Chapter 3 Payment in Blood

Indigo was still sitting on the bed when the door burst open so hard that her whole body jerked in fright.

Caspian stood at the entrance, his tall frame filling the doorway, his face cold and unreadable. The moment Indigo saw him, the pain on her cheek from Gia's slap seemed to disappear beneath a stronger fear. She quickly lowered her gaze, but it was too late. She had already seen the hatred in his eyes, and it was the kind of hatred that did not need shouting to be dangerous.

For a few seconds, Caspian said nothing. He simply stared at her while she sat there with her hands clenched on the bed, trying not to tremble. The silence between them was heavy enough to choke her. Then he stepped inside and locked the door behind him.

The quiet click of the lock made Indigo's stomach twist.

Caspian walked farther into the room with a calmness that frightened her more than anger would have. His face showed no emotion, but everything about him felt controlled, sharp, and deadly. He had left an important board meeting after Gia's call, and the thought that Indigo had tried to escape while he was away had fed the rage already burning inside him.

He sat on the couch close to the bed and leaned back as though he had all the time in the world. Indigo remained still, afraid that even breathing too loudly might provoke him.

"Anytime I come in," Caspian said coldly, "you will stand up and address me. Stop staring at me like an idiot."

Indigo swallowed and quickly nodded.

Caspian's gaze hardened. "So you were planning to escape?"

His voice was quiet, but it carried so much authority that Indigo felt it press against her chest. She wanted to answer, but fear held her tongue. She could still remember his hand on her face, his cold words, and the way he had called her his property. She hated him, but her body had not forgotten what he could do.

Caspian's jaw tightened. "I hate silence. When I speak, you respond."

Indigo bit the inside of her lip, trying to stop the tears gathering in her eyes.

"You were planning to escape, right?" he asked again.

"Yes," she whispered, then stopped because her voice was shaking too much.

Caspian rose from the couch.

Indigo stood up at once and moved backward without thinking. Every step she took away from him only made him come closer. His eyes remained fixed on her, and she kept retreating until her back touched the wall. There was nowhere else to go.

Caspian stopped in front of her, close enough that she could feel the heat of his presence, far enough that she couldn't predict what he'd do next. That distance—that uncertainty—was worse than any blow.

Indigo blinked fast, but the tears came anyway. She hated herself for crying. She hated that fear had made her smaller. She hated that the girl who once spoke without shaking now could not even look a man in the eyes without feeling her knees weaken.

"You thought you could run from me?" he asked, his voice low enough that she had to lean slightly forward to hear it, a trap in itself because it brought her closer to him.

Indigo pressed her back harder against the wall. "Please…"

He gave a cold smile that did not reach his eyes. "Please? You should have thought of that before you tried to escape."

He stepped closer, and she had nowhere to retreat. His hand came up, not to strike but to grip her chin, forcing her to look at him. The touch was controlled, precise, the grip of someone who knew exactly how much pressure to apply to terrify without breaking.

"I need you to understand something," he said, and there was something in his voice that made her freeze—not just rage, but something underneath it, something that sounded almost like pain, though his face gave nothing away. "You don't get to leave. You don't get to choose. You belong to me now. To this house. To me."

He released her chin and stepped back, and that withdrawal was somehow more threatening than the closeness had been.

"Do you understand?" he asked.

Indigo's lips trembled. She managed a nod, but that wasn't enough.

"I asked you a question," he said coldly. "You respond with words."

"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, I understand."

"Good."

He turned his back to her for a moment, and Indigo watched the tension in his shoulders, the way his hand clenched into a fist and then slowly released. Something flickered across his face—frustration, or the effort of controlling something inside him that wanted to break free. Then he turned back to her, and whatever she had glimpsed was buried again.

"I can see you are eager to start your training as a slave."

Indigo stared at him through her fear, unable to understand how one person could speak so calmly while destroying another person's life. But underneath the fear was something else now, something sharp and cold. He had revealed something to her—not kindness, never that, but a seam in his control. A moment where the mask had slipped. That moment told her something important: he was not an unstoppable force. He was a man, and men could be studied. Men could be anticipated.

"Training?" she whispered. "Slave?"

