Chapter 195: And Maybe I’ve Tried Other Things

By late afternoon, the heavy black sedans navigate the winding perimeter roads of the city, carrying Louise through the dense traffic until they pull into the underground loading bay of an upscale hotel owned by Orion.

The transition from the blinding sun of the lake house to the artificial glare of the concrete parking garage is sudden and disorienting.

Armed guards flank her on either side as she is escorted past the service elevators and up to a private suite on the top floor, completely cut off from the rest of the building.

The journey feels longer than it should. Louise watches the changing scenery through the tinted windows, observing the familiar streets with the detachment of someone already separated from the world outside.

Cars crawl past one another, pedestrians hurry along the sidewalks, and shopkeepers continue their business as though nothing has happened.

Life goes on, indifferent to the fact that hers has just been dragged into a corner.

Nobody speaks to her during the ride. The guards have been trained not to engage unless necessary, and Louise has no intention of making conversation.

She keeps her gaze forward, her expression blank, refusing to give them anything they might mistake for fear.

The room has been thoroughly prepared before her arrival.

Security guards swept the entire perimeter earlier, removing breakable glass items, heavy decorative statues, and anything with sharp edges that could potentially be used as a weapon.

They searched her personal belongings at the door, turning out her coat pockets and checking the seams of her clothing with practiced, mechanical caution.

In their careful haste to secure the room against physical threats, they missed one vital detail.

They failed to find the small, thin pocketknife hidden deep within the inner lining of her coat. It’s a good thing she chose to wear the coat.

The metal stays tucked away against her ribs, a cold secret that belongs only to her, giving her a quiet anchor in the middle of the sterile, cream-colored space.

She knows better than to mistake that little piece of metal for freedom. It cannot open the locked door or get her past the armed men stationed outside.

It cannot undo what has happened or restore the choices that have been taken from her. Still, knowing it is there gives her something the people guarding her have failed to take away.

A secret.

And for now, that is enough.

Adrien specifically instructed Orion’s team to make the suite comfortable. He did not want the room to look or feel like a dungeon, a basement cell, or a torture chamber.

He ensured the window blinds were drawn to block the harsh light, the restraints were removed from her wrists, and basic food and water were left on the wooden table near the bed.

His choice does not come from a place of forgiveness or soft affection. He still feels the sting of betrayal burning under his skin like acid.

He simply refuses to push her into an irreversible act before he can get his answers. He wants her upright, thinking, and breathing when he walks back through that door to demand the truth.

There is a difference between wanting answers and wanting revenge, even if the distance between the two has grown painfully thin.

Adrien knows that much. Whatever Louise has done, he will not allow his anger to make the decision for him before he has heard her speak.

That does not mean he intends to make things easy for her.

Orion does not share Adrien’s concern to the same degree. He views the comfort precautions as an unnecessary risk, a sign of emotional hesitation that could easily backfire if Louise decides to lash out.

Yet Orion allows the arrangement to stand because Adrien has insisted on handling the conversation himself.

Orion remains outside the suite in the private hallway, content to let Adrien play his hand as long as the guards maintain their posts and no one crosses the threshold without his permission.

To Orion, a locked door is a simple solution to a complicated problem.

He has little patience for the delicate balance Adrien is trying to maintain, particularly when the woman behind that door has already demonstrated how easily she can harm him.

After all, she leaked all that information, didn’t she?

He waits in the corridor, his expression unreadable, while the guards keep their positions. Every few minutes, someone checks the hallway and reports that everything remains quiet.

Orion accepts each report without comment. Silence does not reassure him. Sometimes, it simply means the trouble has not decided to show its face yet.

Inside the room, Louise stands near the center of the plush carpet, listening to the soft, definitive click of the deadbolt engaging on the outside of the door.

The sound settles into the room long after it has faded from the corridor.

