Chapter 5 The Unhealed Wound

Elena left Indigo’s room with a weight pressing heavily on her chest. She closed the door gently behind her and stood in the hallway for a moment, her gaze lingering on the wood as if she could still see the young girl sitting behind it, confused, wounded, and surrounded by truths no one had allowed her to understand. “Poor child,” she whispered before shaking her head and walking away. She had lived long enough to know that pain did not always choose the guilty. Sometimes, it found the innocent first and left them carrying punishments that belonged to others.

She made her way toward Caspian’s bedroom, determined to speak with him before anger pushed him into something he could never take back. When she reached his door, she knocked softly. “Caspian?” she called, waiting for a response that never came. After a second knock, she opened the door slowly and stepped inside. The room was empty. The bed looked barely touched, the curtains were partly open, and the faint scent of his cologne still lingered in the air. Elena sighed. “Where could he be? I need to talk to him about something important,” she murmured, already turning to leave when something on the bedside table caught her eye.

Her hand tightened at her side as she stared at the object. For several seconds, she could not move. She did not even want to take a closer look because she already feared what it was and why Caspian had kept it there. “Oh, dear Lord,” she whispered. “Please, don’t let this be what I think it is.” She had just taken one careful step toward the bed when the door opened behind her.

“Grandma?” Anthony said, stopping at the doorway with surprise on his face.

Elena quickly turned away from the bedside table and forced herself to smile. “Anthony. I thought you had left for the office.”

“I did, but I came back to get a file,” he replied, though his eyes moved from her face to the room, clearly wondering why she was there. “Are you looking for Caspian?”

“Yes. I came to see him, but he isn’t here.”

“He’s in his study,” Anthony said.

Elena nodded. “Thank you.” She walked past him toward the study, but Anthony watched her go with a slight frown. Something about her expression told him she had seen something that had shaken her.

When Elena reached the study, she opened the door after a soft knock. “Caspian.”

Caspian looked up from his laptop and closed it immediately. “Grandma.”

The sight of him almost broke her heart. Dark circles sat beneath his eyes, and exhaustion clung to his face no matter how hard he tried to hide it behind his usual calm expression. He looked like a man who had spent another night fighting memories instead of sleeping. For fifteen years, Elena had watched him survive the day and lose himself to the night. The world saw a powerful CEO, but she still saw the boy who had come back from horror with a heart full of wounds no one knew how to heal.

Caspian noticed the tears gathering in her eyes and frowned. “Grandma, are you alright?”

“I should be asking you that,” Elena said, stepping closer. She touched his cheek lightly, her voice softening. “Look at yourself. You look tired, Caspian.”

He stood and gave a faint smile that did not reach his eyes. “I’m fine.”

“No, you are not.”

He picked up his phone and called Anthony. “Come to my study,” he said before ending the call. Then he moved closer to Elena and placed both hands gently on her shoulders. “Grandma, you worry too much. Please, it’s not good for your health.”

The tears she had been fighting finally slipped down her cheeks. Caspian’s expression changed at once, and he wiped them away with his thumb. “Please don’t cry,” he murmured.

Elena held his wrist before he could move away. “Caspian, I need to talk to you about something important.”

The weariness in his face deepened because he already knew where the conversation was going. “If this is about Indigo, you can’t change my mind. My decision has already been made.”

He turned as if to leave, but Elena’s next words stopped him.

“I saw what was on your bedside table.”

Caspian went still.

The silence that followed was colder than anything she had heard from him since entering the room. His jaw tightened, and for one brief moment, his control cracked enough for her to see the storm beneath it.

“I thought I told Anthony to keep it locked away,” he thought bitterly.

Elena stepped closer, her voice trembling. “Please, Caspian. Don’t use it on her. Whatever you believe her father did, Indigo is innocent.”

The word innocent struck him like an insult. He turned sharply, and the pain in his eyes burned hotter than anger. “Innocent?” he repeated, his voice low at first. “Was I not innocent when her father took everything from me? Was I not innocent when they dragged me away like an animal? I was ten years old, Grandma. Just ten.”

