"No, you didn't," he agreed, closing the door behind him. "But you've been in here for four days. Not eating. Barely sleeping, from what the staff tells me. This isn't processing, Grace. This is self-destruction."
I laughed, the sound harsh and bitter in the quiet room. "Self-destruction? That's rich, coming from the man who destroyed my life. Who took me from my home, kept me prisoner, and then had the audacity to act surprised when I fell apart after learning my family had written me off as a loss."
Pain flickered across his features—not physical, but emotional. A reaction to the accusation in my words, to the bitterness that had replaced the tentative connection we'd built over the past months.
"I didn't destroy your life," he said quietly. "Your father did that when he decided you were expendable. When he chose business interests over his daughter's safety and freedom."
"And you're so different?" I challenged, anger finally breaking through the numbness that had enveloped me for days. "You, who kept the truth from me for a month? Who let me continue hoping, wondering, imagining that somewhere out there, someone was looking for me? You, who claim to love me but treat me like a possession, a prize to be won, a trophy to display to your enemies?"
He flinched, the words finding their mark with unerring precision. "That's not fair," he said, his voice rougher than before. "I kept the truth from you because I couldn't bear to be the one to hurt you that way. Because I thought?—"
"You thought what was best for me," I interrupted, moving toward him with sudden energy, fueled by the rage that had been building inside me for days. "You decided what I could handle, what I should know, what reality I should live in. Just like my father. Just like every man who's ever claimed to care about me while treating me like a child, like a doll, like something to be protected and controlled rather than a person with the right to make her own choices, even if those choices lead to pain."
I was standing before him now, close enough to see the flecks of amber in his dark eyes, to smell the familiar scent of his cologne, to feel the heat radiating from his body. Close enough to strike him, if I'd wanted to. Close enough to kiss him, if that impulse had been there.
It wasn't. For the first time since our relationship had evolved beyond captor and captive, I felt nothing when I looked at him. No desire. No connection. No complicated tangle of emotions that had kept me bound to him despite everything.
Just emptiness. Just the hollow recognition that I had trusted him, in my way, and he had betrayed that trust as surely as my father had.
"I'm sorry," he said, the words simple but laden with a sincerity I couldn't deny despite my anger. "I was wrong to keep the truth from you. Wrong to think I was protecting you by doing so. Wrong in ways I'm only beginning to understand."
The admission should have satisfied me, should have validated my anger, my sense of betrayal. Instead, it left me feeling even emptier, even more adrift in a world where nothing was as I'd believed it to be.
"It doesn't matter," I said, turning away from him, moving back to the window where I'd spent so many hours staring out at grounds that had become as familiar as they were confining. "Nothing matters anymore. Not your apologies. Not my father's betrayal. Not whatever this is between us. It's all just... smoke. Illusion. A story I told myself to make sense of a situation that has never made sense, has never been anything but a nightmare I can't wake up from."
I heard him move closer, felt his presence behind me, though he didn't touch me. Knew better than to touch me in this moment, with the chasm between us wider than it had ever been.
"It's not illusion," he said quietly. "What's between us. What I feel for you. That's real, Grace. The only real thing in this whole mess."
I turned to face him, something breaking inside me at the vulnerability in his expression, at the raw need I could see beneath his carefully controlled exterior. "Is it? Or is it just another form of possession? Another man deciding I belong to him, that he knows what's best for me, that his desires trump my autonomy, my right to choose my own path?"
He flinched again, the accusation hitting home with devastating accuracy. "That's not what this is," he insisted, though I could hear the doubt creeping into his voice, the recognition that from my perspective, the distinction might be meaningless. "Not anymore. Maybe at the beginning, yes. But now?—"
"Now what?" I challenged. "Now you love me? Now you want what's best for me? Now you'd let me go, if that's what I truly wanted? That's what you said at the estate. Was it true, Rafe? Would you really let me walk away, knowing what I know now, feeling what I feel now?"
The question hung between us, loaded with implications, with history, with the weight of everything that had happenedsince that night he'd taken me from my apartment, since the moment he'd decided I belonged to him.
"Yes," he said finally, the word barely above a whisper but carrying an absolute certainty that caught me off guard. "If that's what you truly want. If that's what would bring you peace, happiness, a life you could embrace rather than merely endure. I would let you go, Grace. It would destroy me. But I would do it."
I searched his face, looking for signs of deception, of manipulation, of the calculated control that had defined our relationship from the beginning. Found none. Just raw honesty, vulnerability, a pain so evident it made my chest ache despite everything.
"I want to leave," I said, the words escaping before I'd fully formed the thought, the decision. "Not forever. Not... permanently. But I need space. Distance. Time to think without you here, without the weight of your presence, your expectations, your... love, if that's truly what it is."
Something flickered in his eyes—disappointment, fear, resignation. But he nodded, accepting my decision with a grace I hadn't expected. "Where will you go?"
It was a fair question. One I hadn't fully considered in my impulsive declaration. Where could I go? My father had abandoned me. My family had disowned me. My former life had continued without me, the space I'd occupied filled in and smoothed over as if I'd never existed.
"I don't know," I admitted, the honesty costing me. "A hotel, maybe. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere I can think, can process everything that's happened, everything I've learned. Somewhere I can figure out who I am now, what I want, what future I can imagine for myself."
He was quiet for a moment, considering. "I have a property in the Berkshires," he said finally. "A cabin. Isolated. Peaceful.No staff, no security, just... space. You could go there. Stay as long as you need. No one would bother you."
The offer was tempting—a compromise between the complete break I'd impulsively demanded and the practical reality that I had nowhere else to go, no resources of my own, no identity that existed outside the world of the Contis and O'Sullivans.
"Would it still be a cage?" I asked, the question that mattered most. "Would I be watched, tracked, monitored? Would I be free to leave if I chose to, to go somewhere else, to... disappear, if that's what I decided I wanted?"
Pain crossed his features again, but he didn't hesitate. "No cage," he promised. "No tracking, no monitoring. The keys would be yours. A car in the garage. Money in an account you could access. Complete freedom to stay or go as you choose."
I studied him, trying to read beyond the careful mask he wore, to see the truth beneath his words. Found only sincerity, vulnerability, a willingness to risk losing me completely rather than continue holding me in a captivity that had become untenable for us both.
