Chapter 24: Eden

Chapter 24: Eden
There’s no such thing as morning or night here. Just walls and locked doors and the smell of something too clean. The lights stay on. The cameras blink. The shadows never change. Time moves like water in a clogged drain—spiraling, slow, suffocating.

I think it’s been a month.

I tried counting days at first. Scratched them into the underside of the vanity drawer with a loose earring. Seven lines before someone replaced the whole thing. The new drawer still smells like polish. Like bleach. Like erasure.

I haven’t spoken since they brought me here.

Not really.

I answer when forced. I eat just enough not to pass out. I sleep, but it’s not rest. It’s disappearance. A few hours at a time, I become something else. Something without memory or a name.

They say I’m being kept in the “guest wing.” The floor is marble. The bedding is silk. The water pressure in the shower is perfect. The windows are tall but sealed shut, and the door locks from the outside. There’s always someone watching. Always.

I know I’m not the first girl who’s stayed here. The drawers were already lined. The perfume on the pillow wasn’t mine. There’s a chip in the tile near the bathroom wall, dark like it remembers blood.

They bring me things I don’t ask for. Clothes. Jewelry. Expensive lotion in heavy glass bottles. Gifts meant for a girl they think I am.

I hide the mirrors when I can. Turn them toward the walls. I can’t look at my face too long. I see too much of her—my mother. And something worse.

I see what they’ve turned me into.

I’ve known for a while now. I didn’t need a test. I didn’t need the nurse they sent in, all smiles and latex gloves and soft reassurances. My body told me first.

The nausea started on day five.

The soreness on day nine.

By day ten, I was crying in the shower and didn’t know why.

There’s a baby inside me.

His baby.

Salvatore’s.

I don’t say it out loud. It feels like a curse. A name I’m not worthy to speak anymore.

I’m not ready.

Not for this.

Not to be a mother. Not to be anything.

My hands aren’t steady enough to hold something good. My body doesn’t know how to carry hope. I feel broken everywhere. I feel haunted by myself.

I press my palm against my stomach sometimes, when I’m alone, and whisper, “I’m sorry.”

I don’t know who I’m saying it to.

Maybe the baby.

Maybe the girl I used to be.

Maybe the version of me that never existed.

I didn’t think I’d survive the first week.

I stopped eating.

They didn’t care.

I got dizzy. Fell in the shower. They bandaged my head and never said a word.

On the eleventh night, I stood at the window and pressed my forehead to the glass. I could see nothing but trees. Black sky. Cold stars. I thought about opening the window, even though I knew it wouldn’t budge.

I wanted the wind.

I wanted the fall.

I didn’t want to die exactly.

I just didn’t want to be this anymore.

I found the shard of glass under the sink. Maybe it was left there on purpose. Maybe not. It was long, curved, like a crescent moon. It felt light in my hand.

I sat on the bathroom floor with my back against the tub, my knees bent, my wrist resting on my thigh.

I didn’t cry.

I didn’t hesitate.

I pulled it across my skin, just hard enough to open something.

Blood welled up, warm and red and right.

And for the first time in weeks, I felt something like relief.

It didn’t last long.

A housekeeper screamed. I don’t even remember her coming in. I remember the white towels and her shaking hands. The sound of my name. The bandages. The nurse again.

They didn’t punish me.

They said I was overwhelmed.

They said I needed rest.

They said the baby was fine.

That word. “Fine.” Like I’m a broken dish glued back together.

Sergio came that evening.

He didn’t look angry.

He looked calm.

He sat in the leather chair by the window and folded his hands in his lap like a father come to lecture a wayward daughter.

“You always had a flair for drama,” he said. “You were like that even as a kid.”

I said nothing.

He smiled.

“I remember when you used to sit in my lap. You never wanted your mother. You always wanted me.”

My stomach turned.

“You’d crawl up after dinner and fall asleep on my chest. Do you remember that?”

I stared at the floor. My pulse thundered in my throat.

“You were always so warm. So soft. Like you knew where you belonged.”

He stood and walked to the mirror, adjusting his cufflinks.

“You belong to us now,” he said, calm and final.

The way he said “us” made my skin crawl.

I didn’t ask what he meant.

I already knew.

That night, Angelo came.

He brought roses.

White. Long-stemmed. Too perfect.

He put them in a crystal vase on the table and looked at me like I was something already his.

“You’re quiet,” he said.

I didn’t answer.

“I like that. I think you’re just overwhelmed. It’s okay.”

He sat beside me on the bed. Not touching. Not yet.

“You don’t have to be afraid. Sergio told me everything about you. You’re strong. Smart. You’ll adjust.”

I turned my face away.

“You’re carrying something sacred now,” he whispered. “A child born of two powerful families. Do you realize what that means?”

I clenched my hands.

He reached for one.

I didn’t let him have it.

He paused. Smiled. The kind of smile that doesn’t reach the eyes.

“You’ll come around,” he said, standing. “You’ll see.”

He left the door open behind him.

I didn’t move.

I sat there until the moon shifted across the floor, and the wind pressed against the windows like it wanted in.

I thought about the baby.

I thought about mercy.

I thought about oblivion.

And then—I saw it.