CHAPTER 2: THE COLOREDLESS PAINTING

The fluorescent light above the garage beamed down onto the syringe in Julian’s hand. The metallic needle flashed with a cold, razor-sharp glint.

I stood frozen beside the wide-open trunk. At my feet, Ethan—my actual husband, his face matted with blood—was still thrashing frantically, his shadow jerking against the concrete floor. He stared up at me with eyes wild with desperation and pleading. But I knew that if I uttered a single cry for help or made any move to protect Ethan, the syringe in Julian’s hand would plunge straight into my neck before I could take my next breath.

“Be a good girl, Emily. Drink all of this milk. Curiosity is always the blade that slits the throat of a caged bird.”

Julian casually stepped down the final stair. His voice was deep and soothing, like a classical melody echoing inside a tomb. He didn’t look at Ethan. His hazel eyes were locked onto me—a dark, obsessively twisted gaze. He approached, holding the steaming glass of warm water in one hand while raising the syringe to my eye level with the other.

I forced myself to suppress the panic. My pupils contracted, and my shoulders trembled violently—the picture-perfect fear response of a helpless victim. I took a step back, feigning a stumble over the edge of an old tire, and collapsed onto the freezing concrete floor.

“Julian…” I whimpered, raising both hands to cover my face as tears threatened to spill. “I… I’m terrified. There’s someone in the trunk… I was just trying to find a way out… I don’t know anything…”

Julian stopped right in front of me. He looked down at me, his ruthless expression wavering slightly before my sheer vulnerability. Lowering the syringe, he slowly knelt down and used his warm hand to lift my chin.

“You don’t need to know anything, Emily,” he whispered, that lingering smile returning to his lips. “The filth out there, the people who want to steal you away from me… I will take care of it all. The only thing you need to do is stay by my side. Be good now.”

He brought the glass to my lips. I closed my eyes and obediently took large gulps. The sweet taste of the milk, blended with the bitter aftertaste of the cognitive depressant, flowed down my throat. I knew this was the drug he used daily to brainwash me. But I had to drink it. I had to survive to execute my next move.

Within minutes, the drug took effect. Before Julian’s eyes, my vision blurred and my head spun out of control. I slumped my head against his chest, letting my entire body go limp like a puppet with its strings cut. Julian scooped me into his arms and held me tight. Before closing my eyes to feign unconsciousness, through the slit of my lashes, I caught him casting a contemptuous glance at Ethan in the trunk, followed by a cold, violent kick that slammed the trunk shut.

Slam!

Total darkness swallowed the space.

I woke up on the rabbit-fur mattress in the master bedroom.

The room was still filled with the artificial scent of pine. Julian sat at the edge of the bed, carefully wiping each of my fingers with a warm towel. His eyes were filled with tenderness, as if the brutal scene in the garage a few hours ago had been nothing more than an illusion cooked up by my mind.

“Are you awake, my love?” Julian smiled softly, placing the towel on the tray. “It’s morning. The blizzard outside is worsening. I need to head into town to grab more fuel for the generator and pick up supplies.”

He bent down and pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead. A long, suffocating kiss.

“Stay home and rest up. Don’t go anywhere. The front door is securely locked. I’ll be back soon.”

“Be… be careful,” I whispered, my voice still groggy and weak.

Julian smiled in satisfaction. He stood up, adjusted his long black trench coat, and walked out of the room. The sound of his footsteps faded away, followed by the roar of the Range Rover’s engine outside, which quickly dissolved into the howling Aspen blizzard.

The second the car was out of range, all weakness vanished from my face.

I sat bolt upright, my eyes clear and razor-sharp. The dose he forced me to drink earlier? I had tucked it under my back teeth with my tongue and spat it out the moment he carried me up the stairs. He thought he was running the show, but he was far too naive.

I walked over to the vanity. On it stood an exquisite glass vase filled with white snow roses. Without hesitation, I reached out and slammed it onto the floor.

SHATTER!

Glass exploded across the room, sharp shards scattering into every corner. I bent down, picked out the largest and sharpest shard, and carefully wrapped a layer of adhesive bandage around the edge to serve as a handle. A crude weapon, but sharp enough to slice through a carotid artery if necessary.

Hiding the glass shard in my puffer coat pocket, I stepped out of the room.

This time, my target wasn’t the garage. I recalled the villa’s layout. When Julian carried me up from the basement, he hadn’t taken the main staircase; instead, he had gone through a long, dark hallway behind the kitchen. Located there was a steel-reinforced oak door secured by three mechanical locks.

I slipped down to the basement. The air down here remained freezing and heavy with the smell of mold. The Volvo in the garage sat untouched under the blue tarp, but Ethan was no longer inside. Julian had moved him elsewhere.

I followed the hallway behind the kitchen. The steel-reinforced oak door appeared before me. Three shiny locks. But Julian had made a fatal mistake: in his rush to prepare for his trip through the blizzard, he had forgotten to remove the master key sticking out of the bottom lock.

Click. Click. Click.

Three dry sounds echoed. The heavy door slowly creaked open, releasing a draft of freezing air laden with the pungent smells of oil paint, old canvas, and harsh cleaning chemicals.

