Haven's POV
The remains of our dinner sat between us like the pleasant aftermath of a storm. The air was still thick with the comforting scents of garlic, seared Wagyu, and the underlying, ever-present sweetness of Vanilla Strawberry. Althea's proclamation about "fun trying" and "souvenir babies" hung in the air, a goofy, beautiful, and terrifyingly sincere promise of a future I was desperate to believe in.
Her words had lit a fuse inside me. The casual intimacy of it, the sheer, uncomplicated want. It was a stark contrast to the cold, transactional duty of our past. The monster in the vault, still sated from the warehouse, purred in approval. The architect saw the final, perfect blueprint falling into place. And the part of me that was just Haven, trembled with a hope so fragile it felt like it could shatter from a single, wrong breath.
The silence stretched, comfortable but charged. I watched her, tracing the happy curve of her lips with my eyes, memorizing this moment of perfect, unguarded peace.
"I'm considering your suggestion," I said, my voice softer than I intended, cutting through the quiet.
She looked up from where she'd been doodling on her napkin with her fork. "Hmm? Which one? The one about Bexley needing a tiny scarf? Because I stand by that."
A genuine smile touched my lips. "No. The procreation one."
Her eyes widened, the fork clattering onto her plate. "Omg. Haven. You suggested it first!" She leaned forward, her entire face alight with a triumphant, disbelieving joy. "On our recent ones, it's always been me! Yay! You're stepping up!"
The phantom of the old Althea materialized behind her, a cynical smirk twisting her features. "She's so easily manipulated. A few sweet words and she's putty. You haven't changed, Haven. You're just using a different kind of leash."
I shoved the thought away, focusing on the radiant woman in front of me. "It was a… compelling argument. The 'souvenir' part was particularly persuasive."
She giggled, a sound that felt like sunlight. But then, her expression shifted. The effervescent joy receded, replaced by a thoughtful, almost hesitant seriousness. She fidgeted with her napkin, her gaze dropping to the table.
"And by the way, Haven… uhm, I noticed something."
My blood ran cold. The monster in the vault went still, listening. Noticed what? The sedatives? The surveillance? A flicker of a memory she shouldn't have?
"There's… lapses," she continued, her voice quieter now. "When it comes to stuff. And I have like… a gut feeling about things. And it's humming in me that it doesn't seem so right? You know?"
Every muscle in my body locked. This was it. The cracks were not just fine lines anymore; she was pressing on them.
"Like sometimes," she went on, her brow furrowed as she searched for the words, "I feel like I'm being… caged. Or something is like… whispering? A presence. But it's not scary, just… there. I always shove those feelings off, though. I always want to hear your side first."
She looked up at me then, her amber eyes wide and impossibly trusting. "I know I don't have memories, and I should try to remember stuff. But you know, seeing those articles about me before, and the songs I published… it's just not it. It's not that I don't wanna remember, or like, go back to that, but you know, seeing those makes me think that old me didn't have a good life. Maybe the reason I had amnesia is because, you know, my brain is trying to protect me from something not just because of the accident."
Her intuition was a blade, sharp and terrifyingly accurate. She was diagnosing her own condition with a wisdom that bypassed her amnesia. Protecting her from something. From the grief. From the rage. From me.
"And maybe it's because of that," she whispered, her voice so fragile it threatened to break, "I know I don't fully grasp what manipulation is like. And if… if you're manipulating me, Haven… please do tell me."
The air left my lungs. The world narrowed to her face, to the devastating trust in her eyes. She was handing me a weapon and asking me to use it on her.
"I will try to understand," she promised, her words a vow. "With the best of my capabilities. I saw a blog earlier; they say for a successful marriage, communication is the key. But for me, it's also comprehension. I want to understand you, Haven. As I wanna know you more. So, please, tell me. If there's something bothering you. If there's something… you're hiding."