Elena moved back without meaning to, not because she feared the man before her, but because she feared the memories rising inside him. Caspian’s breath grew uneven as he continued, no longer speaking like the feared CEO but like the child who had never been saved. “They chained me. They beat me. They treated me like I was nothing. Where was innocence then? Where was mercy when I cried for my parents? Where was justice when they stole my home, my name, and my life?”

The room fell quiet after his outburst. Caspian closed his eyes and dragged a hand over his face, as if trying to pull himself back from the edge. “God,” he muttered, then walked out before Elena could stop him.

The moment he left, Elena’s strength failed. She sank to the floor, tears sliding freely down her face. By the time Anthony entered the study, she was still there, one hand pressed against her chest as though holding herself together.

“Grandma!” Anthony rushed to her and helped her up carefully. “What happened?”

Elena leaned into him, and he guided her to a chair. “Please, don’t cry,” he said softly.

She looked toward the door Caspian had walked through. “Do you think he will ever find happiness, Anthony? Do you think he will ever know peace again? Do you think he will ever let go of the past?”

Anthony wanted to answer quickly, to comfort her the way she needed, but the truth sat heavily between them. He had watched Caspian build an empire with hands that still carried the memory of chains. He had watched him command boardrooms during the day and return at night with shadows beneath his eyes. He knew some wounds did not close simply because time had passed.

Still, he wiped Elena’s tears and forced a gentle smile. “I believe he will be fine with time.”

Elena searched his face, and Anthony looked away for a second because even he did not fully believe what he had said. Caspian’s pain had lived too long inside him. It had become part of how he breathed, how he ruled, how he punished. A wound that refused to heal for fifteen years would not disappear because anyone wished it away.

Inside her new room, Indigo stepped out of the bathroom and dried her hands slowly. She caught her reflection in the mirror and stopped. The girl staring back at her looked familiar, yet painfully distant. Her face still carried traces of fear, but beneath it was something quieter now, something that had not been there before. She looked like someone who had been pushed to the ground too many times and was beginning to understand that standing up did not always mean fighting with fists.

She leaned against the sink and whispered, “Maybe this is my life now.”

The words tasted bitter.

“A slave,” she added under her breath, and for a moment, the weight of it tried to settle inside her.

Then Sable’s voice returned to her memory, not as a cry this time, but as a command. “Indigo, no matter what happens, I want you to be strong. I want you to be tough.”

Indigo opened her eyes and stared at herself again. “No,” she whispered, the word firmer than she expected. “I won’t let this place decide who I am.”

She did not know how she would escape. She did not know what Caspian planned to do with her or why everyone in the mansion spoke as if her father had committed a crime too terrible to name. But if crying had not opened the door, then she would have to learn. She would watch. She would listen. She would remember every face, every rule, every weakness in the house. If this mansion was going to be her prison, then she would study it like a map.

A knock sounded on the door, and before Indigo could answer, Gia walked in carrying a folded bundle of clothes. The familiar coldness returned to the maid’s eyes the moment she saw Indigo.

“Put this on,” Gia said, throwing the clothes onto the bed.

Indigo looked at the bundle and saw a maid’s uniform.

Gia folded her arms, clearly enjoying the moment. “Meet me in the kitchen. You have a lot of work to do today.”

Indigo lifted her gaze from the uniform to Gia’s face, saying nothing. She could see the satisfaction there, the need to make her feel smaller. Gia wanted a reaction, perhaps tears, perhaps begging, perhaps proof that she had power over her.

Indigo gave her none.

Gia’s eyes narrowed. “You’d better be fast if you don’t want me to punish you.”

She turned and walked out, leaving the door to close behind her.

Indigo stood still for a moment, staring at the uniform on the bed. Then she slowly reached for it, not because she accepted what they called her, but because she understood something her mother had taught her long ago.

Sometimes survival began with pretending to obey.