Wendy
The mirror is a liar.
I stare at the woman reflected in the heavy, gold-leaf vanity, and I don’t recognise the hollowed-out eyes looking back at me.
This room is a masterpiece of Italian cruelty—velvet walls the colour of dried blood, marble floors polished until they shine like ice, and the scent of lilies so thick it smells like a funeral.
It is a room built for a bird meant to be looked at, never heard.
I am dressed in the outfit Viktor’s servants laid out for me. It is a mockery of my wedding night.
The dress is a slip of black silk, so thin it feels like a second, bruised skin.
It hangs from spaghetti straps that dig into the raw, red edges of the brand on my shoulder.
The neckline plunges nearly to my navel, exposing the swell of my breasts and the faint, purple finger-marks Viktor left on my ribs.
It isn’t a dress; it’s an invitation to be used.
Beneath the silk, I am wearing nothing but a lace thong that cuts into my hips. On my feet, four-inch stilettos with thin, lethal straps that wrap around my ankles like more chains. They force my calves to ache, force my hips to tilt, force me to stand like a prize.
I pick up a heavy, silver-cased lipstick. The colour is “Siren”—a deep, aggressive crimson.
My hands shake as I drag the wax across my mouth.
I have to cover the split in my lip, the one where his ring cut me when he hit me in the barn.
I apply the red until my mouth looks like a fresh wound.
I take a brush and sweep dark, smoky shadow over my lids, trying to hide the fact that the capillaries in my eyes burst from the pressure of his hands around my throat.
I look like a whore. The thought isn’t a scream; it’s a dull, heavy stone sinking in my chest. I look like exactly what he turned me into in the straw.
I lean closer to the glass, my breath fogging the expensive surface. The ruby on my finger catches the light of the chandelier, pulsing—a steady, rhythmic red. It looks stupid now. A child’s toy. A broken promise.
“He’s not coming,” I whisper. My voice is a ghost, a thin vibration that shatters against the marble.
I think of the way Peter used to look at me—like I was the only thing in the world that wasn’t broken.
He spent weeks carving his name into my soul, making me need the sound of his voice, the weight of his hands, the safety of his shadow.
He made me love him. He made me believe that as long as I wore his gold and his red, the world couldn’t touch me.
He lied.
“You left me,” I whisper to the reflection, a single, hot tear carving a track through the expensive foundation on my cheek. “You made me need you… and then you let him take it all. You let him erase you.”
I feel the cold, heavy ache between my thighs, the physical reminder of the hours I spent under Viktor’s weight.
I feel the brand on my shoulder throbbing, a permanent map of my failure.
Peter didn’t save me. He stayed in the smoke while I was dragged into the fire.
He let the “good girl” die in the dirt of a stable.
I pick up a bottle of perfume—something heavy and floral—and spray it until the air is suffocating, desperate to drown out the scent of cedar and sweat that I can still taste in the back of my throat.
I hate the woman in the mirror. I hate her for surviving. I hate her for the way her heart still beats for a man who isn’t here.
I stand up, the heels clicking sharply against the marble, a cold, rhythmic sound that echoes through the empty, opulent room. I am a masterpiece of misery, painted in red and black, waiting to be paraded in front of a ghost.
“He won’t even know me,” I choke out, my hand flying to my mouth to stifle a sob. “He won’t even recognise the pieces.”
The heavy oak door clicks open, and the mirror reflects him—a shark in a midnight suit.
Viktor doesn’t look like the beast who grunted in the hay; he looks like a king who has just finished a casual stroll through his gardens.
He stops behind me, his hands landing on my bare, bruised shoulders.
I flinch, the movement sharp and jagged, but his grip is iron.
“Exquisite,” he purrs, his eyes roaming over my reflection, lingering on the way the black silk clings to my hips.
He slides one hand down, his palm flat against my stomach, pulling my back flush against his chest. I can feel it immediately—the thick, heavy ridge of his cock, already stone-hard against the base of my spine.
“You have no idea what you do to me, piccola fiamma. Even now, smelling of my sweat and your own tears, you make me so hard it’s a physical ache.
I could hike this silk up right now and finish what I started in the barn. ”
I close my eyes, a shudder of pure, unadulterated loathing racking my frame. “Please… just stop.”
“It’s such a shame,” he whispers, his lips brushing the shell of my ear, his breath hot and smelling of expensive bourbon. “It’s such a fucking tragedy that I have to let you go so soon.”
My eyes snap open. My heart stutters, a frantic, hopeful beat that hurts more than the brand. “Let me go?” I rasp, my voice cracking. “You’re… you’re letting me go? Back to Peter?”
Viktor freezes. Then, a low, rumbling vibration starts in his chest. It builds until he’s laughing—a cruel, mocking sound that fills the velvet-lined room and shatters the last of my dignity. He spins me around, his fingers digging into my jaw, forcing me to look up at his derisive smile.
“Back to Peter?” he mimics, his voice dripping with venom.
“Stupid, pathetic girl. You think after I’ve marked you, after I’ve filled you with my seed and burned my name into your skin, I’d just hand you back to that boy?
Don’t be fucking ridiculous. Peter Hale is a ghost. You don’t go back to ghosts. ”
“Then where?” I shriek, the panic rising like a tide of acid in my throat. “Where are you taking me?”
“You aren’t going to a home, Wendy. You’re going to a stage,” he says, his eyes dancing with a lethal light.
