The glass shattered into a thousand glittering shards against the far wall. Her chest heaved violently, her eyes wide and bloodshot. "The tiny closet. The darkness. The suffocating silence. "Her lips moved frantically, desperate to scream "No, no, no!" but the world remained dead quiet around her, the terror written entirely in her manic gaze.
Driven by pure survival instincts, she grabbed a heavy wooden chair and threw it. It slammed into the locked door with a deafening crash, splintering the frame. She lunged for the vanity, sweeping a porcelain vase off the surface. It shattered violently against the floor, raining sharp debris across the carpet.
Her hands trembled uncontrollably as she continued to dismantle everything within reach. Pillows were ripped apart, books were torn from shelves, and glass ornaments were smashed into dust. Her breathing became ragged, uneven, and laced with panic. Tears finally blurred her vision, but she couldn't stop.
Within minutes, the magnificent room was transformed into a chaotic battlefield. Overturned furniture lay scattered like broken bones, and a sea of jagged glass covered the floor. Elena stood in the dead center of the wreckage, shivering violently, trapped in a waking nightmare.
Suddenly, the lock clicked. The door burst open.
Several maids rushed into the room, their voices raised in alarm. "Madam!"
They froze in absolute shock. The pristine sanctuary was gone. In its place stood a wasteland of broken glass, and Elena—barefoot, her wedding gown tattered—standing in the epicenter of the destruction. Her breathing was frantic, her eyes wild and unrecognizable.
"Madam, please calm down!" one of the head maids cried, terror evident in her voice.
Another maid took a cautious, trembling step forward. "Madam, please..."
But Elena couldn't hear them. Their voices were just the distant, echoing taunts of her old caretakers. She snatched a heavy silver clock from the mantelpiece and hurled it directly at them. The maids panicked, dodging as it smashed into the hallway.
"Stop her! Restrain her!"
Two of the strongest maids rushed forward, lunging through the debris to grab Elena's arms. But the physical contact sent an electric shock of terror through her veins. Elena struggled violently, her movements desperate, uncontrolled, and frantic. Her mind wasn't in the mansion anymore; she was a little girl fighting back against the hands dragging her into the punishment room.
In the chaotic thrashing, Elena shifted her weight. Her bare foot came down hard on a massive, jagged shard of the broken porcelain vase. The sharp edge sliced deeply into her flesh, instantly splitting the skin. Bright, crimson blood spread across the floor, soaking into the ruined carpet.
But Elena didn't even flinch. The psychological horror had completely numbed her to the physical pain. She continued to fight wildly, her arms thrashing against her captors, her hands catching on the broken glass littered around them. Blood smeared across the walls and the floor, painting the room in a horrific, gruesome display.
The maids were thoroughly horrified, struggling to hold onto her slick, blood-stained skin. "Call Mr. Luca! Quickly! Tell him she's losing her mind!"
But before anyone could move toward the phone, Elena's adrenaline completely depleted. The air left her lungs all at once. Her body went entirely limp, her eyes rolling back into her head as consciousness abandoned her. She collapsed heavily onto the glass-strewn floor.
The room fell into a deathly, suffocating silence. A pool of dark blood slowly expanded across the marble beneath her pale, still form.
The maids stared in absolute horror. "Oh my God... oh my God..." One of them scrambled over the debris, frantically grabbing the bedside phone. "Call Mr. Luca immediately! Tell him to hurry!"
Across the city, in the high-stakes environment of a glass-walled boardroom, Luca sat at the head of a massive conference table. Several top-tier executives sat in rigid silence around him as he coldly reviewed a stack of multi-million dollar acquisition documents. His sharp profile was unreadable, a dominant, dangerous aura commanding the entire room.
Suddenly, the sharp vibration of his phone cut through the silence. Luca frowned slightly, his dark eyes narrowing when he saw the caller ID. His house staff knew better than to ever disturb him during a corporate meeting unless the estate was burning down.
He answered, his voice a low, commanding snap. "What is it?"
The head maid's voice on the other end was hysterical, breathless with panic. "Sir... Madam collapsed. She... she woke up and started destroying the room, sir. There's... there's blood everywhere. She's unconscious!"
Luca froze, his pen halting mid-air. The dangerous, manipulative composure he always maintained slipped for a fraction of a second. "What?"
"She smashed everything, sir! She's bleeding terribly—"
Luca stood up instantly, his massive frame casting a terrifying shadow over the boardroom. The executives around the table collectively held their breath, terrified by the sudden, lethal coldness radiating from their CEO.
"Call the family doctor," Luca said, his voice dropping to a deadly, quiet register that promised violence if anything went wrong. "I'm on my way."
He hung up without another word, turning his back on the meeting and walking out of the boardroom with long, predatory strides. Within minutes, his black luxury car was tearing through the city streets, weaving dangerously through traffic as he sped back toward the villa.
When Luca arrived at the estate, the entire house was in an uproar. Security guards and frantic servants stood nervously in the corridor outside the master bedroom, whispering in hushed, terrified tones. The moment his tall figure appeared at the top of the stairs, they bowed quickly, trembling.
"Sir..."
Luca didn't even look at them. He pushed past the crowd and stepped over the threshold into the room.
Then, he stopped dead in his tracks.
The master bedroom was completely unrecognizable. Beautiful mahogany furniture lay splintered and overturned; priceless artwork had been ripped from the walls; and a sea of shattered glass and porcelain covered every inch of the floor. But it was the dark, brilliant streaks of crimson smeared across the walls and the pooling blood in the center of the room—where Elena lay pale and unconscious—that caused Luca's expression to darken into something deeply menacing.
"What happened?" he demanded, his voice a low, terrifying growl that rattled the remaining glass in the windows.
The maids trembled violently, one of them stepping forward with her head bowed so low she was nearly double. "She... she woke up and tried to leave the room, sir," she explained frantically. "When she realized the door was locked from the outside... she completely panicked. She didn't even scream, sir. She just started destroying everything like a wild animal. She wouldn't stop, even when she was bleeding..."
Luca's brows pulled together into a deep, calculating frown. "That doesn't make sense."
He walked slowly through the wreckage, his leather shoes crushing the glass beneath him as he approached the bed. He looked down at Elena's fragile, broken form. Her delicate hands were covered in small, jagged cuts, and a deep gash stained her bare feet in a horrifying mask of red.
His expression grew darker, a chilling wave of suspicion washing over his features.
"My wife has never behaved like this before," he murmured, his voice low, cold, and dripping with an unsettling realization.
Sarah was manipulative, cunning, and fiercely vocal. She threw tantrums, yes, but she valued her own comfort and beauty above all else. She would never deliberately mutilate her own flesh, nor would she fight in such a frantic, unhinged, and silent panic.
The family doctor arrived shortly after, rushing into the room with his medical kit and immediately kneeling beside Elena to treat the deep lacerations. Luca stood a few paces back, his arms crossed over his chest, watching the procedure in absolute silence.
His mind was racing, analyzing every anomaly since he had found her at the bottom of the cliff.
This behavior wasn't like Sarah at all. Not even close. The raw, primal terror, the absolute silence during a violent breakdown, the complete lack of regard for her own survival... it was completely unfamiliar.
Luca looked down at the pale face of the girl bleeding on the floor, his sharp eyes narrowing to dangerous slits as his brows tightened.