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One day, Nathan brings me a full-length mirror, its size commanding the space in the tiny room. The frame is intricate, gold filigree twisting like veins, the kind of thing you’d see in a museum or a house too large for one family. He doesn’t explain. He doesn’t even look at me. He props it against the wall with a grunt, adjusts it until it’s perfectly straight, and leaves without a word.

At first, I try not to notice it. I keep my head down, eyes fixed on the floor, the way I’ve been taught. But the mirror is impossible to ignore. Its presence hums, pulling at the edges of my attention, turning the room into a trap of reflections and empty space. It feels alive, as if it’s watching me even when Nathan isn’t.

Days pass. The mirror becomes a weight, an unspoken thing pressing on my chest every time I move. Finally, I give in. I crawl toward it slowly, the way you might approach an animal you’re not sure will bite. My knees burn against the floor, but I barely notice. All I can think about is the mirror and what it might show me.

When I reach it, I lift my head. And there I am.

The reflection knocks the air out of my lungs. This is the first time I am seeing myself— really seeing myself in three years. I don’t recognize myself. My hair hangs in tangled clumps, greasy and matted. My body is hunched, my shoulders caving in like they’re trying to disappear. Bruises spreading up my arms and

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across my back. They look almost purposeful, like a grotesque mimicry of something natural. The pink collar gleams against my skin, snug and unrelenting, a perfect symbol of everything I’ve let myself become.

I reach out, my fingers trembling, and press them to the glass. The reflection blurs under the smear of my hand, but it doesn’t go away. I pull my hand back and let it fall to the floor, my gaze dropping with it. My knees, raw and calloused, stare back at me like an accusation.

Nathan enters. I don’t hear him at first, but I feel him—the weight of his presence shifting the air in the room. My body stiffens. He stops behind me, his reflection towering over mine, and the room feels suddenly smaller.

“What do you see, girl?”

he asks, his voice calm, measured, but sharp enough to cut.

I stare at the floor, unsure if I’m supposed to answer. The silence stretches, and when it becomes unbearable, I let out a soft bark just to appease him.

He crouches beside me, his hand brushing against my shoulder. His eyes meet mine in the mirror, and I hate the way it feels like he’s searching for something, like I’m a puzzle he’s trying to solve.

“I see potential,”

he says. His tone is low, almost tender, but it sticks in my throat like something sour.

The words sit heavy in my chest, their weight spreading, suffocating. His hand lingers on my shoulder, the pressure just shy of comforting, before he stands and leaves. The door clicks shut behind him, but the sound doesn’t break the spell the mirror has cast.

I stay there for a long time, my eyes locked on the stranger in the glass.

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I sit in front of the mirror for hours, the floor gnawing at my knees, the reflection in the glass warping as the light shifts in the room. The golden frame gleams faintly, mocking, its ornate edges curling like fingers around the truth it holds. My mind drifts, unmoored and slippery, to the app. To the flicker of messages. Names and faces blurred together now, like smudged ink.

I think about the other men. The ones who called me beautiful, who promised to treat me like a queen, who filled my inbox with carefully crafted lines about respect and affection. The ones who wanted nothing more than a warm body across the table, a companionable laugh over wine that tasted like money. The ones who wanted more but dressed it in velvet, wrapped it in promises of fun, of ease, of no strings.

I scroll through those memories like a faded photo album. The man with the yachts, his profile picture a sunlit grin, who wanted someone “spontaneous.”

The one who signed every message with a rose emoji, “darling”

spilling from his fingers like a reflex. The man who quoted poetry like he owned it, who wrote in sprawling paragraphs about art and soulmates and destiny.

None of them had felt real. Too smooth, too curated, as if they’d rehearsed their lives for an audience. Too eager to show me the spotlight without asking if I wanted to be seen.

Then there was Nathan.

Nathan didn’t bother with poetry. He didn’t wrap his intentions in silk. His messages were short, blunt, carved clean with the precision of a scalpel. He didn’t promise adoration or indulgence.

And now, here I am. Kneeling on this cold floor in the gilded cage he’s built for me, staring at a reflection that barely feels like mine. My hair is limp, my posture hunched. The bruises on my skin—some yellowing, some dark and purple, casting shadows

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across my arms, legs, and back. The collar gleams in the glass, a perfect circle trapping me where I am.

I wonder if I chose wrong—or if I’d ever had a choice at all. What were the odds, out of everyone on that app, that I’d choose Nathan, and Nathan would choose me?

This was fate, and I was cursed. Terrible luck of epic proportions. Cosmic Karma for something I did in my past life. It was the only explanation.

He was the first message I got on the app. The first ping in the empty, cavernous inbox. His words were direct, no flowers, no fluff, just a plain introduction that didn’t even bother with a compliment.

It was almost like he could feel the desperation radiating from me through the screen, as if I had unknowingly sent out a telepathic plea to every man on the app: pick me, choose me, save me. His message cut through the static like a blade. No hi beautiful no roses, no pretense.

