Page 25 of The Captive
"What is this?" He moved forward, lifting a photo where Alexander stood on a balcony clearly after leaving his bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist. The man had no qualms about the cold.
"Research," I replied, my voice steadier than it should have been. "Know your enemy."
Patrick's rage crystallized into something worse than his usual explosions. This wasn't about immediate punishment—this was about permanent correction. The calculating look in his eyes made my blood run cold as he stepped back, studying my work with clinical detachment.
Patrick surveyed my work with disturbing calm, fingers tracing the red threads I'd used to map Alexander's movements through the Ashford lands. His eyes lingered on the close-ups, on the handwritten notes detailing Alexander's daily patterns, then on the emptied bottle of his Adderall. He picked it up.
'This is mine.' Not a question. 'How did you get this?' His voice carried that dangerous smoothness that preceded his worst moments.
'My lithium dulls my thinking,' I admitted, seeing no point in denying what was obvious. 'I needed clarity for this.'"
I expected the familiar explosion of violence—the backhand across my face, fingers tangled painfully in my hair, perhaps the cigarette pressed against my skin. Instead, Patrick's rage crystallized into something worse: cold calculation.
"Come with me," he said, grasping my arm with deceptive gentleness. "I think it's time you understood certain things about our marriage."
He led me downstairs, past the formal dining room, through the kitchen where staff averted their eyes. We descended the hidden stairs behind what one would assume was a wine cellar door—an area of the house I'd never stepped foot in.
"Patrick, where?—"
"Quiet."
We moved deeper beneath the mansion, the air growing increasingly stale and cold. When he finally stopped before a heavy metal door, my pulse quickened with palpable fear.
"Do you know what this is?" he asked, producing a key.
I shook my head, manic energy still surging through my system, yet tempered with terror.
"This is what happens when wives forget their place," he said simply, unlocking the door and shoving me inside.
Complete darkness engulfed me as the door slammed shut. I lunged forward too late, hands colliding with cold metal. I heardthe key turn, locks engaging. Then nothing but my own rapid breathing in absolute blackness.
"Patrick!" I pounded against the door, panic overriding sanity. "Patrick, open this door!"
Silence answered.
Hours passed—or was it days?—in complete darkness. Time lost meaning. I explored my prison by touch—a room approximately twelve by fourteen feet with concrete floors and walls. A metal frame bed bolted to the floor in one corner. A bucket in another. Nothing else.
I hadn't ventured to this place beneath our home. A room constructed specifically for Patrick's business—or his darkest impulses.
Without food or water, my body weakened while my mind fragmented. The darkness became a canvas for my obsession, populated by hallucinations born of my condition and dehydration. Alexander materialized from memory, sometimes speaking with cruel detachment, sometimes with the hushed intimacy I remembered from the maze.
"You're pathetic," hallucination-Alexander observed from somewhere in the darkness. "Look at you, imprisoned by a husband who treats you like property, and you sit there fantasizing about me."
"I'm not fantasizing," I argued, voice raw from earlier screaming. "I'm planning."
"Planning what, exactly? To escape one monster by capturing another?"
I laughed, the sound echoing strangely in the darkness. "You're not a monster, Alexander. You simply understand the beauty of controlled violence, of dominance earned rather than simply taken." I wasn't sure if I was speaking out loud or in my head. It didn't matter, anyway.
My fingertips traced the walls again and again, mapping every centimetre, memorising the layout. Even in captivity, I refused to surrender my purpose. Three drainage holes in the floor drew my attention, precisely arranged, and two metal rings were embedded in the wall above the bed. The only ventilation shaft was too small for escape but allowed just enough air to prevent suffocation.
"He's breaking you," hallucination-Alexander noted dispassionately.
"He's trying," I corrected, my throat hurting. "There's a difference."
By what I estimated to be the third day—if my internal clock could be trusted in this darkness—my thoughts had become conversation partners, Alexander's voice and touch materialising with terrifying realism. Without a drop to drink, I should be dead. Indeed, I could barely move. It proved a challenge to remain anchored to reality whilst my body screamed for water and my mind spiralled through increasingly chaotic patterns.
When the door finally opened, a shaft of light stabbed my eyes, blinding me temporarily. I slowly curled into myself, arms shielding my eyes.