The silence that followed was the most profound of my life. It was a chasm, and I was standing on the edge. On one side was the beautiful, perfect lie I had built. On the other was the brutal, soul-destroying truth. The ghost of the old Althea stood behind her, arms crossed, her expression a mix of mockery and a strange, grim satisfaction. "Go on, Haven. Tell her. Tell her how you drug her. How you watch her. How you made a man and women suffer for her today. Tell her how you've stolen her past and are curating her future. See how well she 'comprehends' that."
My mouth was dry. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird trying to escape its cage. I wanted to tell her. God, the temptation was a physical ache. To confess everything. To lay my sins at her feet and beg for the absolution only she could give. To be known, truly and completely, by this woman who held my soul in her hands.
But the fear was a colder, stronger force.
If I told her, what would happen? The shock could shatter her fragile mind. It could trigger a regression, bring the Tyrant screaming back to the surface. She would look at me not with this tender trust, but with the same loathing she'd had before. She would see the monster, and she would run. Or worse, she would break entirely.
The lie was a cage, but it was a gilded one, filled with light and music and her laughter. The truth was a barren wasteland where nothing could grow.
I reached across the table, my hand covering hers. Her skin was warm, real, the most solid thing in my spinning world.
"Althea," I began, my voice hoarse, each word a struggle. "The… lapses. The feelings. I can't explain them. Your brain… it's healing. It's a mysterious process. Sometimes it throws up shadows, echoes."
It was a half-truth, a deflection. A coward's answer.
"And the cage…" I swallowed, my thumb stroking the back of her hand. "I would never cage you. But my love for you… it's… all-consuming. It's possessive. Perhaps you feel the weight of that. The intensity of it. I know it's not always… healthy." That, at least, was the most honest thing I'd said.
Her eyes searched mine, and I felt laid bare, my soul x-rayed by her innocent, perceptive gaze.
"As for manipulation…" I took a shuddering breath. "I am trying to give you the best life possible. A safe life. A happy one. I am… curating your environment. Is that manipulation? Perhaps. But it comes from a place of… of a love so deep it terrifies me."
Tears welled in her eyes, but they weren't tears of anger or fear. They were tears of empathy. "It terrifies you?"
"Losing you terrifies me," I whispered, the confession ripped from a place so deep and dark I rarely acknowledged it. "The thought of you being in pain, of you remembering that pain… it's my greatest fear. So yes, I want to protect you. From everything. Even from your own past, if that's what it takes."
She was silent for a long moment, just looking at me, her hand turning under mine to lace our fingers together.
"I don't want you to be terrified, Haven," she said finally, her voice steady and sure. "And I don't feel like a prisoner. Not really. I feel… cherished. Maybe a little smothered sometimes," she added with a small, watery smile. "But in a good way. Like I'm a precious, fragile thing you're afraid of dropping."
She squeezed my hand. "I can't promise I won't try to remember. I think… I think I have to. For me. To be whole. But I can promise you this: whatever I find, whatever I remember… I will try. I will try again and again to understand. And I will always, always come back to you. To this. To us."
It was a promise I didn't deserve. A grace that felt like a physical blow.
"The old me… she must have been in so much pain," Althea murmured, her gaze turning inward. "The songs… they're so angry. So sad. I don't want to be that person again, Haven. But I don't want to be a blank slate forever, either. I want to be someone new. Someone who remembers the pain but isn't defined by it. Someone who chooses this. Who chooses you. Every day."
The ghost of the old Althea behind her seemed to flicker, her cynical smirk softening into something sadder, more complex. She didn't vanish, but she grew quieter, as if listening.
"So, no more fear, okay?" Althea said, her voice firming with resolve. "We communicate. We talk about the hard stuff. Even if it's scary. Even if my brain is humming. We face it together. That's the deal."
I could only nod, my throat too tight for words. The lie was still there, a cancer at the center of our beautiful life. But she had handed me a scalpel and asked me to help her operate. She was offering me a chance, not to confess, but to change. To slowly, carefully, dismantle the cage myself and hope that when she saw the bars were gone, she would still choose to stay.
