Chapter 39 SECRET ROOM
(Eli’s POV)
Lately I’ve been getting out of bed late.
Not because I sleep in— God, I barely sleep anymore— but because staying under the blanket gives me a small excuse to avoid Julian. And I’m kinda thankful he doesn’t try to wake me up. He just leaves the room early like he always does, quiet, distant, invisible but still somehow everywhere.
I finally dragged myself out of bed around almost 1 PM, shoulders stiff, head aching. The master bedroom still smelled like him: clean, sharp, and expensive. His side of the bed was untouched. Again.
He didn’t sleep here last night.
I tried not to think about that too much.
I went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, splashed water on my face, then stood under the shower until my skin felt warm and alive again. Being alone in the water is the only time I can breathe without feeling like the walls are pressing in.
By the time I got dressed and headed to the kitchen, my stomach growled loud enough to echo. I scrambled eggs, toasted bread, and ate standing by the counter because sitting felt… too normal. Like something for people who weren’t trapped in a mansion with a crime lord.
When I finished, the house stayed quiet.
Too quiet, honestly.
No footsteps.
No voices.
No Julian.
Nothing…
No Anton, who's apparently a more twisted version of Julian because what kind of psycho stalker tells their stalkee that they've been stalking them. Why did he have to tell me that he was stalking me? Jeezzz. That guy.
This house is huge; huge enough to hold multiple families, maybe a whole small village. And I’d only been in three rooms: our bedroom, the kitchen, and the main living room. Everything else was just… there. Unexplored. Unknown, to me.
I don’t know what possessed me, maybe boredom, maybe courage, maybe stupidity, but I decided to look around. Just walk. Just see.
Maybe it would make this place feel less like a cage.
Maybe it would make Julian feel less—
…unpredictable.
I stepped into the hallway. Marble floors. Expensive paintings. Doors everywhere.
The first door I opened was a gym, big enough to train soldiers. All black equipment, weights, mirrors. The air smelled faintly like sweat and metal. Julian worked out here. I could picture him lifting weights alone in the middle of the night, all tense muscles and bottled-up rage.
I closed the door fast.
The next few rooms were bedrooms; each one furnished like a fancy hotel. Clean sheets, neutral colors, minimal decoration. Nobody lived in them. Nobody even touched them.
Why did he need so many empty rooms?
I kept walking…
Found another living room. Then another one. A lounge with a bar. A room full of bookshelves. A hallway I almost got lost in.
Every room looked like a designer’s dream: perfect, expensive, and so fucking cold.
Nothing personal.
Nothing human.
Just Julian’s money in physical form.
Until I opened a door near the end of the house.
And everything changed.
The room was dark, only lit with a dim red light coming from a lamp on the ceiling. A deep, warm red that made the whole place look like a crime scene.
Confused, I stepped inside.
My first thought was Why is it so dark?
My second thought was Where’s the light switch?
I ran my hand along the wall. Nothing. I looked around… still nothing. The room was meant to be dim.
Finally my eyes adjusted.
And my heart dropped into my stomach.
This wasn’t a normal room.
This was… something else entirely.
A vent room. A planning room. A crime room.
Whatever movies called it, this was it.
There were splashes of paint on one side of the wall; angry, violent streaks like someone fought with color instead of knives.
But the other side—
The other side made my legs go weak.
There was a large corkboard, and pinned right at the top was a picture of Henry Winslow.
My father.
His face stabbed with red pins.
Lines drawn from him to other men.
Names written in black marker.
Dates. Places. Circles, arrows, crosses.
Beneath him, there's other photos.
Men I didn’t know.
A woman.
A teenager.
Maps.
Old newspaper articles.
Handwritten notes in Julian’s sharp, angry handwriting.
And then—
My picture.
Pinned in the corner. A smaller string tied from me to my father.
Like I was a part of this. A piece in Julian’s revenge puzzle.
My stomach twisted so hard I had to grip the desk for balance.
I looked around desperately, hoping, praying, that maybe I misunderstood this.
But then I saw the bigger board on the opposite wall. This one wasn’t about names or crimes.
It was personal.
A giant framed photo of a younger Julian— maybe eight or nine— stood beside a man who looked exactly like him, just older. His father, I guessed. They were smiling. The kind of smile normal people have when they’re happy.
And for a second, I felt this ache in my chest.
Julian looked normal once.
Human once.
Loved once.
I stepped closer.
Below that frame were more pictures: Julian’s training photos, Julian with some men I didn’t recognize, Julian at a funeral, Julian holding a gun with this dead-eyed look that made me shiver.
Was this where he came to think? To plan?
To drown in the past?
My gaze dragged back to the messy red-board wall.
Henry at the top.
Strings everywhere.
My picture tangled in it.
This wasn’t just hate.
This wasn’t even normal revenge.
There's an obsession somewhere among all this…
A deep, consuming obsession he’d nurtured for years. Maybe his whole life.
And I—
I was part of it from the beginning.
Not because I've ever personally offended Julian, but because I was another link to Henry. Another piece of bait. Another weapon.
I swallowed hard, a bitter taste on my tongue.
It all made sense now.
Julian’s anger. His protectiveness. His possessiveness. His constant need to keep me close and display me in such a sick manner.
It wasn’t just control for the sake of control.
It was a strategy.
A horrifying strategy.
Because using me supposedly hurt my father's ego.
And hurting my father made Julian feel like he was finally winning.
I backed up slowly, chest tight, lungs struggling to pull in air. My hands were shaking so badly I had to press them to my sides.
My knees nearly buckled, and I grabbed the edge of the table to keep myself standing. The room felt like it was closing in, pressing into me, wrapping its fingers around my chest.
I didn’t know how long I stood there before I finally whispered to myself:
“Oh God… what did I get dragged into?”
The house, the silence, the red lighting… all of it felt suddenly heavy.
And it hit me, painfully, brutally, all at once:
Julian wasn’t spiraling out of control because my father suddenly showed up.
He’d been spiraling for years.
Before me.
Before all this.
And I just happened to fall into the center of it.