"Strip," Caspian ordered.

The word fell into the room like a blade.

Indigo did not move. Her whole body turned cold, but her eyes filled with a hatred she could no longer hide. Caspian saw it. He stepped toward her again and grabbed her hand tightly.

"I asked you to strip," he said. "Didn't I?"

"You're hurting me," Indigo cried, and she meant it not as a plea but as a statement of fact, something to be registered, something she was making him aware of so that when she resisted, it wouldn't be from weakness but from choice.

"I would prefer you to address me as master, not sir," Caspian said, his voice rising with anger. "I am your master because I own you. You are my slave and my property."

He struck her across the face, not with the wild fury she might have expected, but with a controlled force that spoke of deliberation. The pain was sharp, but she didn't fall. She stood there, breathing hard, her cheek burning, and something inside her crystallized. This man was treating her like property, but he was also monitoring her, controlling her, which meant he cared about her response. That care, even if it was only the care a collector has for a valuable object, was a lever.

"I hate silence," he said. "You respond when I speak."

"Yes, sir," she muttered, then corrected herself quickly when his eyes darkened. "Master."

The word tasted bitter in her mouth, but she made a choice when she said it. She would say what he needed to hear. She would survive this night and the ones after it, not by fighting every battle, but by deciding which ones mattered.

Caspian hit her again, but this time she didn't collapse into sobs. Instead, something inside Indigo cracked open—not her will, but her fear, and in the space where fear had been, rage moved in, cold and useful.

She lifted her tear-stained face and screamed, "What did I do wrong? What crime did I commit to receive this treatment? What have I done to you?"

Caspian scoffed as if her questions meant nothing, but she saw something in his eyes—a flicker of something that wasn't purely sadism. Pain, maybe. Or the effort of not feeling it.

"You are your father's daughter," he said, each word deliberate, each one landing like a separate blow. "You are paying for your father's sin. Now strip."

Indigo's lips parted, but no words came out.

Her father's sin. Those words were a key, and even through her terror, even as her body shook, she understood that she had just learned something crucial. This wasn't random cruelty. This was revenge. And revenge meant motive, meant history, meant something she could eventually understand and use.

She tried to search her memory for anything that could explain Caspian's hatred, but all she found was confusion. Her father had died years ago. Her mother had carried secrets, yes, but Indigo had never known what those secrets were. Now she was standing before a man who had already judged her guilty because of blood she did not choose, but that judgment also gave her something: a frame for understanding him. He was not a sadist. He was a man driven by loss, and men driven by loss could be leveraged.

"Indigo," Caspian said, his voice low and dangerous, "I hate repeating myself."

She remained frozen, and his hand came across her face so fast that she barely saw it. The force turned her head to the side, but this time, instead of begging immediately, Indigo slowly looked back at him. Tears ran down her cheeks, but beneath them, something stubborn remained alive—something that was thinking now, even as her body trembled.

"You will never be able to break me," she said through clenched teeth, and she meant it not as defiance for its own sake, but as a statement of fact. If he was going to do this, if she was going to survive it, she needed him to understand that some part of her would remain unbroken. That was how she would live through the night.

Caspian's mouth curved, but there was no warmth in it. For a moment, he just looked at her, and she saw something in his expression that she hadn't expected to see: a kind of interest. As though she had surprised him.

"I can see how bold and stubborn you are," he said. "I love stubborn pets."

He grabbed her by the neck, not enough to end her life, but enough to make every breath a struggle. Indigo's fingers flew to his wrist as panic filled her eyes, and in that moment, as oxygen became scarce, she made a decision. She would not beg. She would not scream. She would let him see that some part of her remained separate from what he was doing to her body.

"Strip now," he said.

She shook her head, the movement small but deliberate, her fingers still gripping his wrist even as her vision began to blur from lack of air.

Something shifted in his expression. It wasn't mercy. It was colder than that—a kind of satisfaction that she had done exactly what he expected. He released her throat but didn't step back. Instead, he moved toward her with the inevitability of a closing door.

"Don't," Indigo whispered, her voice hoarse from where his hand had been. She pressed herself harder against the wall, and for the first time, she reached out not to fight but to plead, her hands up in front of her. "Please. Don't."

