiness because the same thought came to me while having this lab prepared.”
Her cheeks burn bright red. “How can you speak such nonsense with such seriousness? You’re hopeless, Matleon,” she grits, walking around me and out of the room.
I smile. Now she’ll think about it next time she comes here. Words have a powerful effect, and I enjoy wielding that power.
I’m perfect at mind games, but the moment illogical things like feelings come into the picture, I usually stop enjoying it.
She is an exception. With her, I enjoy the entire spectrum of feeling itself.
Last night wasn’t entirely enjoyable, but it was a much-needed experience for me.
I’m not the type for heart-to-heart talks.
I can do brain-to-brain conversations, fist-to-face conversations, but not heart-to-heart.
I don’t like peering inside my own heart, I prefer dissecting others’ emotions so I can use them against them.
My own emotions? I keep them locked away.
It’s not that I don’t feel. I feel everything perfectly, I’m not Zo.
I understand emotions with precision, but only when they belong to others.
When it comes to my own, I like the canvas blank.
If I can’t see something, I don’t act on it.
If I don’t feel the guilt of killing someone, I don’t react to it.
But yesterday, I forced myself to confront that blank canvas.
I saw inside myself that I need her, not just her body, but her presence, close to me in every way.
When I saw her tears falling, I didn’t shut off the other end; I let her pain hit me square on the chest. And when she said she would never love me, I let the hurt consume me completely.
Looking into my own emotional space isn’t pleasant, but around her, it’s necessary. I think I can work on it.
Iselyn
I watch the golden drops fall one by one from the cloth-lined filtration funnel. It will take ten more minutes for the complete extract to filter out. More than enough time for my mind to wander toward Matleon.
When my hands are busy with work, my brain doesn’t have space to think about him, but the moment I get even a little breathing room, all my thoughts fly straight to him. And last night… last night was more than enough material for my mind to dwell on.
The sound of the door opening pulls me from my thoughts. Wen rushes inside, her face tight with worry. I frown. “What happened?”
“Someone leaked it to the media—Avira is Alexander Bennett’s biological daughter.”
“Shit.” I rush toward her, and we both sprint outside.
This morning, Zo announced he’s going to marry Avi.
Outside our circle, no one knows about Avi, Wen, or me.
We’ve been kept hidden from the world our entire lives.
Avi is a published, world-famous author under her pen name Ash Penny, and Wen is a deeply talented pianist, known only by her stage name Ella.
As for me, no one knows anything about me.
And now, this leak is going to cause a whole lot of shit.
We run to Zo’s mansion. Sounds echo from Zo’s study, its doors wide open. Inside, Avi is a crying mess.
He looks up as we enter. I pull my phone from my shorts pocket and step outside while Wen moves toward them. I make a call to Matleon, he picks up instantly.
“Did you see the news?” I ask.
“What news?”
“Someone leaked the information that Avi is Alexander Bennett’s daughter.”
“Fuck.” He mutters under his breath. “I’m coming.”
His voice turns distant as he speaks to someone else. “We’ll have this meeting next Monday.”
The call cuts. I walk back inside the study.
On Zo’s screen, an article is open. Photos of Avi and Zo from their younger years at a party. Photos of Avi with her parents. Smiling. Unaware.
The headline reads: Marrying the Girl He Called Sister: The Dirty Life of the Rich.
My stomach twists.
Below it are the comments.
“They kept her hidden so they could do this incest without anyone knowing. Leeches of society.”
My brows pull together.
“They hid her so no one would know their adopted son was fucking their daughter for who knows how long. Creeps.”
Another one.
“They should have let him rot in that basement where they rescued him from. It would’ve saved the Bennett name.”
I avert my gaze, unable to read any further. Anger coils tight in my chest. Wen is holding Avi, murmuring to her, trying to calm her shaking body. I can’t do that right now. I don’t trust myself to speak gently.
I hate people like this, people who know nothing about the truth, nothing about the lives they’re tearing apart, yet speak with mouths full of rot.
I pull out my phone, open the browser, find the article, and scroll straight to the comments.
I start replying. To the woman with grey hair who wrote that Zo should’ve been left to rot in a basement, I type: “The way you speak is inhumane. It’s people like you who deserve to rot in hell.”
Next, the creeps comment. “How can your mind even go there? Maybe you’re the one who fucked your own sibling.” I know I don’t sound like a civilized human being anymore. I don’t care. I’m furious.
The grey-haired woman replies to my comment: “People like you, who support such things, are ruining society.”
My fingers fly over the screen, a dull headache building right between my brows as they knot together. “I am damn sure you don’t give a single shit about society,” I type back. “Tell me, what have you ever done for society apart from picking at people from behind a screen?”
A hand wraps around my shoulder. I jerk my head up and find Matleon standing beside me, his gaze already on my phone. He rubs my shoulder slowly.
“Don’t stress yourself,” he says quietly. “We’ll deal with these people.”
Then he turns away from me and walks toward Avi, who is wiping her nose with trembling fingers. Zo and Wen have calmed her a lot.
Matleon pulls out a chair and sits in front of her. He takes her hands in his.
“Is what they’re saying true?” he asks.
She shakes her head immediately, tears pooling again.
“Then do their words matter?”
“They still hurt,” she mutters, her voice hoarse, raw from crying.
“They hurt,” he says calmly, “because you’re giving them power. I know it’s not like you can snap your fingers and take that power away. But you have to start trying, especially when what they’re saying is nothing but garbage.”
He leans forward slightly. “And whenever you see someone speaking like that, remember this, they are writing among the last words they’ll ever put out.”
Her eyes widen. “Will you kill them?”
For a fraction of a second, Matleon’s gaze flicks toward Zo. Then he shakes his head. “We’ll ban them from the internet.”
It’s a lie. I know it. Zo knows it.
“We’ll keep them in the redemption room for some time,” he continues smoothly, “and then let them go.”
My anger drains out of me, replaced by pity. Because I know what the redemption room means. I almost feel sorry for these people, typing hatred so casually, unaware of who is reading.
Avi nods, looking a little more stable now.
She doesn’t know about the redemption room.
It’s a white room. Completely white. Captives are given food, water, a single bed to sleep on.
A perfectly cleaned bathroom. Fresh clothes.
Everything they need to survive. Except one thing. They never see another human.
There is nothing to do, no sound, no work, no distraction. Just white walls and time. Endless, suffocating time. Within fourteen days, they start losing their minds. Slowly at first, then all at once.
Just like everything related to Matleon, Kaz told me about this method of torture he uses.
He has different levels of it. The redemption room is a white room, meant for those they want to break slowly.
The grey room is for those they want to destroy faster.
And then there is the black room, designed to shatter the mind within two or three days.
My family never kept me in the dark when it came to information. They never showed me practical examples of their work, never dragged me into blood or violence, but all the theoretical knowledge was always laid out in front of me.
Papa wanted me to understand how their world works, to know the basics well enough to protect myself in case of emergencies. Wen and Avi, on the other hand, were kept far away from this world. Shielded. Untouched.