Chapter 75 Seventy five
Elena's POV
My sketchbook was gone. I noticed it on a Tuesday morning, when the light was gray and the house felt too quiet. I had been reaching for it under my pillow, where I always kept it, where no one was supposed to look. My fingers found nothing but sheets.
I tore the bed apart. I checked every drawer, every shelf, every corner of the room. I looked in the bathroom, in the closet, under the furniture. Nothing. The sketchbook had vanished like smoke.
My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears. That book was full of things no one was supposed to see. Drawings of the estate as a cage, as a trap, as a beautiful prison with bars made of shadows and locks made of lies. I had drawn the gates closing behind me. I had drawn the walls closing in. I had drawn myself small and trapped and screaming in silence.
If anyone found it, if he found it, he would see everything. He would see how much I hated this place. He would see how much I hated him. He would see the parts of me I kept hidden even from myself.
I spent the whole day searching. I asked Sophie if she had seen it. She said no. I asked the maids, the guards, even Franco when I passed him in the hall. No one knew anything. No one had seen a thing.
By nightfall, I was sick with worry. I barely ate. I barely slept. I lay in the dark staring at the ceiling, imagining him reading my sketches, studying my anger, learning all my secrets.
Days passed. Nothing happened. No mention of the book. No punishment. No questions. I started to hope that maybe I had lost it somewhere, that maybe it would turn up in some forgotten corner of the house.
Then I came back to my room one afternoon and found a single page on my pillow.
I knew it immediately. The paper was from my sketchbook, torn out carefully, left there like a message. My hand shook as I picked it up.
It was one of my darkest sketches. A drawing of the estate as a cage, with thick black bars across every window and heavy locks on every door. I had drawn myself inside, small and alone, pressed against the bars with my hands reaching out for something I could never reach. It was ugly and raw and full of all the pain I could not say out loud.
But it was different now.
In the margins, in ink that was not mine, someone had drawn. His handwriting, precise and bold, the same script I saw on documents and orders and the occasional note left on my desk. He had taken one of my cages, one of the worst ones, and he had changed it.
The bars were still there, but he had turned them into something else. They were no longer just bars. They were the strings of a violin, stretching from floor to ceiling, curved and graceful and beautiful. He had drawn a bow resting against them, ready to play. He had added light coming through, soft and golden, where before there had only been shadows.
And at the bottom, in that same precise hand, he had written a single line.
Even a cage can make music, if you learn to play it.
I stared at the page for a long time. The paper trembled in my hands. My heart was doing something strange, beating too fast and too slow all at once.
He had seen my sketches. He had looked at my anger, my pain, my darkest feelings, and instead of punishing me, instead of throwing them in my face, he had answered. He had taken my cage and turned it into an instrument. He had told me, without words, that there was another way to see this place. Another way to live in it.
I did not know whether to scream or cry or both.
Fury rose in me first. How dare he touch my work? How dare he go through my things? How dare he think he could just rewrite my feelings like that, as if they were his to fix?
But underneath the fury, something else was stirring. Something I did not want to name. Something that looked at the violin strings and the golden light and felt, against all reason, a tiny flicker of hope.
I needed to find him.
I stormed out of my room and down the hall, the page crushed in my fist. My feet pounded against the marble. My blood was on fire. I did not know what I was going to say, only that I had to say something, had to face him, had to make him explain.
His office door was closed. I did not knock. I threw it open.
Empty.
The room was quiet, still, no sign of him anywhere. I stood there breathing hard, ready to fight, and there was no one to fight with.
Then I saw the papers on his desk.
Blueprints. Large sheets covered in lines and measurements and notes. I walked closer, drawn by something I could not resist. My eyes scanned the pages, trying to understand what I was seeing.
It was the west wing. I recognized the layout from my walks through the house. But something was different. Walls had been moved. Spaces had been opened up. There were windows where there had been none before.
And at the top, in bold letters, a label.
Elena's Wing. Proposed.
I leaned closer, my breath catching in my throat. The plans showed a huge room, bigger than anything in the current house. North facing windows, the kind artists dreamed of, the kind that let in perfect light all day long. High ceilings. Open space. Shelves for supplies. Racks for canvases. A sink for cleaning brushes. Everything. Everything an artist could possibly want.
He had designed me a studio.
Not a small room in the corner. Not a temporary space I could use until he changed his mind. A whole wing with my name on it.
The page from my sketchbook fell from my hand and floated to the floor. I did not pick it up. I could not move. I just stood there staring at the blueprints, at the windows, at the light, at the words that said my name belonged here.
Even a cage can make music, if you learn to play it.
He was not just saying it. He was building it. He was taking my anger, my sketches, my vision of this place as a prison, and he was answering with walls and windows and light. He was telling me that if I could see the cage, maybe I could also see the music. Maybe I could make it myself.
I did not know what to feel. The fury was still there, burning low in my chest, because he had no right to go through my things, no right to touch my work, no right to decide what I needed. But something else was there too, something warm and terrifying, something that looked at those blueprints and felt seen.
He saw me. Not the prisoner. Not the wife. Not the trophy. He saw the artist. He saw the woman who drew cages because she could not draw anything else. And instead of locking that woman away, he was building her a room with windows.
I stood in his empty office for a long time, surrounded by his things, by the evidence of his power, by the plans for my future. The blueprints sat on his desk like an offering. Like a question.
Would I take it? Would I learn to play the cage?
I picked up the page from the floor, the one with the violin strings and the golden light. I smoothed it out carefully, gently, like it was something precious. Then I folded it and put it in my pocket, close to my heart.
He was not there to answer my questions. But the blueprints were. The violin was. The invitation was.
I left his office without slamming the door. I walked back to my room slowly, thinking about windows and light and the strange man who watched me drive and gave me books and drew violins on my darkest sketches.
I did not know what came next. I only knew that something had changed. Something had shifted between us, some wall I had not even known was there.
The cage was still a cage. But for the first time, I thought I heard music.