CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Do it now, Starling, or there will be punishments.”
Mr. Hirsh’s voice was cold steel—polished, precise, stripped of humanity.
The whip sliced through the air before I could move.
CRACK.
Pain exploded across my cheek. I staggered, one knee buckling beneath me, hands catching on the filthy concrete.
“Sir, please—” I began, trembling, but—
SMACK.
The second strike hit harder. Sharper. My head snapped to the side, stars burst behind my eyes. Copper filled my mouth.
“You think you're above obedience?” His boots creaked as he stepped closer. “That stage made you think you earned something?”
I shook my head—barely able to see, barely breathing. “I didn’t—I was just—”
He grabbed my jaw in his filthy hand, forcing my face up.
“You exist to be chosen,” he spat. “Your mouth, your body, your pain—all of it has purpose only when it serves.”
Tears blurred my vision, but I didn't let them fall. Not in front of him.
He released me like I was nothing. “Again,” he said, stepping back. “Beg. Or I’ll make an example of you the way I did your friend.”
My stomach twisted.
No. No, not her. Not again.
“Please,” I whispered, broken and hollow.
“Louder.”
“Please… sir…”
He raised the whip again, mouth curling in satisfaction.
But just before it struck—
Thunder cracks. I jolt awake with my heart pounding louder than the storm outside. The room is drenched in darkness, broken only by the red glare of the alarm clock. 4:14 AM.
My bladder screams. I try to swing my leg off the bed, but I can’t move—trapped under the weight of a heavy arm and leg.
A hand cups my breast, possessive and warm, pulling me back against a broad chest.
“Where are you going, Starling?” His voice is rough with fatigue, but the dominance in it never fades.
“Can you please call me Daya?” I whisper, my voice barely holding together. “And I… I have to use the bathroom.”
A moment of silence.
“How do you ask?”
I swallow. “Please, sir. May I get up and use the bathroom?”
He releases me with a low grunt. “You may use mine.”
I nod, though he can’t see me. I don’t come into his room often, but I know the layout well enough. The darkness doesn’t scare me—not the way disappointing him does.
I slip from the bed, careful not to jostle the mattress, and pad toward the bathroom.
The door has barely begun to close when his voice rumbles from behind me.
“Leave it open, Daya. You know the rules.”
My fingers freeze on the edge of the door. I leave it cracked, just enough for him to see me if he wants to. Just enough to remind me I am never really alone.
I sit and relieve myself. The cold porcelain grounding me even as my mind spirals back to the dream. The whip. The command. The slap.
When I finish, I flush and wash my hands in the dark—no need for light. I don’t plan to stay. The water is cold, metallic against my skin, and the silence feels thicker in here, as if the air itself is holding its breath.
I creep back into the bedroom, the soft creak of the floorboard under my heel making my stomach tighten.
His form is still beneath the blanket, one arm thrown across the pillow, the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest giving the illusion of sleep.
No mask. Just him—bare-faced in the dim spill of darkness, though he’s turned away from me, angled slightly toward the far side of the room.
Enough that I can’t make out details. Only shape. Only presence.
I step cautiously across the floor, inching toward the hallway.
I don’t make it two full strides before the sound cuts through the dark.
“Da—”
The sound catches. Not finished. Not spoken all the way through.
A pause follows, heavier than the word itself.
“Starling.”
My name falls from his lips like a warning wrapped in silk. I freeze, spine stiffening, heart stuttering.
Then comes the command — low, calm, immovable.
“Quit lollygagging. Bed. Now.”
He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t need to. The authority in it hits like gravity. It isn’t a question. It isn’t a suggestion. It is a tether, pulling tight around my ribs.
Part of me wants to rebel. To keep walking. To prove I am still free. But another part—deeper, darker—obeys without question. That part is already moving, already turning toward the bed, steps slow and weighted with something I don’t want to name.
I climb in beside him without a word.
He doesn’t touch me. Not yet.
