ZARIAH'S POV
I wake up tangled in a bed that I don't remember getting into.
I remember falling asleep at the lounge but not about coming out of it---- Alaric must have brought me here.
Speaking of him, the sheets still smell like him, his cologne and power— and I hate that my body aches for him even when my soul just wants to set him on fire.
The collar's still around my neck now, still thin, Diamond- studded and custom- made---- It makes me feel like I'm owned.
Cussing, I yank it off and fling it across the room then push myself off the bed and turn to look at the full length mirror at its usual post.
The mirror shows me what I already know.
My eyes are tired, my lips are swollen and my body feels bruised from sleeping off somewhere other than a bed.
Last night, he lost control because of me, because I flirted with the wrong man which I did just because I wanted to see how far I could push a monster like him.
Well turns out, it's not far at all.
I throw on a robe and storm down the hallway, ready to scream, to fight and to break something that's made of glass and expensive, however he's not his servants showed me; he's not in his office, not in the gym and also not in the damn war room where I've seen him brood over blueprints and body counts.
I keep walking, barefoot on the marble floor----- I seem to be doing that lately---- until finally I push open a door I haven't dared to enter since my time here.
... And that's his bedroom.
It's colder than I expect to be, larger even and much darker, but it's clean and...
How should I put it?
... Impersonal; as in, it looks like he sleeps covered in ghosts instead of bed sheets----- it's too clean.
As I look around, a photo catches the corner of my eye and I immediately stop in my tracks.
It's sits quietly on the dresser with no frame, so it's just leaned against a crystal decanter.
It's a picture of a lady with a soft smile, long hair and... kind... eyes.
She's everything that I'm not, and he's right there beside her.
... Smiling, like actually REALLY smiling!
I've never seen him smile like that, with me or with anyone else.
The woman in the photo is dressed in a white dress with her hands wrapped around his arm as if that's were they belongs.
Then my gaze goes down to her finger and I see the ring on it.
It is enormous.
That means she is Fiancée---- WAS his fiancée.
She's dead now, if the rumors I've overheard are true at all.
Suddenly a cold chill crawls up and down my spine as I look the image again.
The collar, the color of her hair and the gown looks just like how I was dressed yesterday at the Mafia Gala.
Hell, he's even holding her the same way he held me yesterday.
Yesterday, just YESTERDAY!!
No.
No, no, no.
I storm back to my room, throw open the door to 'my' closet and start yanking out all the gowns that her there.
And all of them look just like her size from the picture, HER SIZE!!!
Alaric is trying to change me into someone else; his dead fiancee.
----------
He finds me in the corridor ten minutes later, pacing back and forth like a wild animal on the loose.
"Where is she?" I demand.
He pauses and tilts his head.
"Who's she?"
"Don't play dumb. The woman in the photo, the one with the engagement ring."
His jaw ticks at this.
"She's dead," he says flatly.
"So I heard. But now you're what? Replacing her? Rebuilding her? Or turning me into a version of your perfect little fucked up fantasy?"
He doesn't blink and so I shove him in the chest.
"I'm not her."
He catches my wrist before I can shove him again for a second time, keeping silent for a few seconds before he says;
"I know."
"Well it doesn't look like you know so let me tell you; I'm not soft, I'm not silent, and I don't exist to be touched when you feel like it and silenced when you don't."
Suddenly he yanks me forward until our faces are just inches apart.
"I don't want you to be her."
"Then stop trying to mold me into someone I'm not!"
He releases me so suddenly that I stumble back, then he walks past me coldly and opens a drawer in the hallway console, pulling out something black and glossy, and then tosses it at me.
It lands in my hands before I can look at it properly, so I raise it in the air, only to stare at it blankly when I see that it is another collar.
The only difference is that it is leather, with a buckle and a metal tag.
Obviously this one isn't for show.
"Put it on," he says.
I laugh. "You're out of your mind."
"Put. It. On."
"No."
He steps forward, using his hand to grip my chin, forcing my head up to look at him.
"This isn't about some dead woman you think that I miss. This is about you and me, and what you do to me that I don't fucking understand."
I stare at him, my chest heaving slightly less than I'm feeling now.
"Then say that."
But he doesn't. Of course he doesn't.
He just wraps the collar around my throat and fastens it with so much ease that it makes me realise that he's tied up several others before me.
The collar's snug, not tight and not rough but it makes my skin burn.
"There," he says.
"Now you're exactly what you are."
"And what's that?"
"Mine."
--------------
I don't speak to him for hours.
Instead I rip the collar off the second he leaves and head back to my room and throw it under the bed.
If he wants silence, he'll get it.
However I'm still pacing when the doorbell buzzes.
I'm about to ignore it when I realise that it isn't coming from the estate entrance or the hallway but rather from HIS private security line.
I hesitate for a while and then walk out of my room, down the hallway and into his office, all the while wondering why on earth his private security line's ring tone sounds like a doorbell and why it's so loud.
It's rang for the fourth time by the time I've reached his office, but Alaric's not anywhere.
Hell, even his guards aren't here;
Did he threaten to kill them if the entered?
Well I don't know but I'm already in...
While I'm trying to process my thoughts, a monitor I hadn't noticed when I came in lights up, and when I look at it, it's playing a live video stream.
The screen glitches for a while, then stabilizes to show me Luc.
He's sitting in some gaudy leather throne with his legs crossed and a cigar in his left hand.
Then behind him is a man I recognize from Alaric's last supplying meeting, the Bald Goldie with the weird accent.
Gold Tooth is tied to a chair, bleeding, looking like he's been beaten and just barely conscious.
Then Luc leans toward the camera, making me turn my attention to him.
> "Miss me, darling?"
I don't reply and he smiles.
> "I thought I'd send your new... master a gift."
Then he raises his hand, snaps his fingers and a man with a blank look on his face walks toward Goldie with a long knife, and slashes his throat.
Blood sprays the camera, blurring the screen partially and I stagger back, running out of the office while Luc's laughter follows me out, ringing in my ears.