Chapter 83

Morning arrived with an unfamiliar quiet.
Evelyn had not appeared at her usual hour.

Dr. Niran Williams stood over the sink, plunging her hands into the cold water for a quick, bracing wash. Her reflection in the mirror was exhausted, etched with sleeplessness, but also astonished and fiercely satisfied. For two solid weeks, Evelyn had been an irreproachable slave. Now, as the third week approached its end, the rebel was finally showing a crack.

She recalled the rule: for every lapse, points had to be deducted.

A small, proud twitch ran through her right arm. It wasn’t perfect, but it could now perform necessary actions like signing files, washing herself, choosing her clothes, and, most importantly, opening a door. And this morning’s primary exercise was going to be opening a door, not any door, but specifically the rebels’ one. It was a task she would perform with ruthless pleasure.

Still in her silk pajamas, she strode quickly, almost eagerly, toward Evelyn’s dungeon.

“Well, Madam,” she announced, throwing the door open with an aggressive, controlled snap of her wrist. “Are you sleeping?”

No answer.

Evelyn was nowhere.

Instead, a strained, wet retching noise drew her gaze toward the small adjacent bathroom. Williams approached and found her.

“Hazel,” she whispered to herself.

Evelyn was crouched beside the toilet, shaking, one hand clinging to the porcelain, the other wrapped around her stomach. Her dark hair hung messily over her face.
She was vomiting with painful and shuddering intensity.

Williams stood silently in the doorway. Evelyn didn’t notice her presence. The rebel looked utterly fragile, defeated, and undone by a force she couldn’t control. It was the crushing reality of the pregnancy symptoms, and Williams felt that familiar, hot knot of conflicted emotion, a feeling she desperately wanted to label and excise but couldn’t.

“Dr. Williams!” Evelyn spun around, wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist, her eyes wide with shock and guilt. “I’m sorry, I’m late.” She scrambled to her feet, swaying slightly.

Williams turned away instantly, unable to hold the image of Evelyn’s physical distress. “A deal is a deal. You lose points.” The sentence was clipped and formal, a flimsy shield against the sympathy that had almost surfaced.

Evelyn flushed the toilet and splashed water on her face before stepping out, damp and unsteady. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again, breathless.

Williams finally looked at her, dissecting her with cold precision. “How long have you been throwing up?”

“For a few days, but it’s been more aggressive recently.”

“Do you have other symptoms?”

“Huh?”

“Other symptoms.”

“No idea. I just feel tired and have some back pain.”

Williams’s gaze lowered traitorously to the curve of Evelyn’s stomach. She thought of that tiny, rapidly expanding life taking shape inside the rebel’s belly, something she did not, under any circumstances, want.

“When I am done with this deal, I will go for a consultation,” Evelyn offered, adjusting the loose fabric of her dress.

Two weeks left.
Two weeks before she was meant to kill her.

Williams felt a strange sting behind her ribs. As a sharp strategist, she should have welcomed this thought with savage joy. Instead, it left her with a hollow heart.

Perhaps I should give her a product to spare her life so she can remain my slave longer before I get rid of her. The poisonous thought slithered into her mind. She shook her head sharply, trying to dislodge the idea. This line of reasoning was becoming increasingly absurd, increasingly dominant.

“I’m so hot,” Evelyn murmured, rubbing her arms. “I’d like to remove my clothes.”

Williams snapped her head up. “You just dressed. Is that a symptom?”

“What?” Evelyn blinked, confused. “I am talking about having your breakfast done. Would you…”

“No, it’s fine,” Williams interjected, her tone suddenly aggressive and irritated. “I’ll do it myself.”

Evelyn flinched. “Is it because I was late? I really… I’m sorry.”

“No,” Williams replied, the lie tight in her throat. “I don’t want you vomiting near my meal. Make yours afterward.”