I could have had the man who wanted me for my smile, for the way my face glows in candlelight. The man who would’ve draped diamonds around my neck, who would’ve flown me to Paris just to watch me sip wine beneath the Eiffel Tower. And even though I wasn’t looking for any of those things, it sounded nice. Meeting someone who would’ve kept me intact, untouched, unchanged. But I didn’t.

I chose the man who wanted not who I was, but who I could become.

A pet.

A prisoner.

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I’m dreaming of a feast—pizza and chicken salad sandwiches and burgers and little mini donuts and big steaming bowls of ramen when I hear Master Nathan scream, a raw, guttural sound that rips through the house and claws its way into me. It startles me awake, my body jerking, my heart pounding like it’s trying to escape. His grief is so loud it feels alive, heavy and thrashing, filling the air with its weight. My stomach knots, instinct taking over. I feel the guilt before I understand it, a sharp, reflexive thing burrowing deep, like somehow this is my fault—like I’ve failed him in a way I can’t even name. The walls seem to close in tighter, the pink trim mocking in its sweetness, and I sit frozen in the dark, every muscle tense, waiting for his grief to turn its head and find me.

A couple of hours later, I get my answer. Nathan staggers into the room, grief etched deep into his face, his hair sticking up on all ends, his breath thick with whiskey. He moves like his body has forgotten how to hold itself upright, dragging himself to the edge of the bed and collapsing there, head hanging low. I lay frozen, every muscle locked, afraid to even breathe. My heart hammers in my chest as the silence stretches, heavy and endless.

Finally, he speaks. He turns his head, and his eyes—red and raw—find mine. “My mother was murdered yesterday,”

he says, his voice flat, stripped of anything but the weight of the words. He looks back down, his fingers twitching against his knees. “She got robbed at gunpoint in a grocery store parking lot. They got away with her purse and still fucking shot her.”

The words hit the air like stones, heavy and sharp, and I can feel their weight pressing into the space between us. I stare at him, my breath catching in my throat. There’s a knot in my chest, tight and

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unfamiliar, and I can’t tell if it’s pity or fear or some awful combination of the two.

He sniffs, a wet, broken sound, and for a moment, it’s like I’m staring at someone else—a child who lost his mother, not the man who’s turned me into this, who’s stolen the shape of my life and forced me to crawl. His face crumples, his body shaking as he breaks down into tears, loud and wrenching, his grief spilling out in waves.

And then he grabs me. His arms wrap around me with a force that steals my breath, and he holds me against him, his face buried in my shoulder. His sobs are loud and raw, soaking through me like rain.

For a second, I think maybe this is it. Maybe this will crack him open, make him see himself for what he is, for what he’s done. Maybe this will change him, make him realize that holding me here, stealing my life, was monstrous. Maybe he’ll let me go.

I hold my breath, my heart pounding as his tears soak into my skin. Please, let this be it, I think. Let him see.

But his grip only tightens, his sobs turning into muffled, guttural sounds. And I stay still, trapped in the silence of his grief, in the terrible, fragile hope that this might be the moment that saves me.

The next morning, Nathan is stone, hard and emotionless, like the man who cried into my shoulder never existed. His grief is gone, or maybe it’s buried so deep it’s turned into something else—something sharp and jagged. He doesn’t look at me when he unlocks the door. His movements are brisk, mechanical, his face a mask of blank indifference.

I sit there, waiting for a crack, for the softness that had briefly flickered through him the night before. For a moment, I think maybe I imagined it, that the version of him who shook and

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sobbed into my skin was some trick of the dim light. But then I reach out, hesitant, my fingers trembling as they hover near his arm.

He turns and slaps me across the face so hard that I topple over.

“You’re a fucking dog,”

he says, his voice low and venomous, each word landing like a stone thrown into a well. The room feels smaller, the air sucked out, and my cheek burns hot under his hand.

I stare down at the bed, my heart pounding in my ears. The tears threaten to come, but I choke them down, swallowing the lump in my throat. He stands there for a moment, breathing heavy, his hand still raised like he might strike me again. His eyes are hollow, his expression cold, like he’s already erased what happened yesterday.

Losing his mother hasn’t softened him. It hasn’t changed him. Whatever part of me dared to hope for that feels small and stupid now, shriveling under the weight of his anger.

He doesn’t say anything else. He just grabs the leash, clips it to my collar so he can take me to the bathroom. My knees hit the floor, the rug scratching at my skin, and I crawl after him, my body moving on autopilot, my mind frozen in the slap, the burn of his hand, the words hanging in the air like smoke.

He’s harder now, harder than he’s ever been, and I know, deep down, that whatever softness I thought I saw in him was a ghost. Whatever version of him I held onto last night is gone, buried under the weight of himself.

YEAR FOUR