Chapter 28: The Fire He Hides.

A soft red glow enveloped her skin in a warm, eerie light, like molten lava flowing very slowly downwards. Air thick with foreboding tension laced with some scent Sherry couldn't quite identify settled low in her belly very seductively.

She knew there was no turning back as Enzo turned the key and locked the door firmly behind them, suddenly now.

She asked, "Why bring me here?" Her voice was barely above a whisper yet laced with sharp undertones. Enzo remained silent initially, with no response forthcoming. "Because you keep demanding the truth," he said finally. "But truth isn't soft.

He moved stealthily toward her like a predator, sizing her up with a measured gaze, weighing her abject terror and morbid fascination.

He said, Finally, because you keep demanding the truth. "This is where the masks come off." The walls were velvet-lined and soundproofed. Truth isn't soft but rather surprisingly harsh and unyieldingly rigid beneath its deceptively gentle surface.

Chains hung tastefully from above, not crude, but designed. Deliberate. Sherry's heart pounded. She should have turned around. She should have told him no. But her feet didn’t move.

"This is your truth? Control? Chains?"

Enzo's eyes darkened. "This is survival. When your world is power, control is the only thing that saves you from madness." Sherry crossed her arms, fire flickering in her chest. "And me? What am I in this room, Enzo? A game piece? Another one to conquer?"

His lips parted, but no words came. Instead, he walked up behind her, his fingers trailing down her arms like a brand. "You’re the only one who can undo me. And I hate it."

She turned, stunned by the honesty in his voice.

"Show me then," she challenged. "Show me who you are."

He paused, then reached for a red silk tie from a glass drawer and held it up.

"Hands."

Her pulse slammed inside her veins. Still, she extended her wrists.

He tied her carefully, gently, binding her but never hurting her. Then he led her to the chaise.

Every move that followed was calculated, reverent, and primal. His fingers brushed her bare thighs. His lips pressed against the hollow of her throat. She gasped as his mouth trailed lower, his breath igniting everything inside her. Bound but never powerless, she moaned his name as his tongue claimed her, slow and ruthless.

And through it all, he spoke.

"The board thinks you’re leverage. Victoria thinks you're my weakness. But they don't know... You are the only person who has ever touched something inside me I thought was dead."

She came undone in his hands, in his mouth, with her legs trembling and her heart unraveling.

When it was over, he untied her, his fingers brushing her wrists as though ashamed.

They didn’t speak.

Back upstairs, morning had begun to press light into the corners of the penthouse. Sherry sat by the window, her robe loose around her frame, coffee untouched.

Enzo leaned against the doorframe. "You're still here."

"Should I have run?"

He smiled faintly. "Most do."

She stared out the window. "Victoria sent me a message. A picture. Of you. In that room. With someone else."

Enzo tensed. "She’s playing a game with your head. That was years ago. Before you. Before this."

"And what is this?"

Silence fell heavily as he remained unresponsive. His silence boomed remarkably loudly amidst stillness. Tension gripped her chest suddenly beneath her sweater.

“If you can’t define it, why do you keep pulling me deeper into it?”

“Because I don’t want to lose you,” he said, and his voice was strained. “But Sherry, I don’t know how to keep you without breaking something in me.”

His phone buzzed. Ethan. Enzo stepped away.

Moments later, a knock echoed in the hallway. A package.

Sherry opened it.

Inside: a handwritten letter.

Even pain can feel like love when you’ve been starved long enough.

And a photo: her, at sixteen, standing in their estate’s garden. Her father was beside her. And in the distant background—a boy. Enzo.

Her hands trembled. She had no memory of this.

She sat on the edge of the bed, holding the photo like it might burn her. Her breathing quickened. She remembered that dress. She remembered that day. But she didn’t remember him. Not like that.

Was it possible her father had kept that part of her life locked away from her?

That night, she opened her email.

An anonymous video attachment waited.

In it: her younger self, arguing with her father.

"You don’t understand what Enzo’s father is capable of," her father said. "We don’t trust the Blackwoods. You can’t be near their son."

Her voice on the video—young, defiant—shook her more than she expected.

“I like him,” she said. “He’s kind to me.”

The footage glitched. Static buzzed.

Then a final message:

You forgot for a reason. Let me help you remember.

Sherry dropped the laptop onto the bed, her breath coming in ragged gasps slowly. Her fingers trembled violently as she pressed them against her lips, and memory's specter seeped slowly through cracks in her frazzled mind like wispy smoke.

Might this possibly be factual somehow? Was she familiar with Enzo previously?

Fate perhaps orchestrated this peculiar convergence of circumstances somehow. Or

Perhaps one could reimagine it entirely with a healthy dose of unorthodox flair and creativity lurking quietly in the background.

She paced around a room like some feral beast, her body aching sorely still from the Red Room, and morbid fascination wrestled with creeping, stark terror.

She clutched the letter again. The writing… something about it felt familiar.

Not just Victoria.

Not just a stranger.

Someone who knew her.

She pressed her forehead to the cold window glass, watching the early dawn wash the city in colorless grey. Downstairs, the echo of Enzo’s voice on the phone with Ethan filtered up, fragmented but urgent.

“…increase surveillance… No, I don’t care what it costs. She’s escalating.”

Sherry’s eyes closed.

She wasn’t safe.

Not in this penthouse.

Not in this marriage.

Not even in her memories.

A small chime buzzed on her phone. Another message.

You only remember what you’re allowed to. What if he chose what you forgot?

The text was unsigned. No number.

She looked back at the Red Room in her mind. The careful precision. The control. The intimacy. What else was Enzo capable of controlling?

She sat back on the bed, wrapping her arms around her legs.

Tears slipped silently down her cheeks. Not from fear. From betrayal.

And once doubt started burning, it didn’t stop.

It burned everything.