Chapter 43
Elise's POV
Benjamin's palm landed on the back of my neck.
Warm. Damp. Carrying the lingering greasiness from after dinner.
His five fingers slowly tightened, like a snake coiling around its prey's throat—not rushing to strangle, just feeling the pulse beating beneath his fingertips.
"Be good," his voice dropped low, so low that only I could hear it, "Be obedient. Like before. Alright?"
My body froze.
Not pretending. It was a conditioned reflex trained into me since I was thirteen, sunk deep into my marrow. The moment his hand touched that spot—the back of my neck, the most vulnerable section of my spine—my breathing would become shallow, my muscles would tense, and my brain would automatically switch to that mode: Don't resist. Don't make a sound. Don't provoke him. Just endure it.
Just endure it.
Words I'd told myself for five years.
But this time, something was different.
Perhaps it was the experience three days ago of being bound to that metal frame in the cocoon room that had pushed me to my limit.
Perhaps it was that moment after showering at Victor's villa, changing into his clothes, looking at my expressionless face in the mirror, when something inside me snapped.
Perhaps it was tonight at the dinner table, settling all accounts, watching Margaret's face turn from red to pale, when I suddenly realized—
I had nothing left to lose.
Benjamin's fingers gently caressed the back of my neck.
Waiting for me to lower my head. Waiting for my silence. Waiting for that trembling and submission he'd carefully cultivated over five years, that would surface the moment he came near.
I slowly raised my hand.
The movement was light. Light as if brushing away a fallen leaf from my shoulder.
My fingers touched his wrist. Inch by inch, I removed his hand from the back of my neck.
Benjamin didn't move.
He looked down at my hand—that hand, a size smaller than his, with prominent knuckles, gripping his wrist, not heavily, but very firmly.
Then he raised his eyes to look at my face.
He saw something that made me a stranger to him.
I didn't lower my head. Didn't tremble. Didn't avert my gaze. My eyes looked straight at him—not defiant, not angry, just a calm, unshakeable refusal.
That fear.
That fear he'd spent five years watering inch by inch into my bones.
It was gone.
Benjamin's hand hung in midair.
His expression hadn't changed—still that gentle, elder-like face. But his eyes betrayed him. In those turbid eyes, squeezed into slits by fat, flashed something I'd never seen on his face before.
Not anger. I'd seen anger too many times.
It was confusion.
And beneath the confusion, something deeper—
Loss of control.
His control over me had never relied on chains, not on photographs, not on anything concrete. It relied on fear.
Fear is cheap, efficient, requires no cost.
You only need to make someone afraid of you once, and afterward she'll complete the rest herself. She'll control her own mouth, lower her own head, swallow her own sobs back down in the dead of night.
But now that string had snapped.
His hand slowly withdrew. Hung at his side.
"I came back," I said, my voice steady, "because of my parents' inheritance. What should be mine, not a penny less."
Benjamin looked at me.
Three seconds. Five seconds. Seven seconds.
He didn't lose his temper. Didn't slam the table. Didn't pull out his phone to flip through those photographs. He just looked at me, as if trying to recognize someone he thought he knew well but had never truly seen clearly.
Then he turned and left.
No threats. No conditions. No "let's talk this through properly." He didn't even glance back at me.
Silence—more unsettling than any words.
Margaret returned to the kitchen after Benjamin left.
Anna had disappeared from the dining table at some point—probably slipped away during Benjamin's confrontation with me.
I stood there for a long time.
Until that sticky sensation of being touched on the back of my neck slowly faded.
I returned to my room. Closed the door. Locked it.
Leaning against the door panel, I took a deep breath.
My hands were trembling.
Not from fear.
From anger.
That kind of anger that seeped out from between bones, burning hot enough to scorch all five organs and six viscera. I clenched my fists, nails digging into my palms, the pain bringing my thoughts back to clarity.
Benjamin wouldn't let this go.
A person accustomed to control, at the moment of losing that sense of control, wouldn't retreat.
He would escalate. He had to escalate—because control was the only thing he knew how to do. He didn't know how to interact with people any other way.
He just hadn't figured out what method to use yet.
I walked to the bed and sat down. Pulled out my phone from my pocket.
Several unread messages on the screen. Spam texts.
Sophia asking why I hadn't been to class lately. And one more—
Sent three days ago.
The sender had no saved name, but I knew that number by heart.
"Seven days."
Just that brief sentence.
I stared at this message for a long time. The light from the screen reflected on my face, cold white, like lights in an operating room.
Four days left.
I placed the phone face-down on the bed and lay back.
There was a water stain on the ceiling, shaped like a bird with spread wings.
When I first noticed it at fourteen, I thought it looked like a butterfly pinned to a wall.
Looking at it now, it still did.
But I was different.
---
Liam's POV:
Edwin's study was at the far end of the manor's second floor.
Oak bookshelves extended from floor to ceiling, filled with legal texts and family photographs.
Above the fireplace hung a portrait of my great-grandfather—an old man in military uniform with a stern expression, looking almost identical to Edwin.
I stood across from the desk. Edwin sat behind it, holding a photograph in his hand.
He didn't look up.
"Sit."
I didn't sit.
He flipped the photograph over and pushed it toward me.
It was Elise.
The photo was blurry, the lighting dim, but clear enough—she was fixed to a metal frame, hands cuffed above her head, ankles locked. A gag and blindfold on her face. Nothing on her body.
My stomach lurched violently.
"Where did this come from?" I asked.
"Someone posted it on the dark web for 48 hours," Edwin's voice was flat, as if reading a quarterly financial report, "Your father's people intercepted it."
Forty-eight hours.
The dark web.
Someone had filmed everything from that night and posted it on the dark web.
My fists clenched tight, nails digging into my palms.
That night—it was supposed to be staged for the family—actors, masks, pre-recorded video—everything was arranged.
But someone had filmed those scenes without my knowledge and posted them.