She looks slowly around the space. The soft cream walls, the velvet curtains draped over the windows, the quiet hum of the air conditioner overhead— it is a cage, regardless of how neatly they have arranged the furniture.

A cage is still a cage even when the bars are painted white and the floors are covered in expensive wool.

The bed is large enough for three people. The lamps cast a warm glow across the bedside tables, and a fresh towel has been folded neatly beside the bathroom door.

Someone has even placed a small vase of flowers on the dresser, although the guards have removed the glass vase before she entered and left the flowers behind in a plain container.

It is almost insulting, the effort they have made to disguise her confinement as hospitality.

Louise walks slowly over to the window, pulling the curtain back an inch to observe the street far below. She sees two dark sedans parked near the entrance, their engines idling quietly in the bright afternoon light.

She knows guards are posted in the hallway just beyond the wood-paneled door. She understands that Adrien arranged all of this to keep the situation from turning violent, trying to control the chaos without provoking her further.

She feels no urge to thank him. She feels no gratitude for the soft bed or the drawn blinds.

Whatever kindness Adrien thinks he has offered her, it does not change the circumstances. He may prefer questions to violence, but she has no reason to believe that the difference will matter once he decides he has waited long enough.

She lets the curtain fall back into place.

Instead, her thoughts drift back to Alice.

A familiar and bitter anger boils in her stomach as she thinks about her mother. All her life, Louise has been placed in situations where someone else decided how much air she was allowed to breathe, how much freedom she deserved, and where she was allowed to stand.

Alice trained her to be a weapon, a dutiful daughter who took the hits while Alice preserved her own clean, untouchable image in high society.

Louise remembers the lessons disguised as advice, the expectations presented as love, and the quiet disapproval that followed whenever she dared to want something for herself.

Alice rarely needed to raise her voice. She knew exactly how to make disappointment feel like a punishment and obedience feel like the only way to earn affection.

For years, Louise mistook that arrangement for family.

Perhaps the most humiliating part is that she cannot pretend she never understood what was happening.

There were moments when the truth stood directly in front of her, when she could have questioned Alice or walked away from the role prepared for her.

Instead, she stayed. She convinced herself that enduring another demand would eventually earn her something better.

It never did.

Now Louise sits locked in a polished room while Alice is somewhere out in the world, free, comfortable, and waiting for the storm to pass.

The thought makes her teeth grind together until her jaw aches. She hates that Alice escaped the wreckage while she is the one left holding the broken pieces.

She hates even more that some part of her had expected nothing different.

Louise reaches into her coat pocket, her fingers brushing against the cold, thin metal of the hidden pocketknife. The metal feels real against her skin. It is a tiny piece of power kept entirely to herself.

She draws her hand away without taking it out.

There is no point in making a decision simply because she has been cornered. She has spent too much of her life reacting to other people’s choices.

If she is going to do anything now, it will be because she has decided to do it, not because someone has left her with no other option.

She sits down slowly on the edge of the bed, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. The guards outside are waiting for a breakdown. Adrien is waiting for a confession, an explanation, or a plea for help.

She will give them nothing.

She refuses to give the people outside this room an emotional scene they can analyze and interpret. She will not explain her fury, she will not name her mother, and she will not offer Adrien the peace of mind he is looking for.

Let them wonder whether she is afraid. Let them mistake her silence for guilt, stubbornness, or the first signs of surrender. Their assumptions are theirs to make, and she has no obligation to correct them.

Beyond the door, footsteps pass and fade. Somewhere in the suite, the air conditioner clicks before returning to its steady hum. The water on the table remains untouched, and the untouched food begins to cool. ℯ

Louise sits alone in the quiet room, her face pale under the soft lamps, completely caught, yet stubbornly refusing to surrender her inner life to her captors.

For the first time in hours, she allows herself to close her eyes. Not to rest. Not to escape.

Only to remind herself that, for all the locks, guards, and threats surrounding her, there is still one thing nobody in this hotel can force out of her.

Her silence belongs to her.