The sheets were softer than anything I'd ever felt. The air smelled like sandalwood and something colder—sterile, clean, unnatural.
I wasn't in my apartment.
I wasn't anywhere near Ethan.
I was in a cage.
It didn't have bars.
It had silk curtains, a chandelier, and polished floors that felt like they judged you with every step.
And the door was locked.
I scrambled to it, yanked at the knob until my hands burned. Nothing. No response. No sound. Just the quiet weight of my own panic pressing into my lungs.
Then I heard it.
Footsteps—measured, unhurried. The kind of steps you can't fake unless you know no one would dare stop you.
He appeared in the doorway like a ghost who never needed to knock.
Johnson Moretti.
Dark suit. No tie. Sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing ink that wrapped around his forearms like smoke. He looked less like a man and more like a myth with regrets.
"You're awake," he said softly.
I backed away. My voice cracked as I forced it out.
"Where am I?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he moved to a small table in the corner and poured two glasses of water. As if this was normal. As if he hadn't abducted me.
"This isn't your home," I snapped.
"No," he said. "But it could be."
I flinched.
"You kidnapped me," I hissed.
He turned toward me, glass in hand, eyes unreadable.
"I protected you. There's a difference."
I laughed. It sounded like it belonged to someone else.
"Is that what you call this? A rescue mission?"
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't move closer. But somehow, his presence wrapped around me tighter than the locked door behind me.
"You were going to leave," he said, and there was something in his voice—raw, fractured.
"I couldn't let that happen."
"Because you own me?" I spat.
His jaw tightened.
"Because I don't know how to ask for love. I only know how to hold onto what matters before it disappears."
And just like that, the monster slipped.
I saw the boy underneath—the one who had been abandoned too many times, who had turned his grief into a kingdom of fear.
"I'm not a possession," I whispered.
He stared at the glass in his hand, then set it down slowly.
"No," he agreed, voice like smoke. "You're not. But I don't know who I am without you here."
And for a moment… I didn't know who I was either.