He doesn’t have to.
His presence alone is command enough—heavy in the space between us, filling the silence until it feels less like absence and more like instruction.
In this room—his room—I belong to him.
Every part of me.
My body. My breath. Even my fear.
Control doesn’t exist for me here. Not mine, anyway. It had been stripped away the moment I stepped through his door—maybe even before that.
He owns the rules. He enforces the consequences. He decides who I am allowed to be.
And the terrifying part?Somewhere deep down, I find comfort in that.
I find order in the rituals. In the silence.
In the precise way he can control a room without raising his voice.
I don’t know when it started, but I’d stopped flinching when he touched me.
Stopped resisting when he corrected me. Maybe it was survival.
Maybe it was conditioning. Maybe it was something even more dangerous.
I never go back to sleep.
I just lay there, wide-eyed in the dark, letting him hold me.
Shoomaker.
His name slides across my memory like a whisper beneath a locked door.
I let my body imagine the feel of a thick police-issued jacket tucked around my trembling frame. I imagine the steady drum of his heartbeat behind me as he pulls me close—not out of desire, not for power or punishment—but because he can’t stand to see me break again.
In the dark, I imagine him brushing his hand through my hair, gentle and slow, grounding me in ways the real world never did. He would hold me through the shaking. Through the aftermath. Through the moments where I wasn’t even sure I still belonged to myself.
But I don’t let the fantasy go.
Not yet.
The alarm buzzes at 5:45 AM, shrill and unforgiving.
He silences it with one hand, then says, flat and final, “Time to get back to your room, Starling.”
I grunt, soft and bitter. More bitter because he keeps calling me by that name.
I’m not really comfortable—not physically. His bed is too cold, too firm, too full of shadows. But being here...
Being here is safer.
Because I know exactly what happens when I’m not.
I know the rooms he sends me to when he wants to bend me, break me, unravel the edges of my sanity just to see what I’d cling to when there is nothing left.
*****
Back in my room, I hear the click—metal against metal.
He locks me in.
Of course he does. Today would be one of those days.
It’s routine by now. Every time I spend the night in his bed—every time he uses my body like it belongs to him (because it did)—he brings me back here before sunrise, silent and unreadable, and locks the door behind me.
Like I am something shameful.
Like I need to be contained.
Like he can’t stand the sight of me after what he’d done.
Maybe it is guilt.
Maybe it is control.
Or maybe it is both—twisting together like the bruises blooming on my hips.
Speaking of bruises—
My reflection stares back at me from the mirror across the room, ghostlike in the early morning light.
My neck is dotted with shadows.
Small bruises.The kind makeup could cover—but only barely.
The kind that leaves no question about where they came from.
The Warden’s fingers.Wrapped around me in the heat of passion. Possessive. Demanding.
He usually doesn’t punish me when I’m in his room. That space is for pleasure. For control disguised as tenderness. For the illusion of choice.
And at night, it’s almost like he becomes someone else entirely.
The sharp edges don’t disappear—they just change shape. Softer in appearance, but no less certain. Less performance, more presence. A version of him that doesn’t need an audience, doesn’t need to prove anything. Just exists in the dark like it belongs to him.
But last night things were different.
I mouthed off. Twice.
He hates that.
The first time, I thought I could push the line and still stay standing on my side of it. The second time, I stopped thinking at all.
That’s when everything shifted.
Not loud. Not immediate. Just a slow recalibration in the room, like the air itself decided I’d crossed something I couldn’t see.
He demands control like it’s stitched into my skin—whether I’m in the hallway, the dining room, or on my knees in his bed.
This estate—it’s beautiful. Sprawling. Rich with white tile floors and rooms that echo when no one’s around.
But it’s still a prison.
Just…a gilded one.
I have a room to myself.
A private en suite bathroom with a clawfoot tub that looks like something from a magazine.
It could be worse.
I’ve been somewhere worse.