“In an hour, the elite of the underworld will be in my ballroom. You are the star of the evening. I am going to stand you on a stage, let them see every bruise I gave you, let them see the King’s wife in her Sunday best…
and I am going to sell you to the highest bidder. ”
The world tilts. The air in the room vanishes.
“No,” I whisper, the word dying in my throat. “No! You can’t! You fucking monster! I am not an object! I am not a fucking prize!”
Rage, pure and white-hot, explodes in my chest, overriding the trauma.
I scream—a raw, animal sound—and lunge at him.
My nails rake down his cheek, drawing four jagged lines of crimson.
I kick at his shins with my four-inch heels, trying to puncture his skin, trying to tear him apart.
“I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you, you Italian piece of shit!
You can’t sell me! Peter will burn this whole city to the ground! ”
“Peter is late, Wendy!” Viktor roars, grabbing both of my wrists in one hand and slamming me back against the vanity. The perfume bottles clatter and shatter, the scent of a thousand lilies drowning the room.
I’m sobbing now, a violent, hacking sound, my chest heaving against the black silk. “Fuck you! Fuck you, Viktor! I’ll scream! I’ll tell everyone what you did! I’ll make sure they know you’re a fucking coward who hides behind women!”
“Shhhhh,” Viktor whispers, his face inches from mine, his expression suddenly, terrifyingly calm.
The door opens again. Two massive men in black tactical gear step into the room, their faces hidden behind ballistic masks. They carry a heavy leather harness and a roll of silver duct tape.
“Don’t waste your breath, mia cara,” Viktor says, stepping back and straightening his tie as the men move toward me. “By the time you hit the stage, you won’t have a voice left to scream with.”
I scramble back, my heels skidding on the marble, but the men are faster. They snare my arms, and the first strip of tape is ripped from the roll with a sound like a gunshot.
The tape isn’t for my mouth. Not yet.
Viktor reaches into the inner pocket of his navy blazer and pulls out a small, velvet-lined case. He opens it with a clinical flick of his thumb, revealing a glass syringe. The liquid inside is amber, thick and honey-slow, catching the light of the chandelier like a trapped sunset.
“No,” I whimper, my body shaking so violently the spaghetti straps of the black slip slide down my arms. “Viktor, please. No needles. No drugs. Just… just take me to the stage. I’ll be quiet. I’ll be a good girl.”
“You were never a good girl, Wendy,” he says, his voice a low, melodic hum. “You were just a well-behaved hostage. But a girl with your fire? You’ll fight the buyer. You’ll make a scene. And I need you… compliant. I need you floating in the clouds while the sharks circle below.”
The two men in masks pin me against the vanity. One of them grabs my arm, his gloved fingers bruising my bicep, forcing my elbow to lock. He turns my arm over, exposing the pale, blue-veined skin of my inner elbow—the most vulnerable part of me left.
“Hold her still,” Viktor commands.
“I’ll kill you!” I scream, the sound tearing at my vocal cords. I thrash, my heels kicking out, shattering the lower mirror of the vanity. Glass shards fly, cutting my ankles, but I don’t feel it. All I see is that glinting silver needle. “I’ll fucking find a way to end you, Viktor! Peter will—”
“Peter is a memory, piccola fiamma. This is your reality.”
He steps into my space, his thumb flicking the side of the syringe to clear the air bubbles. He doesn’t look like a man anymore; he looks like a scientist performing an experiment on a stray dog. He grabs my forearm, his grip a vice, and presses the needle against my skin.
I feel the sharp, cold bite of the steel. I let out a jagged, broken sob as he slides the needle home.
“There,” he whispers.
He plunges the amber liquid into my vein.
The horror isn’t immediate. It’s a slow, creeping invasion. It starts in my arm—a sudden, blooming heat that feels like molten lead racing toward my heart. It hits my chest, and for a second, I can’t breathe. My lungs feel like they’ve been filled with warm, heavy velvet.
Then, the world begins to dissolve.
The sharp edges of the room—the marble, the gold, the blood-red walls—start to melt into one another like a watercolour painting left in the rain. The rage in my chest, that hot, beautiful fire that was keeping me alive, is suddenly doused in a cold, oily syrup.
“That’s it,” Viktor murmurs, his face blurring into a soft-focus nightmare as he leans closer. “Let go, Wendy. The horse is out of the gate now.”
My knees buckle. The men don’t let me fall; they hold me up like a marionette with frayed strings. I try to lift my head, to spit in his face, but my neck feels like it’s made of water. My tongue is heavy, a useless piece of meat in my mouth.
It’s heroin. High-grade, lethal, and pure.
The terror is still there, buried deep under the chemical fog, but I can’t reach it.
I’m watching my own kidnapping from the bottom of a dark, warm ocean.
I feel the men dragging the silver duct tape across my mouth, the adhesive biting into my skin, but I can’t even wince.
They wrap it around and around my head, sealing my screams into a tomb of plastic and glue.
“Beautiful,” Viktor’s voice echoes, sounding like it’s coming from miles away. “She looks like a doll. A perfect, silent doll.”
I feel them hoisting me up. My feet, in those four-inch heels, drag uselessly across the marble. The clicking sound is gone, replaced by the dull thrum of my own slowing heartbeat.
I’m being carried toward the door, toward the stage, toward a life where I’m nothing but a commodity. And as the darkness starts to pull at the edges of my vision, I think of the red ring on my finger.
Peter, I try to think, but the drug is too strong. The name dissolves into the amber haze.
Who is Peter?