Chapter 91 – Captive Months
Chapter 91 – Captive Months
(Eden’s POV)
It had been months. I knew that much.
I kept track at first, scratching a mark into the underside of the bedframe every morning, but somewhere around day seventy the lines blurred together. The only constants were the cold, the silence, and Daniel’s voice.
He still hadn’t touched me. Not in that way.
It wasn’t mercy. It was control.
In his mind, I was still “tainted” from being with the twins, and until he burned every trace of them from me, I was off-limits. He said it like he was sparing me, but I knew the truth — it was about his power, his timeline. Not mine.
The showers were the worst. Six a day.
He’d turn the water so hot it stung before it even hit my skin, the steam so thick it made breathing a chore. I had no choice but to stand there, naked under his gaze as he leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, timing me.
“Fifteen minutes,” he’d say. “Every inch, Eden. They touched you everywhere.”
By the third shower of the day my skin was raw, flushed angry red, the heat raising welts on my shoulders and thighs. By the sixth, I felt hollow, like he was peeling me away layer by layer until there’d be nothing left for me to recognize.
“You’ll thank me,” he said once, holding out a towel I didn’t take. “One day, you’ll feel clean again.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
The room itself never changed — a prison of concrete walls and that high barred window. I’d learned to listen for sounds beyond it: a distant engine, a dog barking once, the low rumble of a voice too far away to make out. Little fragments of the world I’d been ripped from.
Sometimes he’d bring food and sit on the edge of the bed, talking like we were sharing a meal at home. He’d tell me about the news, about places he planned to take me when I was “better.” Once, he brought me a book, but only after tearing out the dedication page because the author’s name reminded him of Luca.
I never asked how he knew things about them. About us. It was enough to know he did.
I survived in stolen ways. Memorizing the pattern of the cracks in the ceiling. Counting the footsteps between the door and the window. Hiding a bent screw I’d pried from the bedframe weeks ago, rolling it between my palms when he wasn’t looking, feeling the cold metal bite into my skin like a reminder I wasn’t completely powerless.
Every day, I told myself the same thing:
Don’t break. Don’t give him what he wants.
Because if I did, then he’d have already won — and I refused to let Daniel win.