Evelina could still feel the coldness of the secret corridor under her palms, its stone biting against her skin as though the house itself was warning her not to hope, not to dream of freedom. Yet even here, surrounded by shadows and dust that hadn't been touched for years, her mind refused to let go of the burning question she had uncovered—the wound that Kairo's existence bared to her: his mother had sold him, just as her father had sold her. The revelation should have made her hate him less, perhaps even understand him. But instead, it terrified her more. Because if someone who had been wounded in the exact same way could grow into this monster, what was waiting inside her own future?
She had hidden there, trembling and feverish, and yet somehow the silence of the corridor felt less suffocating than the weight of his eyes on her. But Evelina knew it was only a matter of time. Kairo was not the kind of man one could run from. He did not chase with desperation. He waited. He let his prey exhaust itself, wander in circles, until it crawled back to him on its own.
And when the door to the corridor had creaked open, she hadn't needed to look up to know it was him.
Kairo stood there with his tall frame filling the entrance, grey eyes gleaming in a way that seemed to drink in every detail of her defiance, her weakness, her pathetic attempt at escape. He leaned against the wall, not even moving toward her. He didn't have to. His calmness was more dangerous than any violence he could have wielded.
Evelina tried to summon the courage to speak. Her voice cracked as she forced words out.
"Why? Why are you doing this to me? You said yourself you know the pain. You lived through it. Then why repeat the same cruelty? Why… the same fault?"
The word fault slipped from her lips like a bitter poison.
Kairo tilted his head, and his lips curved—not quite a smile, more like the ghost of one. "Fault?" His voice rolled in the corridor, low and deliberate. "No, Evelina. You misunderstand. I'm not repeating history. I am rewriting it."
She blinked at him, confusion mixing with despair. He stepped inside slowly, each measured stride echoing in the hollow chamber. His presence filled the narrow space, leaving her nowhere to retreat.
"I'm trying to make everything better," Kairo said, crouching down so that his eyes were level with hers. The dim light from the wall lamp caught the storm-grey irises that seemed to pierce straight into her bones. "You must learn to accept reality, not run from it. Isn't that what hurts you most? This… denial. This refusal to open your eyes."
Her heart pounded painfully against her chest. "Better? Better for who? For you?"
"For both of us." His answer came without hesitation, as though he had rehearsed it in silence for years. His tone was almost gentle, and that terrified her more than his cruelty.
Evelina's throat tightened. "You're destroying me."
"No." He leaned closer, so close she could feel the heat of his breath against her cheek. "I've been saving you long before you even knew you needed saving."
Her eyes widened. The fever in her body turned to ice. "What… what do you mean?"
Kairo straightened, his shadow stretching long across the wall behind her. His voice was calm, steady, but each word felt like a strike against her chest.
"I've been watching you for years, Evelina. Every step you took. Every sigh. Every word that slipped from your lips when you thought no one was listening. I knew how fakely your parents smiled at you, how their love was nothing but a mask. I saw it. I saw you. And I knew you were mine long before fate handed you to me."
The world spun around Evelina. The dust, the stone, the coldness of the corridor—all of it blurred. She felt as though the air had been stolen from her lungs. Her voice trembled when it finally escaped her.
"You… you watched me? For years?"
"Yes." He said it so simply, as though he were confessing to something as ordinary as remembering the weather. "Every single thing you did. I studied you. I protected you from afar even when you didn't realize it. Because no one else could. Not your father. Not your mother. Not those friends you trusted. They were all liars. But me? I've never lied to you. Not once."
Her stomach twisted violently. She wanted to scream, to deny him, to curse his name. But his words pressed down on her like chains, heavy and undeniable.
"Was it really love, Evelina?" His voice sharpened now, like a blade being honed. "The way your parents treated you? The way they smiled at you while pocketing money behind your back? Tell me, Mrs. Volkov…"
The name made her freeze. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. He had called her that before—at dinner, through the mouths of his servants, in moments where the words slipped into the air like a curse. But here, now, the way he said it carried weight. It wasn't a slip. It was a claim.
"Would you deny everything you've seen with your own eyes?"
Her eyes burned, tears threatening to spill but refusing to fall. The truth of the footage he had forced her to watch—her father accepting Kairo's money with eager hands, her family dining in luxury while she cried herself to sleep in captivity—it gnawed at her. Yet her heart screamed to resist, to fight against the web he spun around her.
"Don't call me that," she whispered. Her voice cracked like glass.
"Mrs. Volkov." He repeated it, firm, as though stamping the name into her very skin. "Because that is who you are now. That is who you've always been meant to be. You were never Evelina Han, the daughter of a man who would sell you like cattle. You were mine, from the moment I first saw you."
Her mind reeled. Questions clawed at her insides—when had he first seen her? How? How deep did his surveillance reach? Was her entire life nothing but a stage for his watching eyes? She wanted to demand answers, but fear sealed her lips.
Instead, Evelina stared at him, trembling, her silence an act of fragile rebellion.
Kairo didn't mind her silence. In fact, he seemed to relish it. He crouched again, brushing a strand of her damp hair from her face with an intimacy that made her skin crawl. "You think it's cruelty that binds you here. But it's truth. And truth, Evelina, is freedom. One day you'll understand that."
Her chest rose and fell in quick, shallow breaths. "And if I never do?"
He smiled faintly. "Then I'll wait."
The weight of those words crushed her. He wasn't threatening punishment, nor bargaining with her defiance. He was simply declaring that her resistance meant nothing. Because time itself was his ally. Because he had already waited years just to have her. What was a few more?
Evelina's mind screamed at her to shout, to curse him, to claw at the walls until her fingers bled. But exhaustion dulled her. Fever, grief, and despair pressed her body into submission. All she could do was force her lips into something resembling a smile, brittle and trembling.
"Then… if you'll excuse me," she whispered, her voice thin, "may I go back to my room? I want to rest. If you allow me to."
Kairo studied her face for a long moment, his eyes tracing every line of her false composure. And then, with a nod, he stepped back.
"You may go."
The corridor seemed to close around her as she rose unsteadily, every movement heavy with fatigue. She passed him without daring to meet his eyes, and yet she could feel them burning against her back, watching her every step.
As Evelina stumbled through the hallway, her mind swirled with his confession. He's been watching me for years. The thought drilled into her skull like a nail, unshakable. He knew her better than her own blood. He had collected every piece of her life, stored it like precious treasure.
And now he was building her future from those fragments, with a name that wasn't hers, with a fate she had never chosen.
Mrs. Volkov.
The words echoed in her head as she closed the door of her room behind her.
She pressed her back against the wood, slid down to the floor, and finally let the tears fall.
To be continued...