Chapter 215: I Have Built A House…

LOUISE’S POV

The door clicks shut, and the sharp sound of the deadbolt sliding into place echoes through the silence.

Adrien is gone.

His footsteps fade down the carpeted hallway outside, muffled and slow, taking with him the last faint trace of the past.

The room returns to its heavy, motionless state. The air conditioner continues its steady, mechanical hum overhead, blowing a thin, cold breeze across the room.

I stay sitting on the edge of the smooth white bed for a long moment. I listen until I can no longer hear Adrien walking away.

It is strange how quickly a room can feel empty.

A few minutes ago, he was standing here, looking at me with those tired eyes of his. He had so many things he could have said.

So many questions he could have asked. Yet, in the end, he left without giving me the satisfaction of knowing what he truly thought of me.

Perhaps that is for the best.

I have spent so much of my life trying to understand what people think of me. I have lied, manipulated, and hurt others because I could not bear the thought of being the person nobody wanted.

Now, I find that I no longer care enough to ask.

Outside my door, Orion’s guards walk their patrol. Their footsteps come and go at regular intervals, reminding me that I am still a prisoner, even if the room looks more like an expensive hotel suite than a cell.

They believe that the precautions they have taken are enough to keep me safe.

They removed the glassware from the nightstand, cleared away the heavy decorative pieces, and searched my belongings with mechanical focus. They checked my pockets and examined the things I carried, convinced that nothing dangerous could have escaped their attention.

They were thorough. Almost.

The small pocketknife hidden in the folds of my coat remains undiscovered.

I know exactly why I kept it. I have known since the moment they returned my belongings and told me that I would be staying here until Orion decided what to do with me.

It is a strange thing, knowing that everyone around you is busy deciding what should happen to your life while you are already thinking about its end.

I lower my eyes to my hands.

They look ordinary.

There is nothing special about them. They are the same hands that once held my mother’s jewelry while she prepared for a party.

The same hands that signed documents without asking enough questions. The same hands that helped me carry out plans I knew would hurt Adrien.

The same hands that I have used to humiliate and harm more people than I can count.

I used them to do things I cannot take back. No amount of regret would change that. And I do not regret everything.

That is the ugliest part of it, perhaps. Even now, with nothing left to gain, I cannot pretend that I am suddenly a better person. I cannot look back at my life and turn myself into an innocent girl who was merely misunderstood.

I made choices.

Some were made because I was afraid of my mother. Others were made because I wanted her approval. And some were made because I wanted something badly enough to stop caring who suffered along the way.

I was not always forced. Sometimes, I wanted to win.

Sometimes, I enjoyed the thought of being the person who could make others bend.

I cannot blame Alice for every ugly thing I have done. She taught me how to survive in her world, but I learned how to hurt people on my own.

A faint sound comes from the hallway.

Someone stops outside my door.

I lift my head.

For a moment, I think Adrien has returned. The thought is so unexpected that I almost laugh at myself.

But the footsteps move again. The guard continues his patrol. And I am alone.

I stand and walk toward the bathroom, leaving the bed untouched behind me. My reflection follows me in the mirror, pale beneath the soft hotel lighting.

I stop in front of it.

For a long moment, I simply look.

My hair is slightly untidy. My face is tired. There are faint shadows beneath my eyes, and my lips have lost the color they had earlier.

I look like someone who has not slept properly in days. I look like someone waiting for a decision. And maybe that is what I have been doing all my life.

Waiting for Alice to decide whether I have pleased her. Waiting for Orion to decide whether I am worth keeping around. Waiting for someone to tell me what I should be, what I should want, and how much of myself I am allowed to keep.

I have spent so long living according to other people’s expectations that I no longer know what my own life would look like without them.

The thought should frighten me. Instead, it leaves me tired.

I turn away from the mirror.

I do not write a note. I do not leave a confession on the bed or attempt to make my final moments into a message that will force everyone to understand me.

I have no desire to arrange my death into something meaningful for other people.

Let them wonder.

Let Adrien search for answers and become angry when he discovers that there are questions he cannot force me to answer. Let my mother look at the mess left behind and decide which parts she can still control.

For once, I do not want to give either of them anything. I only want the noise to stop.

My gaze settles on my coat.

For a few seconds, I remain where I am, listening to the steady hum of the air conditioner and the faint movement beyond the door.

Then I reach for it.

The decision has been waiting inside me for longer than I care to admit. It does not arrive with a dramatic burst of courage or a sudden revelation. There is no beautiful moment when everything becomes clear.

There is only the quiet understanding that I have reached a place where I cannot imagine another way forward.

I move toward the bathtub.

The bathroom is cold, and the white surfaces reflect the light without warmth. Everything looks clean and expensive, untouched by the trouble that has followed me from one place to another.

I sit down and let the silence settle around me. For a while, I think of nothing. Then I think of Adrien.

Of course I do.

He always finds a way to return to my thoughts, even when I have spent years trying to push him out of them.

I remember him as a boy, sitting on an overturned wooden crate in the dusty glasshouse. His clothes were never as neat as mine, and he had a habit of talking to himself when he thought nobody was listening.

He used to give a sympathetic glance to dead birds, pets Alice discarded, muttering about how unfair it was that something could be expected to grow when nobody gave it what it needed.

I remember laughing at him once. He looked up at me in barely concealed irritation. Then he went back to staring at them sympathetically.

I did not understand him then. And I still do not.

Adrien has always possessed a stubborn kind of hope. It is not the loud sort that makes people give speeches about how everything will be fine. He does not believe that the world owes him happiness.

He only wants a little peace.

A quiet house somewhere away from people who know his name. A place where he can hear the rain against the roof and wake up without wondering what fresh disaster is waiting for him.

He told me about it once, speaking as though it were an embarrassing secret.

He wanted an ordinary life. Ordinary happiness. A life where nothing terrible happened often enough to become normal.

I remember thinking that his dream was too small.

Now, I think it was the most sensible dream anyone has ever shared with me.

And yet, he never got it.