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CHAPTER ELEVEN

AURELIA

L ight filters through my eyelids, consciousness seeping back reluctantly. Something feels different. The air moves differently across my skin—fresher, less stagnant. I blink, disoriented by the quality of light as dawn creeps through the windows, painting the walls in watercolor hues.

Then I see it—the door. Open. Not cracked by a few inches, but unmistakably, impossibly open.

I sit up and can’t stop a yawn, certain I’m still dreaming. Once I’m more awake, my eyes dart to the security camera in the corner, its red light blinking back at me. Is Julian watching this? Observing my reaction like I’m an animal in a laboratory? What kind of game is this?

I slide from the bed, the plush carpet catching between my toes. Is this freedom, or just a trick? Are guards positioned outside, waiting to catch me in an escape attempt? To add another crime to the list in Julian’s head?

I walk across the room then press myself against the wall beside the door, lungs barely drawing air. Lady Harrow has taught me how lethal hope can be; how easily it transforms into a weapon against the desperate.

I hate to admit it, but I am desperate.

My fingers edge toward the door, nudging it open another inch. The hallway beyond appears empty. I strain to hear footsteps, breathing, anything that might indicate an ambush, but there’s only silence.

Well… Fuck it.

If this is Julian’s sick game, so be it. Better to face whatever trap is waiting for me than waste away in Adrian’s room another second.

Quickly, I snatch the diary from the rumpled sheets, shoving it into the waistband of my pajama bottoms. With one final glance at the camera—a silent challenge to whoever might be watching—I slip into the hallway. Freedom or trap, truth or lie, I’ll face it head-on.

With luck, I’ll be able to escape this hell hole.

The Harrow penthouse stretches before me like an homage to marble.

Every surface gleams with the cold perfection that defines this family—polished black-and-white marble floors and abstract expressionist artwork on light gray walls, furniture arranged like booby traps and always in the way of walking paths.

No warmth. No color. Nothing but pristine emptiness masquerading as luxury.

I know every inch of this godforsaken penthouse. The front entrance and elevator—my only salvation—are just beyond the large living room, past the formal dining area. My bare feet make no sound against the cold floor as I move like a shadow through familiar territory .

The penthouse breathes silence. No voices, no footsteps, no signs of life.

Can it really be this easy? Confidence grows with each step away from Adrian’s room.

Perhaps Emeric talked some sense into Julian and he’s finally letting me go.

Perhaps this is truly the universe granting me mercy after days of torture.

I round the corner into the dining room, calculations already spinning through my mind. From here, fifteen steps to the living room, another twenty to the elevator.

And then time stops.

Julian and Lady Harrow sit at the massive marble dining table, forks suspended midway since they’re in the middle of eating breakfast. Steam rises from plates of waffles drenched in fruit and syrup, the water vapor curling in the air like question marks.

Lady Harrow barely flickers an eyelash, her composure as immaculate as the pearls at her throat. But Julian—his reaction fractures everything into a thousand sharp edges.

He rises so suddenly his chair topples backward, the crash reverberating through the space.

His face is a battlefield of purple and yellow bruises, his left eye swollen nearly shut, a fresh row of stitches carving a jagged line through his eyebrow.

Blood vessels have burst in his right eye, turning the white into a crimson sea around his blue iris.

I wince at how beaten up and bruised he is. But it’s not his injuries that really steal my breath—it’s his expression. Pure, undiluted shock . The kind that can’t be manufactured or rehearsed.

He didn’t know .

He didn’t open the door.

The realization splinters through me as I try to figure this out. If Julian didn’t release me—if my freedom wasn’t part of some elaborate mind game—then who unlocked my door?

Emeric? His words in the hallway suggested he wanted Julian to let me go, but would he betray his best friend so openly? Their bond has weathered decades of violence, so would he risk it all for me, a woman he only tolerates because of Eleanora?

No. I don’t think it was Emeric.

Lady Harrow? It’s possible, but I sense that she wants me here so she can convince Julian to finally end my life. Afterall, I’m the only one who witnessed what she did, besides Adrian.

Valentine, then? Maybe he finally found an opening to sneak in and unlock the door without being seen.

But, Valentine wouldn’t act without a strategy, without considering every variable. And freeing me now feels too haphazard for his calculated mind, especially when Lady Harrow and Julian are at home.

So who? Who opened my cage and why?

I’ll have to figure it out later.

My eyes dart to the archway leading to the living room.

Running would be pointless now. Julian would only tell the guards to grab me at the elevator.

Also, even with injuries, Julian could still overtake me in seconds.

The only path forward is through this moment, through them—a confrontation I wasn’t prepared for but now can’t avoid.