But Caspian's eyes were already empty of anything that might have heard her. He had moved past anger into something else entirely—a place where her words couldn't reach him. He took another step forward, and Indigo realized, in that moment, that resistance would only prolong this. She forced herself to move, to comply, because survival meant knowing when to bend. She turned away from him, a decision that felt like drowning, and moved toward the bed.

---

The world came back in pieces. Consciousness returned slowly, like surfacing from deep water. Indigo lay still, her body aching in ways that went deeper than skin, her mind fragmented and slow. She kept her eyes closed for several breaths, gathering what remained of herself before facing the room around her.

When she finally opened her eyes, the light felt harsh. The bed was clean—fresh sheets, a soft duvet pulled carefully over her. She was wearing a loose nightgown, her body arranged as if someone had taken care to position her like a doll being put away. The thought made something turn inside her chest.

She tried to sit up, and pain bloomed everywhere—across her ribs, her shoulders, between her legs, places she didn't want to examine too closely. Her throat felt raw. She swallowed carefully and tasted blood.

The room was empty. Caspian had left at some point, though she couldn't remember when. There was a gap in her memory—or perhaps she was blocking it deliberately, her mind choosing what it could bear to know and what it would bury for now.

Indigo forced herself to move, to swing her legs off the bed, to stand despite the way her body protested every movement. She had survived the night. That was the first thing. Survive first. Understand later. Escape eventually.

She was too weak to move far, so she lay back down, staring at the ceiling. That's when she noticed it—a phone on the bedside table, just sitting there as though it had been placed deliberately. As though Caspian had left it there knowing she would find it.

Indigo turned her head slowly and stared at the device. Her heart began to pound, but not from fear this time. From the sharp, predatory focus of someone who had just been given something unexpected.

She reached over and picked it up carefully, as though it might burn her. The screen showed the time and date.

September 6th.

The numbers seemed to glow at her, and suddenly Indigo couldn't breathe. Not from pain, but from something that felt almost like irony, or cruelty disguised as coincidence.

Today was her eighteenth birthday.

Her mother had promised that on her eighteenth birthday, she would receive the best gift of her life. Sable had smiled when she said it, as if she had been holding a beautiful secret for her daughter. Indigo had waited for that day with hope, never knowing that before it arrived, her mother would be gone and the gift waiting for her would be grief, captivity, and blood on a stranger's sheets.

A painful, bitter laugh escaped her, so quiet it was almost inaudible. "Happy birthday to me," she whispered.

She dropped the phone back on the nightstand and tried to stand again. Her legs were steadier this time, though pain shot through her with each movement. The bathroom was her first destination. She needed to see herself, to assess the damage, to understand what her body was telling her.

What she saw in the mirror was a stranger wearing her face. Bruises bloomed across her skin like dark flowers. Her lip was split. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot. She looked at her own reflection and didn't recognize the person staring back.

She filled the bathtub with water as hot as she could stand and sank into it, trying to wash away whatever she could, knowing that the worst of it was somewhere water could never reach. But the heat helped. It grounded her, reminded her that she had a body and that body had survived.

When she climbed out of the water, weakness crashed over her suddenly. Her legs gave way, and she stumbled. She reached out, searching for something to hold onto, and instead fell toward the floor.

Arms caught her.

For a moment, Indigo's heart stopped. Her first thought was Caspian, come back. But the arms were gentler than his. The grip was careful, steadying rather than crushing.

She blinked up at the person holding her, and her vision swam. All she could make out was a blur, a silhouette, someone who wasn't Caspian. A woman.

"Don't try to move," a voice said—a female voice, older than she expected, with a tone that held something almost like concern. "You're going to hurt yourself worse."

Indigo's mind was already slipping back into the dark places. She felt herself being lifted, carried, placed gently on a bed—not the one in her locked room, somewhere different. She heard voices, low and urgent, but they didn't penetrate the fog.

The last thing she was aware of, before everything dissolved into darkness, was a memory of her mother's face. A promise made on a birthday that would never come. The feeling of being held by someone who loved her, which was no longer possible in this world.

"Mom," she whispered, and then nothing.