CHAPTER TWENTY TWO #2
And now…he’s furious.
Possessive.
Over something that never even happened.
I wasn’t with anyone. I was alone. Wrapped in silence.
But that doesn’t matter to him.
I can’t see his face—only the presence of him, the pressure of his attention like it fills the room in place of light. Still, I feel the shift in him anyway. The anger isn’t shown so much as felt, like something tightening in the space between us.
But it’s there.
And that, somehow, makes it worse.
Why?
Is it jealousy?
Or is it something darker?
I want to ask him, but my voice catches in my throat. Instead, the room swallows my questions, leaving only the haunting echo of my past—and the cold weight of his presence.
“Starling,” his voice slices through the silence—low, sharp, and threaded with quiet menace. A controlled burn.
“You think you’re so clever, don’t you?”
He steps closer, each word annunciated, like a knife dragging slow across skin.
“Pretending to forget the reason you were chosen. Pretending you don’t remember what you are.”
The air between us thickens.
“Pretending to be someone else…softer, sweeter. Play-acting obedience while your mind drifts to other men.”
His voice dips lower, almost a whisper now, dangerous in its calm.
I swallow hard, biting back the urge to answer. The blindfold keeps me from seeing him, but I can feel the shift in the air—the way he moves closer, the faint scent of his cologne mixing with something darker, something that makes my skin pebble.
“Why do you keep fighting, hmm?” He murmurs. “You belong here. To me. I have told you before that you are mine.”
I want to scream, to tell him he’s wrong. But the words catch in my throat, raw and ragged. Instead, I breathe, steady and slow, gathering the shards of myself he wants to shatter.
“If you think this will break me,” I say, voice trembling but steady, “you’re wrong.”
There’s a pause. Then a soft, almost amused chuckle. “Brat,” he says. “You’ll learn. Or you’ll break.”
“I’ve been broken before…” I force the words out, steadying what’s left of my voice. “You can’t break me again.”
Another beat of silence—heavier this time, like he’s considering me rather than reacting.
Then, a faint shift in his tone. Not louder. Not angrier. Worse than both.
“I wonder,” he says quietly. “Or if I’ll just have to test that theory.”
I don’t answer. Because even blindfolded and tied down, even trapped in this nightmare, I hold on to something he can’t touch: the part of me that refuses to be owned.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s the only thing left that’s truly mine.
“So…brat, eh?” I ask, forcing a breathless smirk into my voice. “I finally get a new nickname?”
There’s a pause before he replies, quieter this time, almost curious. “Starling, why do you continue to push me?”
“I’m tired,” I say, the words heavier than I expected. “Tired of men controlling my life. Tired of being a possession. Tired of being…broken.”
“Then why did you sign up for that auction?”
I freeze. The blindfold over my eyes makes everything else sharper—his voice, the closeness of his body, the heat bleeding from him like a confession.
“Why sign up without backup?” He continues, softer this time, but no less intense. “No extraction plan. No handler. No one watching your back.”
A pause. A breath. The tension between us coils tighter.
“Why go in alone, Starling?” His voice trembles at the edges—not with anger, but with something else. Strain. Pain. A kind of ache he can’t afford to let me hear.
I swallow, but say nothing. My heart pounds against my ribs like it wants to answer for me.
Why does he sound like this?
Why does it feel like he already knows the answer?
Like he isn’t asking to learn something—but to confirm what he can’t stop himself from feeling?
Then his words come lower, rougher, almost broken:
“Did you know?” A pause. “When you stepped onto that stage…did you know you were coming home with me?”
My breath catches.
The question hits me like a slap I didn’t see coming. I freeze.
He knows why. He already knows.
He’d thrown it in my face once before—in the limo on the day of the auction. I can still feel the bite in his voice, the heat of his anger. He accused me of recklessness. Of desperation. Of tempting fate like I didn’t understand what I was walking into.
But I did.
It wasn’t the kind of auction any of Mr. Hirsh’s men would have touched. Not at first glance. I’d made sure of that. And still, they found me. He found me.
I swallow the rising burn in my throat and lift my chin.
“You know why,” I say, quieter than I mean to. My voice still holds, but just barely. “You know.”
The room falls still, thick with a silence that scratches at the edges of my sanity. Only the faint crackle of the hidden speakers breaks through—those looping recordings of my own past playing back like a ghost.
Then his voice slices through it.
Colder now. Measured. Unyielding.
“You’re right,” his voice finally comes, low and close, like he’s standing right at my ear.
“You missed your life at the compound so much, you signed yourself up for more. You wanted back in. You wanted me to remind you what it means to belong to someone. You wanted to be taught who has control over you.”
My blood roars in my ears. My heart hammers in my chest, slamming against the cage of my ribs. I can’t see him, but I can feel him. I know he’s close. That he’s watching me. That he’s savoring the way I tremble.
But I don’t flinch.
And I don’t give him silence.
“You will never have control over me, sir.”
The word is a weapon. Laced with venom. It burns my tongue and I throw it like a dagger.
He laughs—low, dark, patient.
“No?” he murmurs, a cruel edge curling through the sweetness of his tone. “You do realize I own the auction. I bought you. Which means I own…you.”
The words hit like a whip. My breath catches. My fingers flex uselessly against the cuffs.
“Why me?” I whisper.
He doesn’t answer right away. I hear something click—a remote or speaker maybe—and then sudden silence. The background audio, the constant hum of control, cuts off. Now it’s just us. My breath. His footsteps. The weight of the dark.
“Oh, Starling,” he says, softer now. Like silk on skin. Like a threat.