So I plant my feet and let my rage bloom, unfurling like a poisonous vine that’s been cramped too long in dark soil.

The domesticity of what I’m looking at—mother and son sharing a quiet meal while I rot in captivity—ignites something raw in my chest. Like a fury carried through generations of abused and imprisoned women.

“Enjoying your breakfast?” I spit, the words like fire on my tongue. “Must be nice to eat waffles when all I’ve had are protein bars that guards shove under Adrian’s door.”

Julian’s jaw ticks, the muscle there jumping beneath his purple, splotchy skin.

His eyes, one bloodshot and one partially swollen shut, bore into mine with a venom that would have frightened me once.

Now it only feeds the inferno of my resentment.

He remains silent, only staring as if words have abandoned him in his shock.

Lady Harrow sets her fork down with careful movements, the silver barely making a sound against fine china. “You could stand to lose a few pounds,” she says, like it’s a hard fact and nothing new.

A laugh escapes me—harsh, unhinged, the sound of something broken beyond repair. “Funny how you have an appetite after murdering your son.” The accusation hangs in the air, sharp enough to pierce an eardrum.

Julian’s body tenses, coiled like a spring about to release. His good eye widens as his lips part to unleash what will undoubtedly be a torrent of denial and rage.

But Lady Harrow lifts one manicured hand, silencing him with the casual authority she’s secretly wielded for decades. She methodically dabs at her mouth with a linen napkin, each movement unhurried, as if we have all the time in the world.

My heart thunders, the diary burning hotter against my skin with each passing second. Every nerve ending in my body screams danger as Lady Harrow rises from her chair and moves with the fluid grace of a predator.

She approaches me with measured steps, her slim frame still recovering from the stab wound she orchestrated, her black bob shifting around a face etched with cruelty others only see as refinement.

My entire body tenses, but I don’t retreat.

I lift my chin, squaring my shoulders despite being barefoot and disheveled before her polished perfection.

Lady Harrow’s hand moves with a speed I can’t anticipate.

The crack of flesh against my cheek splits the air like a gunshot.

The force sends me reeling back into a wall, stars exploding behind my eyes as the sting spreads fiery tendrils across my face.

Pain blooms sharp and instant, but even sharper is the knowledge that she means to crush me completely.

The bitch. God, I’m going to enjoy killing her.

I steady myself, struggling to breathe past the shock, fighting not to give her the satisfaction of seeing me fall.

My head spins but I turn it anyway—toward Julian.

The impact hasn’t just rattled my senses; it’s shattered something deeper, more fragile.

I search his battered face for any sign that he understands what she’s done, what she really is.

He glances at his mother and flinches, a brief tremor that gives me hope he’ll finally break from her iron grip, finally see through the mask she’s worn all these years. But then his eyes snap back to mine, and they’re colder than death.

It’s like a second slap when he looks at me like that—detached, indifferent, as if he’s watching rain trickle down a windowpane instead of witnessing the slow annihilation of everything we once were.

Without a word, without even acknowledging the monster who birthed him and what she just did to me, Julian picks up his chair and lowers himself back into it. The scrape of wood on marble echoes.

He picks up his fork and knife with steady hands, then returns to his breakfast as though I’m nothing more than an inconvenience. I stand here frozen, everything inside me unraveling in slow motion while he pretends I don’t exist.

Lady Harrow sits, ice-blue eyes fixing me with a gaze that feels like suffocation.

Her lips curl into a thin smile. “I hope to see you at the Harvest of Wealth festival tomorrow,” she says, also returning to her meal.

Louder now, as if I’m little more than a task on her to-do list, she calls out, “Alex, can you please escort our guest back to her room?”

I scoff. Guest.

A shadow moves in the hallway—a hulking figure I recognize as one of the guards. Alex enters with a threatening casualness that makes my stomach lurch. His bulk fills the space around him. He strides toward me and clamps his hand around my upper arm.

“Get off me!” I hiss as he drags me backward.

Julian doesn’t even look up.

Lady Harrow seems to have already forgotten me .

And I know, the way I’ve been understanding again and again these past several days, my mother was treated like this, felt like this.

Alex pulls me from the dining room. Once we’re past Julian’s field of view, Alex loosens his grip just enough for circulation to return but not enough to regain my dignity. Every rough jolt reverberates through my skeleton until anger propels me forward.

“I can walk myself,” I snap, jerking free from his grasp with all the defiance I have left.

Alex smirks but lets go, hovering close behind as if daring me to try anything clever. But I know better now—-it’s not the time to try to make an escape.

I stumble back into Adrian’s room and slam the door behind me. The sound echoes in my ears as my cheek throbs and stings.

And there it is: my first taste of humiliation at the hands of the Inferno Consortium.