"Tell me, how long are you going to play it?" Elijah asked, his voice low and dangerous. He had maneuvered Savannah into a cramped, worn-out room that looked like a storeroom. He caged her against the wall, his right arm pinning her. His eyes, Savannah realized with a jolt, were filled with a raw anger she'd never seen directed at her before.
But Savannah? She seemed completely unfazed. There was no trace of fear or anger on her face—just an eerie calmness. She held his gaze, arms crossed defiantly over her chest.
"Tell me, damn it!" Elijah's patience snapped. He slammed his left hand against the wall next to her head, his fury intensifying with every second. Yet, Savannah didn't even flinch. She remained composed.
"I'm not playing anything, so there's no reason for me to stop," Savannah replied, her voice steady and even.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Elijah spat, his voice thick with rage.
"I'm not—" she started, but he interrupted her.
"Don't you feel any guilt for your child?"
Elijah's words hit their mark. Savannah's eyes flickered, a subtle shift in her calm demeanor. The mention of her child, the child who was no longer with her, pierced through her composure.
"Don't you want to know how he's doing? How can you do this to him?" Elijah pressed, seizing the advantage. He saw her resolve waver.
His voice turned cold. "You're pathetic. Just a pathetic mom who doesn't deserve him."
Those words twisted like a knife in Savannah's heart. Did she really not deserve him? The thought echoed painfully in her mind.
"You're living your best life with your husband, while that child... we don't even know if he's alive or not!"
The silence in the storeroom felt alive, pulsing with tension.
It throbbed in the cracked walls and resonated beneath the dim, flickering light overhead. Dust hung in the air like time frozen, and in that forgotten room, the sound of a soul unraveling filled the emptiness.
Elijah released her wrist and turned to leave the room, but just as he reached for the doorknob, Savannah's voice sliced through the silence, shaky yet resolute:
"He threatened me."
He stopped dead in his tracks.
The lock clicked back into place as his hand fell away. Though his back was still turned, every muscle in his body tensed up. Savannah's voice no longer sounded like the strong woman who had just moments ago withstood his rage. Now, it quivered, carrying a weight that felt much heavier than mere fear.
"He said if I did anything, anything at all, he'd hurt him. Badly."
Elijah slowly pivoted to face her.
There she was—her shoulders rigid, arms wrapped around herself as if she were trying to keep herself from falling apart. But the mask she usually wore was nowhere to be found.
The calm, unflappable Savannah was gone.
So was the woman who spoke with icy resolve and had storms swirling in her eyes.
Now, she resembled a mother on the verge of breaking down.
Elijah stood there, watching her, and in that moment, something inside him twisted with pain. He could see the truth in her stance—in the way she couldn't even lift her gaze to meet his, the way her voice trembled as if it were clawing its way out from deep within her.
"I believed him," she murmured. "And the worst part? I still do."
Her lips quivered as she fought to maintain her composure. She sniffled but didn't wipe away the tears streaming down her cheeks like rivers finally breaking free from a dam. Her body began to shake, as if the truth she had buried was desperately trying to escape.
Elijah took a careful step closer, no longer the man consumed by anger, but a witness to someone else's silent suffering.
"If I made any move..." she whispered, "if I tried to find my son... Blaze said I'd never see him again. Never."
And then Elijah asked the question.
The question that shattered the air between them like fragile glass:
"What if he already did?"
Savannah blinked-slowly, heavily. Her lashes were thick with tears now. The weight of that question... she had asked it to herself a thousand times in the dead of night. But hearing it spoken out loud was something else entirely.
"What if your son's already gone, Savannah?"
Her breath hitched. Her entire body seemed to freeze in time.
Elijah's voice softened, but his words didn't:
"You've been living in a dream. A pretty little lie where maybe... just maybe... he's safe. But he's not. Not with Blaze. And if you really believe he's still alive, you better ask yourself why Blaze kept him from you for all these years."
"I've known that man longer than I'd like to admit," he continued, pain thickening his voice. "And I know what he's capable of. He doesn't love, Savannah. He owns. He controls. He manipulates. And if your child posed a threat to the illusion he created with you... he would've erased him without a second thought."
Savannah couldn't hold it together any longer.
Her knees buckled beneath her, as if the very ground had betrayed her. Her arms wrapped around her waist, crumpling to the floor, her satin dress spreading out like a pool of blood. She sobbed—deep, guttural cries that came not just from her throat but from the very depths of her soul.
It was the wail of a mother mourning a child she never had the chance to bury.
The lament of a woman who had just realized that the love she thought would save her was the very poison that had brought her down.
Elijah knelt beside her, stunned, heartbroken, powerless.
He had seen her angry.
He had seen her hurt.
But never like this.
"Savannah..." he whispered, his voice breaking as he reached out to gently rub her back, slow, steady circles, as if she were the one drowning now. And maybe she was. Drowning in all the feelings she had pushed away for so long.
"I thought if I just stayed quiet," she said through her sobs, "if I just kept him happy... maybe... maybe one day Blaze would bring him back to me. Maybe he'd see how much I loved him... loved Theo. But it was never about love, was it?"
Her voice shook, raw and vulnerable.
"It was always about control."
Elijah swallowed hard, fighting to keep his voice steady as he leaned in closer.
"You're not pathetic, Savannah. You were surviving. And sometimes... surviving means pretending. But it's time to stop pretending."
She lifted her gaze to him, her eyes puffy and shimmering, yet somehow more vibrant than they had been in ages.
"He still lives in my dreams," she confessed. "I can hear his laughter. I can hear him call me 'mama.' And I can't let that go, Elijah. I can't let that part of me fade away."
Elijah nodded thoughtfully.
"Then we uncover the truth. No matter what it is... we'll face it together."
For a long moment, they stood still. The storm that had raged within Savannah had finally passed, leaving behind a trail of destruction but also a newfound clarity.
She wasn't okay.
And she wouldn't be for a while.
But she was done pretending.
She would grieve. She would fight. And she would finally take control of her own narrative.
Broken. Human. Yet beneath it all, something new was emerging—a decision slowly taking shape amid the ruins of her silence.
And that decision... could set everything ablaze.
Author's Note :
Thankyou for reading<3
Have a good day/night<3<3