Williams went downstairs to the kitchen and opened the immaculate, well-stocked fridge. She refused to relive those nightmarish moments of reliance with Evelyn. So, yes, she would cook for herself with her own hands, proving her independence.

She began chopping vegetables with sharp, efficient cuts. The scents rose quickly: onion, pepper, herbs. Despite her concentration on the small, precise act of slicing, her brain was meticulously dissecting those incessant, intrusive flashes of Evelyn that she was pushing back with her last ounce of fading energy.

Unfortunately, Evelyn was back, her steps silent on the marble floor. “Please, let me help you.”

“I asked you to stay away from my meal. Go back upstairs and leave me alone.”

Evelyn smiled. “Look how you’re mixing everything up, Doctor. You seriously won’t manage it.”

“I told you to go back upstairs.” Williams’s voice was a low snarl.

“Hmmm. Will you ever stop your intimidations and ask for help nicely?” Evelyn moved closer, invading the sanctuary of the counter. “You may be good at medicine, but that’s where your competency ends.”

Williams stared at her, then slowly shook her head as a terrible recognition dawned in her eyes. “You’re just a delusion again, aren’t you?”

“What?”

Williams burst out laughing, a brittle, manic sound. “I’m still dreaming. You’re only in my head.” She refocused on her recipe, and suddenly clutched the knife too tightly.

“Dr. Williams, are you losing your mind?” Evelyn took a slow step back.

“Don’t talk to me.” Williams began to sing, a high, off-key melody. “It’s just an illusion. I see you everywhere, in my bed, on my pillow, in my bathtub, on my toothbrush.” She slammed the knife down, her expression shifting into one of cold, terrifying command. “You’re like a disgusting cockroach trying to obsess my thoughts with rebellion. But you see, even in illusion,” she moved closer, invading Evelyn’s space, “I remain Dr. Niran Williams, and I decide what happens next. Do you understand?”

Evelyn took another step back, her eyes wide. “What are you saying? You are making me scared.”

“Oh, you’re scared.” Williams continued to advance, closing the gap. “Why don’t you continue with your seduction games? Get undressed.” She violently grabbed Evelyn’s collar, but Evelyn managed to push her hand away, a sudden surge of adrenaline making her steady.

“Let go of me!”

But Williams lunged again and caught her by the hips, turning her sharply until her back hit the counter. Breath against breath. Heat against heat.

“Show me your curves like you usually do, your wild lingerie, your smoldering look. Where has that mocking smile gone, the one you love expressing to make me desire you? What? You thought you could sneak into my head and play the lottery?” Williams’s laughter was a choked cough now. “Now I’m starting to like this dream when it happens like this, the way I like it.”

“Williams, pull yourself together.” Evelyn struggled toward the exit, but Williams violently seized her again, twisting her back more toward the counter.

“Niran!”

“You see, the dream will only stop when I decide it does. So…” Williams snatched the knife off the cutting board and placed the cold steel against Evelyn’s neck, then lightly stroked it down toward her cleavage. “Do you think I don’t know how to play rough? Tell me, where do we start? with your weak points or…”

She tried to hoist Evelyn up onto the counter, but the desperate use of force sent a blinding, violent agony through her recovering shoulder. Williams writhed and collapsed onto the nearest stool, clutching her arm and groaning in terrible pain.

Had her dreams evolved to the point where she was now feeling physical pain?

“Ahhh!”

She looked up in Evelyn’s direction. Evelyn was frozen, a tomato held loosely in one hand, the top buttons of her dress undone from the earlier struggle. Her expression was one of pure, unadulterated terror as she stared at Williams without reacting.

She hadn’t disappeared. This time, she wasn’t dreaming. And Evelyn wasn’t in erotic wear, just a simple dress. There was nothing seductive in that look. She had genuinely come down to help her.

The realization hit Williams like a blow as she held her head, fighting the rising nausea of awareness. She looked around the bright, ordinary kitchen before dropping the knife, scrambling off the stool, and fleeing to her room, leaving Evelyn stunned by the wreckage of the scene.