"Together," I finally managed to rasp out.
She stood then, coming around the table. She didn't kiss me. Instead, she simply wrapped her arms around my shoulders from behind, much like she had in the kitchen, and rested her cheek against my head.
"I love you, Haven Hartwell," she whispered into my hair. "The you that is scared. The you that is possessive. All of you. And I'm not going anywhere."
In that moment, surrounded by the ruins of our dinner, with the ghosts of our past and the terrifying promise of our future hanging in the air, I made a silent vow of my own.
I would become the woman she believed me to be. I would earn this trust. I would dismantle the cage, brick by bloody brick. I would destroy the Sinclairs not just for what they did to her, but for what they had made me become. And I would create a world so safe, so full of light and love, that when the truth finally came out—as it inevitably must—it would not break her. It would not break us.
The monster and the architect would have to learn to coexist with the woman. The woman who was loved by Althea Vale.
It was the hardest, most terrifying mission I had ever undertaken.
And for her, I would succeed.
But the weight of it all—the love, the fear, the monstrous lies, her impossible grace—suddenly became too much. A dam broke inside me. A hot, silent pressure built behind my eyes, and before I could stop it, a single, traitorous tear escaped, tracing a path down my cheek. I tried to turn my head, to hide it, but I was frozen.
Althea felt the subtle tremor in my shoulders. She moved, coming around to kneel in front of my chair. Her eyes, soft and luminous, found the tear track immediately. Her own expression crumpled with concern.
"Oh, Haven," she breathed, her voice a tender ache.
She didn't ask why. She didn't demand an explanation. She simply reached up, her thumbs gently brushing the moisture from my cheeks. Then, she leaned forward and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to my forehead. "Shhh," she murmured against my skin. "It's okay."
She kissed my temple, then the corner of my eye, tasting the salt of my shame. "Please trust me, Haven," she whispered between each feather-light press of her lips. She kissed my cheekbone, my jaw, a trail of absolution mapping the contours of my despair. Finally, her lips found mine, not in passion, but in a profound, sealing promise. It was a kiss that held the entirety of her vow: I am here. I am not afraid of your darkness.
The tenderness undid me completely. A quiet sob broke from my chest, and I bowed my head, the tears falling freely now. I, Haven Hartwell, who had faced down boardrooms and broken men without flinching, was weeping in my kitchen, shattered by kindness.
"Come here," Althea said, her voice firm but gentle. She took my hands and pulled me up from the chair. She led me, a stumbling, broken thing, to the large, plush sofa in the living room. Sushi, sensing the shift in mood, whined softly and laid his head on my foot. Althea guided me down, then curled herself around me, tucking my head under her chin, wrapping me in her arms and the sweet, safe scent of Vanilla Strawberry. She held me as I cried—quiet, shuddering tears of guilt, fear, and a desperate, overwhelming love.
Slowly, the storm passed, leaving me spent and hollow, yet somehow… lighter. Cradled in her arms, with Sushi a warm weight on my legs, the world's sharp edges felt blunted.
It was then, in the safe, quiet darkness of the room, that Althea spoke again, her voice a soft rumble against my ear.
"You know, Haven," she began, her tone shifting to something almost… conspiratorial. "The reason I called you earlier? To make sure you were working? That you were distracted?"
I stiffened slightly. "Hmm?"
"Yeah," she said, a hint of goofy pride in her voice. "That was a scheme. A whole operation. Codenamed: 'Distract the CEO.' Cute attempt, tho, right? I was surprised it worked!"
A wet, choked sound escaped me half a sob, half a laugh. My scheming Althea. The thought sent a thrill through the wreckage of my emotions. Even her amnesiac self was cunning.
