Chapter 23
She vomited again.
This time in the marble sink of Negan's guest bathroom, surrounded by gold trim and black orchids.
Vanessa leaned her forehead against the cold mirror, wiped her mouth, and tried to breathe.
Her hands trembled—but not from fear. Not anymore.
The test lay face-down on the marble countertop behind her.
Two lines.
A child.
Negan's child.
The horror wasn't in the biology—it was in what it meant.
Control. Legacy. Bloodline.
This was always the endgame…
But it wasn't going to be his.
Not if she found out what was underneath this damn house—and used it to destroy him first.
The Door in the Cellar
She returned to the estate's west wing, where the air grew damp and the wallpaper peeled like old skin.
Camille had once whispered about the west wing when drunk—said the servants never went there after dark. Said the air turned wrong in your lungs.
Vanessa didn't knock. She moved fast, quiet. She traced the sketches Miles had given her.
Behind an antique armoire and beneath an old rug: the trapdoor.
Iron. Heavy. Locked.
But the keys were in Negan's office. And she'd already stolen a full ring last week, after she'd faked an orgasm so intense he hadn't noticed her slipping them off his belt.
She dropped into darkness.
The stairs descended into concrete silence, lit only by the flashlight she'd stolen from the security wing. The walls narrowed. Grew colder. Until the sound of her own breath was the only heartbeat in the hall.
Then she found it:
A hallway of mirrored rooms—glass chambers built for observation.
Steel restraints. Surveillance monitors. Audio feeds. A red leather chair with bloodstains older than memory.
This wasn't just control. It was theater.
And she realized—this was where he'd broken Camille.
But Vanessa wasn't Camille.
She watched herself on one of the monitors—her room upstairs, live. Negan's voice echoed on a distant loop:
"You don't know who you are until I show you."
The screen flickered. Switched.
Now it was Miles.
Bound. Gagged. In the basement.
Her blood turned to ice.
Camille's Escape
Camille had hidden the razor in the lining of her robe.
She'd waited three days for the hallway camera to flicker—just long enough to jam the door with the broken leg of a chair. The hallway light buzzed above her. She wasn't stupid enough to run for the front door.
No.
She headed down.
To the glass tunnels.
To the place where she knew Negan couldn't follow—because even he feared the things he did there.
She was almost at the junction when the wall vent opened.
A hand yanked her back.
She screamed—
"Shh!" a voice hissed.
It was Julian.
Or what was left of him.
"I've been waiting," he whispered. "She's down here. She's here."
"Vanessa?" Camille gasped.
He smiled like a broken doll. "She's going to set fire to everything."
The Ritual
Vanessa ran.
She burst into the mirrored room where Miles lay—mouth gagged, eyes wild. She reached for him, yanking at the straps, screaming his name—
But the room locked.
From behind the mirror, Negan stepped into the light.
Wearing black gloves. Holding the key.
"You always had to see it for yourself," he murmured. "Curiosity. That's the core of your defiance."
Vanessa pounded on the glass.
"You won't get away with this—"
"But I already have," he said.
And then he opened the adjacent chamber.
Inside was a replica of her bedroom. A table set for two. Red wine. Silk restraints on the chairs. A single crimson dress laid across the bed.
"Put it on," Negan said through the speaker. "Or Miles starts losing fingers."
Vanessa turned, heart thudding. "You won't hurt him."
"Sweetheart," he said, voice pure glass and venom. "I already did."
The cameras whirred to life.
The game had changed.
Now it wasn't about seduction.
It was a live performance.
He wanted to film her surrender.
But She Didn't Surrender
She put on the dress.
Not because she'd broken.
But because she'd remembered the sharp piece of glass she'd hidden in her boot.
Negan watched her walk into the room.
Smiling.
But for the first time, Vanessa smiled back.
Elsewhere, Camille and Julian crawled through the lowest ducts, carrying a lighter and the bottle of cleaning fluid she'd stolen years ago.
"We're going to burn it all," Julian whispered.
"And I'm going to watch him scream," Camille said.