Lina finally understood why the woman behind the glass—the once-beautiful, broken shell of a girl—had looked at Fredrich with such terror in her eyes.
Why she had whispered for help like every breath was a plea for freedom.
Because now Lina had seen it, lived it. Fredrich's love wasn't gentle.
It was consuming.
It was possessiveness dressed in elegance. A gilded cage disguised as romance. The kind of love that locked doors while claiming to open hearts.
And no ordinary girl could survive that kind of affection for long. Most would crumble under the constant monitoring, the soft-spoken commands that felt more like chains than comforts, the way Fredrich touched you like you were porcelain—fragile, delicate, breakable—but expected you to never, ever try to stand on your own.
But luckily, Lina wasn't just any girl.
