Adrien #3
“From where I’m standing,” I say simply, “it looks like there isn’t a single person in the whole world who actually loves you.” I shake my head slightly. “It’s depressing.”
That does it. A faint controlled smirk appears on him.
“You know that’s not true,” he says. “There is one person.”
No.
The air shifts and settles heavily on my chest.
No. No. No.
“Wow,” I say after a beat, forcing a chuckle. “That’s adorable. Delusional, but adorable.”
Lucien tilts his head, studying me and enjoying this now.
“You wouldn’t be this angry,” he says calmly, “if you weren’t scared it might be true.”
I go still.
“I hate to break it to you,” I say quietly, “but she doesn’t love you either.”
Lucien doesn’t rush to answer, he lets the silence work for him instead.
“Not the way I’d want her to,” he says eventually. “No.”
My fingers curl tightly at my side.
“But love,” he continues, “isn’t always about preference. Sometimes it’s about attachment, dependency and need.”
I stare at him. “You mean trauma-bond?”
He doesn’t deny it.
“That can probably feel similar, yeah,” he says mildly.
“What you call love,” I go on, “is what happens when someone gets used to surviving you. Abuse does that. It rewires things. It can make pain feel familiar and imprisonment can start to feel like safety.”
He doesn’t deny that either.
“I never imprisoned her,” he retorts.
“Maybe not physically.”
After a moment, he exhales. “Who cares what it is,” he mutters, almost to himself, “as long as it feels good.”
“Did it feel good,” I start, forcing the words out. “Hurting her?”
He snaps immediately. “I didn’t—”
“You did,” I cut in.
He exhales in something like surrender.
“I had to,” he admits.
“You had to,” I echo the words in disbelief.
His shoulders drop, his gaze drifting away as if he’s suddenly tired of himself. He looks around the basement, rolls his jaw, like he’s grinding down the last stubborn fragments of whatever’s left inside him, forcing them loose.
“I had to make sure she knows who’s fucking her,” he says at last, quietly.
His eyes flick back to mine, and I hear every word with painful clarity as a sickening nausea flows throughout my whole body, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.
But I stay perfectly still, watching him. I can’t shake the feeling that this isn’t honest, not entirely. It feels rehearsed or calculated. Like he’s trying to crawl into my head, trying to provoke me.
I narrow my eyes at him, watching the way he’s waiting for my reaction.
He’s desperately trying to die. I can smell it from him.
So it really is what I thought? Or is this just another manipulation?
I know one thing for sure. When a psychopath says he wants something, I’m not stupid enough to grant it to him.
“Why do you want to die so badly?” I ask, genuinely curious.
He looks at me and shrugs, as if the answer should be obvious. So I lift my eyebrows, giving him a look that clearly says: no, it isn’t.
He gulps. And just like that, the cold mask slips. There’s suddenly nothing layered over him anymore, just his bare, unfiltered existence now.
“I have no one,” he says flatly, without any shame or self-pity. Just honesty without much emotion behind it.
I suppose this would be the moment where I’m meant to feel something. Understanding or empathy, or at least flicker of humanity.
I am patiently waiting for it to appear.
Still waiting.
Well, nothing. There’s nothing.
No, wait, there is something—delight. Absolutely pure undeniable delight. I can’t stop myself from viciously smiling.
I enjoy it for a moment.
“Well,” I say lightly, “then I’m not going to give you what you want.”
He lifts his brows in confusion.
“I’m not going to kill you,” I add.
Not that I could. Not yet.
Besides, that would be way too easy. He took everything from me. He took my everything. He put his hands on someone who was never meant to learn that type of fear.
I tilt my head, staring at him, thinking. He still has one thing—the one thing that made it possible for him to manipulate and take whatever he wanted. So I guess I’ll take that instead.
Yeah. That’ll do.
I stand up, slip the knife from my back pocket, and flip it open. The metal sound sends a pleasurable shiver through my hand.
He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t argue, doesn’t scream. Only when I slowly straddle him, pinning his arms beneath my knees so he can’t move, do I finally see it—that last, flickering spark of resistance when he realizes what I’m about to do.
“Just kill me,” he grits out.
I smile, savoring the desperation in his voice.
“No,” I say lightly. “I’m not boring like that.”
I grab his jaw, forcing his head still and click my tongue in irritation. “Stop moving,” I warn him calmly. “Or it’ll be worse.”
And then I finally let myself work.
Blood starts to pour out, coating my fingers as I rearrange his face. The relief in my body deepens with every drop, with every inch of cut skin.
“If you’re lucky enough to ever look in a mirror again,” I say, still working on my masterpiece. “You’ll see what happens to anyone who touches what’s mine.”
A low grunt escapes him every now and then when I cut too deep, but I don’t stop.
It’s just me and my knife now, our little art class.