Chapter 23 Amelia
AMELIA
Consciousness comes in staccato bursts—my head throbbing, mouth cotton-dry. I blink against the dim light, trying to piece together fragments of memory. My studio. Gabe’s face. His hand covering my mouth.
A rush of panic explodes through my chest as I bolt upright.
“God—” My voice comes out ragged. This isn’t my bedroom. Not Gabe’s penthouse or apartment above the club either.
Rough-hewn log walls. A woodstove. One small window showing nothing but darkness. The metallic taste of fear floods my mouth as I register what happened.
He took me. Drugged me and brought me here.
I swing my legs off the bed, noticing my shoes neatly placed beside it. The gesture is bizarrely considerate from a man who just kidnapped me. My head spins as I stand, forcing me to grip the bedpost until the room steadies.
Breathe, Amelia. Observe.
My brain compartmentalizes the terror into manageable sections. I catalog my prison: sparse furnishings, approximately twenty by fifteen feet. Candles cast amber light against pine boards. No phone visible. No obvious weapons within reach.
Then I see the table.
Rope coiled in perfect concentric circles. The knife he held to my throat. A collar I recognize from his apartment.
My brain shifts into the familiar patternmaking I’ve relied on my entire life. Not haphazard placement. Deliberate. A narrative laid out for my consumption. The objects form a visual declension, from darkness to submission. From threat to surrender.
I move closer, studying shadows cast by candlelight across the implements. The composition tells a story—his fantasy of what happens next.
The window shows nothing but reflection—too dark outside to gauge where we are. Dense trees, maybe. The silence suggests isolation. No traffic sounds. No neighbor’s voices.
My heart hammers beneath my ribs, but my mind remains coldly analytical, seeking escape routes. Fight or manipulate? Reason or pretend?
I hear footsteps approaching from outside.
The door swings open, and Gabe fills the frame. My breath catches.
He’s wearing the spike mask.
What once seemed darkly thrilling in his bedroom now transforms into something from a nightmare—black leather with metal protrusions catching the candlelight, turning his silhouette inhuman.
His gaze burns with an intensity I’ve never seen before.
His chest rises and falls too rapidly. His fingers flex and unflex at his sides.
“You’re awake.” His voice sounds different through the mask—deeper, distorted.
I back away until my legs hit the bed frame. “Take that thing off.”
He tilts his head, the spikes creating a grotesque halo around his face. “Why? You liked it before.”
“That was before you drugged and kidnapped me.” My voice stays steadier than I expect.
He steps closer, and I notice how his pupils are dilated to black pools, a slight tremor in his hands, sweat beading at his temples despite the cabin’s chill. Everything about him radiates barely contained energy.
“I had to bring you here. You were going to leave.” His eyes dart around my face, searching. “You understand me. I won’t lose you.”
My body betrays me in the worst possible way.
Despite everything—the chloroform, the abduction, the very real danger I’m in—heat flushes through me at his proximity.
I hate the way my pulse quickens when he steps closer.
Hate how my eyes trace the contours of his shoulders beneath his shirt.
Hate how my mind flashes to his hands on my body even now.
“What you did was unforgivable.”
“But not incomprehensible.” He reaches for me.
I hold my ground, refusing to flinch. “Don’t touch me.”
The manic gleam intensifies behind the mask. “You’re still mine. I can feel it.”
The worst part is—he’s not entirely wrong.
“Look at your paintings,” Gabe says, his voice hollow behind the mask. He pulls out his phone, swiping through photos of my recent work. “The darkness was always there. In every brushstroke. The chaos beneath order.”
I want to deny it, but the evidence glows on his screen—my canvases evolved from cosmic patterns to raw, violent intimacy. Work I was proud of creating.
“That’s just art,” I whisper, unconvincing even to myself.
He removes the mask in one fluid motion, revealing his gorgeous face. “We’re the same, Amelia. We both see what others can’t. The patterns of predators moving through the world. The corruption beneath polished veneers.”
“I’m not a killer.”
“But you understand why I do it.” He moves closer, and I hate that I don’t back away. “When I told you about Reynolds, about what he did to those girls, I saw it in your eyes.”
My stomach twists because he’s right. When Maya showed me the evidence about Reynolds, something dark within me had nodded in approval.
“You weren’t horrified by what I did to him,” Gabe continues, voice softer now. “You were horrified that you understood it.”
“Stop—”
“Tell me I’m wrong.” His hand cups my chin, forcing me to meet his gaze. “Tell me you’ve never looked at men like Gregory Walsh and wished someone would stop them.”
My breath catches. I never told him about Walsh, how he cornered me in his gallery office years ago, how he promised to destroy my career if I spoke up.
“Maya told me,” Gabe says, reading my expression. “How he’s done it to six other artists. How he’s still doing it.”
Something coils inside me—a darkness I’ve always channeled into art instead of action.