"So," she continued, her fingers stroking slow circles on my back. "I could ask Mrs. Li about stuff. Only the sedative parts, though! Please don't blame her. I owe her one, and you owe her one too! I literally forced her. I said, 'Mrs. Li, be honest. What is the sedative thing earlier when the doctor said? I'm planning to have a baby with your master soon, and that wouldn't be great, is it? You guys feeding me sedatives or something? Or what else do you guys put in my food?'"
She paused, and I could hear the ghost of a smile in her voice. "And Mrs. Li… she confessed. Well, kinda. She looked like she'd rather face a firing squad, but she said the doctor's numbers were wrong, that it was just a mild relaxant in your special tea to help with my 'nighttime restlessness' and 'prevent stressful episodes.' She said you were just worried about my sleepwalking and I was like I sleep walk?"
I lay perfectly still, listening to her dismantle my secrets with such calm, logical clarity. She wasn't angry. She was… solving a puzzle.
"And what you did the other night after the carnival, Haven," she went on, her voice dropping to a whisper. "When I saw you atop of me, trying to put something on my neck… it confirmed my early suspicion. My neck has been feeling weirdly sore some mornings not with the marks lol. And the tea you brew me every morning… and then I was surprised when I realized I needed to drink the same thing in the afternoon, too. 'For consistency,' you said."
She let out a soft sigh, her breath stirring my hair. "I notice everything, Haven. Every change in this… cage, as you call it. But for me, you aren't caging me. You're just protecting me. I mean, I'm fragile, after all. I have amnesia, for god's sake. I had a horrible accident from who-knows-what."
Her understanding was a blade that cut deeper than any accusation. She was justifying my crimes for me.
"And when I read my old lyrics," she murmured, her voice growing dreamy, "from the music I made when we were kids… it really does say that I liked you. Loved you. Very, very much. I treasured you. The past me was just… traumatized after my Family died. Which, I guess I don't mourn now because of the amnesia. But you know, if you think about it, what's done is done. My family is gone, and they're somewhere now. The past me should have accepted it, not chased ghosts. But I can't blame her, either. Maybe her grief—my grief—was beyond saving. And of course, I just blamed everything. Because, of course, I was a tyrant."
She said it so simply. As if it were a historical fact about a stranger. She was reconciling the past and the present with a wisdom that left me breathless.
For a long time, I couldn't speak. I just lay there, held in her arms, absorbing her words, her shocking, generous clarity.
"You… aren't angry?" I finally whispered, the words raw.
"I was… confused. Then suspicious. Then… sad for you," she said softly. "Because you must have been so scared. To feel like you had to do those things. To carry that alone." She pressed another kiss to my hair. "The sedatives… we'll stop them. We'll find another way. Together. And the tea… just make it normal tea, okay? If I sleepwalk, we'll deal with it. If I have an episode, you'll be there. Like you always are."
It was a pardon. A rewriting of the rules of our warped world. She was taking the scalpel from my hand and setting it aside, choosing to heal the wound with time and trust instead.
I turned in her arms, finally meeting her eyes in the dim light. Her gaze was clear, unwavering, full of a love that felt like a miracle.
"I'm so sorry, Althea," I breathed, the confession leaving me in a rush. "For all of it. The lies. The control. The fear. I am… I am so deeply, terribly sorry."
She smiled, a small, beautiful curve of her lips. "I know," she said. "And I forgive you. Now, trust me. Trust us. No more cages. Just you and me, figuring it out. Messy and loud and maybe a little goofy. Okay?"
I could only nod, fresh tears—cleaner ones this time—welling up. "Okay."
She pulled me close again, and I buried my face in the hollow of her neck, breathing her in. The ghost of the old Althea was gone, finally silenced, not by my lies, but by the breathtaking, fearless love of the woman she had become.
The cage wasn't just being dismantled. It was being transformed, from a prison of my making into a sanctuary of our mutual choosing. And for the first time, I dared to believe that I might deserve a place within it.