In her room, she locked and bolted the heavy door. For the first time in what felt like years, she cried bitterly, her face buried in her hands.

“What have I done?” She replayed the whole scene, the accusations, the desire, the violence, the knife, and what she had said to Evelyn about her body and seduction.

I am not only a pervert, but I am also insane, she thought.

She hit her head against the wall again and again, each thud a desperate attempt to wake herself. But she didn’t wake. She only broke.

“What is happening to me?” she whispered hoarsely.

With trembling hand, she reached for the nightstand drawer and saw her old medications, the ones Adeline used to have her consume, which she had stopped taking since Adeline was fired.

Did they have something special in them? she thought.

Sitting in that dark corner, her mind clawed through memories of her first appointment with Adeline.

Flashback:

She wasn’t happy about it, but she showed up anyway, dragged there by her mother’s insistence. At that time, she was still a fiercely ambitious, exhausted future medical student. Adeline was warm and welcoming, and from the first day, their exchanges took place in a private residence. Miss Kai had done everything to protect her daughter’s fragile mental state.

“You are welcome, have a seat. By the way, my name is Adeline,” gesturing toward a chair opposite her.

“Niran Williams, but soon it will be Doctor Niran Williams.” Her voice was already edged with professional impatience.

“Great. You’re studying medicine. Well, I am a…”

“A psychiatrist, I know. My mother insisted I come so as not to succumb to burnout.”

“Well, she is worried. But if I may ask, how many hours do you sleep a day?”

“Whenever I have free time.”

Adeline smiled gently. “You don’t sleep enough then, Niran. Well, first of all…”

END

This was how Williams had gradually begun to recount the crushing weight of her medical life. Adeline gave her prescriptions progressively, against fatigue, headaches, and insomnia. There were tablets she took without knowing why, and she cared less.

And now, locked in her own prison, she wondered if it wasn’t wise to take that tablet again, perhaps the one for anxiety or maybe the one for acute fatigue.

Perhaps that was the cause of her current problem, or maybe it was the new medications she had taken to heal her arm. Or worse, maybe Evelyn was drugging her.

She was confused and sickeningly aware of her state. Abruptly, she swallowed a tablet before closing the box and slamming the drawer shut.

She picked up some legal papers she had placed on the nightstand and began leafing through them, forcing herself to concentrate. If she immersed herself back into work, all of this would subside. She wiped away the hot, recurring tears.

As for Evelyn, she remained speechless in the kitchen. She replayed the scene again and again, the sudden mania, the desperate singing, the knife, the instant breakdown.

What had happened to Williams?

Why was she accusing her of trying to obsess her? Even though Evelyn wasn’t a doctor, she clearly recognized that almost drunken, hallucinatory look, but Williams’s breath hadn’t smelled of alcohol.

She looked around the quiet, opulent villa. She wondered if this self-destructive confusion was why Williams lived alone, without friends or family. Too much isolation could twist a mind. And she knew that too well.

Slowly, she began to clean the kitchen, her hands moving mechanically over the mess. What if Williams wasn’t fundamentally mean but just pathologically trying to protect herself, as a result of all the harm that had been done to her?

Evelyn wiped a tear with the heel of her hand.

What if she should tell her who she really was after all?

She recalled Williams’s genuinely shocked face when the sudden pain in her hand reminded her that she wasn’t ready to carry a heavy weight yet. That moment of vulnerability was real. And there was no doubt that something was wrong.

Should she grab her phone, call for help, and run away? Or should she grit her teeth and risk the worst for her Williams?

The cleaning product smelled suffocatingly clean on the counter where the knife had been. Evelyn closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure which choice would destroy her first, but one thing was clear: the woman she had desired all these years now saw her as a slave and an obsession.

Finally, when she opened her eyes again, her decision was made, and it was irrevocable.

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