“What does it make me,” I whisper, “that I’m still drawn to you? That even now, knowing everything, I’m sick with wanting you?”
His mouth crashes into mine before I can finish my thought, consuming the confession like oxygen. This is primitive desperation—teeth scraping my lips, fingers digging into my scalp, breath coming in ragged bursts against my skin.
I taste blood—mine or his, I can’t tell—as his tongue forces its way past my lips.
My back slams against the log wall. The pain radiates down my spine, but I don’t push him away.
Something primal clicks into place as my fingers claw at his shoulders, pulling him closer even as my brain screams to run.
He breaks away, eyes wild and unfocused. “You’re perfect,” he pants, hands shaking as they move to my blouse.
The sound of fabric tearing fills the cabin—buttons pinging against the wooden floor as he rips my blouse down the middle. Cold air hits my bare skin, and I gasp, crossing my arms instinctively.
“Don’t,” he growls, pinning my wrists above my head with one hand. His eyes travel down my exposed chest, lingering on the marks he left days ago, now faded to sickly yellow-green shadows.
He releases me suddenly, backing away. I stand frozen, half-naked, as he reaches for the spiked mask on the table.
“We’re going to play a game,” he says, voice transforming as he slips the leather over his face. The warm amber candlelight catches on each metal protrusion, turning the mask into something from medieval nightmares.
“I don’t want to play,” I whisper, but my body betrays me again—pulse quickening.
He notices. Of course he notices.
“Five minutes,” he says through the mask. “You run. I hunt.” He gestures toward the cabin door. “Woods all around us. No neighbors for miles.”
“And if I refuse?”
The mask tilts. “You won’t. You’ve been craving this chaos your entire life.”
“This isn’t—”
“Run.” The word slices through the air, his body tensing like a predator. “Or I start now.”
The door slams behind me as I burst outside, cold air hitting my bare chest like a physical blow. I clutch the torn edges of my blouse together, stumbling down rough-hewn steps. Moonlight filters through pine branches, casting long shadows across unfamiliar ground.
Run. Just run.
My lungs burn with each breath as I plunge into the darkness between trees. Branches claw at my hair, pine needles stab my bare feet. I didn’t even grab my shoes. The woods swallow me whole—black silhouettes against starlight, the ground a treacherous terrain of roots and fallen branches.
Yet beneath the terror, something else pulses. Heat spreads through my core even though it makes no rational sense. My heart hammers against my ribs, but not just from fear.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I weave between massive pines, trying to put distance between us while straining to hear if he’s pursuing me yet. Nothing but my own ragged breathing and the soft crunch of forest floor beneath my feet. The silence terrifies me more than noise would.
Pausing behind a broad trunk, I press my spine against rough bark and try to control my breathing. The moon bathes everything in silver, turning familiar objects alien. I scan the darkness, looking for movement.
That’s when I see him.
Standing at the edge of the tree line, perfectly still. The mask transforms him into something ancient and terrible—spikes creating a crown of thorns around his jaw. But it’s his eyes that freeze my blood—visible even at this distance, gleaming with manic intensity. Predatory. Hungry.
Watching.
A sound escapes my throat—half-whimper, half-moan. My knees weaken as fear and arousal collide in a confusing cocktail of chemicals flooding my system. My nipples harden against the cold night air, my pulse throbbing between my legs.
He tilts his head slowly, the gesture inhuman behind that terrible mask, and I know he sees me.
I should be running—faster, harder, away—but my feet are glued to the ground. My heart gallops, and not just from exertion.
I hate this. I hate him. I hate myself more.
Because I want him to catch me.
The thought crashes through me with such force that I stumble against a tree, bark scraping my already raw palms. What kind of sick person am I? He’s a killer. He drugged me. He’s hunting me through these woods like an animal, and yet—
My body hums with anticipation.
“This isn’t normal,” I whisper to the darkness, but the words dissolve into the night air, meaningless against the truth pulsing between my legs.
I take three more steps, then pause. Listen. The forest has gone quiet, as if holding its breath. He’s out there, watching, tracking. The thought sends another inappropriate rush of heat through me.
Is this what my art has been trying to tell me all along? The violent strokes, the raw intimacy, the darkness I’ve always channeled onto canvas instead of acknowledging in myself.
My torn blouse flutters open in the breeze. I don’t bother closing it anymore.
I slide down against a tree trunk, sitting in the cold dirt, suddenly exhausted by the pretense.
The game we’re playing isn’t what it appears.
I’m not running to escape. Each step I take is neither too fast nor too direct.
I’m leaving a trail. Pausing too long in clearings where moonlight illuminates my body.
I want to be caught.
The realization doesn’t shock me as much as it should. Something has always been broken in me—the part that drives my obsessive art, that drew me to Gabe in the first place.
I stand up, leaves and pine needles clinging to my skin. I turn in a slow circle, scanning the shadows.
“I know you’re there,” I call out, my voice stronger than expected. “Come and get me.”