I pushed the door and stepped inside.

What met my eyes wasn’t a standard storage room. It was a secret gallery spanning hundreds of square meters, illuminated by pale yellow spotlights hanging sporadically from a raw brick vaulted ceiling.

And across the four grey brick walls… hung hundreds of paintings.

I stood frozen. My footsteps halted, and the glass shard in my pocket jolted against the frantic pounding of my chest.

Every single one of these paintings… was my own work. I recognized my brush technique, the thick, expressive layers of oil paint I had spent years mastering. A painting of a man sitting by a rainy window; a painting of a man leaning against a piano; a painting of a couple embracing amidst a pine forest…

However, there was an eerily terrifying anomaly.

Every single male face in those hundreds of paintings… had been shredded with a razor blade or smeared over with thick, dark acrylic paint that resembled dried blood! Ruthless diagonal slashes tore through the canvas, exposing empty, grotesque voids underneath.

A large wooden board hung at the very center of the room. On it, written in bright red ink, were jagged lines of text:

“Every brushstroke on these walls isn’t art… it’s the body count of every time I caught you looking at another man.”

I stood in the center of that lunatic gallery, feeling as though I were trapped in the eye of a psychotic storm. Julian. His obsession didn’t end with kidnapping or drugging me. He loved me so neurotically that he wanted to erase every trace of any other man from my mind—erasing every memory, every brushstroke I had ever dedicated to Ethan!

“Emily…”

A pathetic, feeble whisper broke out from the dark corner of the gallery.

I gasped and whirled around, raising my hand to grip the glass shard tightly.

In the furthest corner, hidden behind a large easel draped in white cloth, a man was tied up on an iron chair. His wrists were bound tightly with zip ties that cut into his skin, swollen and purplish. His face was battered, covered in dried blood from the crash and fresh bruises from a beating.

Ethan.

“Emily… save… save me…” Ethan looked up at me, his grey eyes dull, his lips cracked and bleeding.

I took a deep breath and slowly approached. The sharp glass shard remained hidden behind my back.

“Ethan?” My voice trembled, maintaining a helpless, innocent tone. “Are… are you really Ethan? My husband?”

“Yes… it’s me!” Ethan gasped, thrashing desperately and causing the iron chair to screech against the floor. “He… that lunatic Julian… he’s been stalking us for months! He staged the accident… he wanted to kill me to take you! Quick… cut the ties! He’s coming back soon!”

I knelt beside Ethan. Pulling out the sharp glass shard, I began sawing forcefully at the thick zip ties binding his wrists.

Slash. Slash.

The synthetic plastic was dense; as the glass sliced through, blood from my hands and his welled up, blending together. But I didn’t stop. My eyes remained glued to Ethan’s every movement.

Snap!

The zip ties snapped open, freeing his hands. Ethan rubbed his purple wrists, letting out a long, pained sigh of relief.

Yet he didn’t wrap his arms around me. He showed no gratitude, nor did he comfort the wife who had just saved his life.

His expression shifted instantly. The pathetic, pleading look from seconds ago vanished entirely. In its place emerged a twisted, cold smile filled with crazy malice. Ethan lunged forward, his rough hands gripping my shoulders tightly, pinning me hard against the iron chair.

“Thank you, my sweet Emily…” Ethan whispered into my ear, his breath reeking of blood and hatred. “You play the actress remarkably well. So well that you even fooled that lunatic Julian into believing you were just a helpless little lamb.”

I froze. My grip on the glass shard tightened.

“What are you talking about, Ethan?” I asked, my voice dropping several degrees.

Ethan brought his face close to mine. His eyes were bloodshot, crisscrossed with red veins. He broke into a bitter, menacing laugh that tore through the quiet dark room.

“Do you honestly think he’s the only lunatic here, Emily? Do you think this entire nightmare was Julian’s doing?” Ethan squeezed my shoulders so hard my collarbones cracked. He gritted out every word, as if thrusting blades directly into my brain:

“It was you… YOU were the one who cut the brake lines on that car!”

Time seemed to freeze completely.

The howling blizzard outside, the flickering spotlights, the wild beating of my heart… everything vanished. Only Ethan’s words echoed inside the blood-drenched gallery.

Ethan stared straight into my eyes, his grin growing increasingly unhinged:

“Did you forget, my dear wife? The night before the crash, I saw you with my own eyes stepping out of the garage holding heavy metal wire cutters! You wanted to kill me! You wanted to stage a horrific accident to collect the full 10 million dollar life insurance payout you secretly took out on me three months ago! You wanted to take that money and run, or turn us all into puppets in your sick twisted mind game!”

Ethan let go of my shoulders, standing up and backing away while pointing a finger at my face, his voice trembling with disgust:

“Julian thinks he’s the mastermind who kidnapped you… He thinks he’s manipulating you with drugs! But he doesn’t know… he’s nothing more than a stupid pawn you dragged into this yourself! Your amnesia? Your fragility? It’s all a front! You are the real psychopath here, Emily!”

I slowly stood up from the cold floor.

I didn’t shake. I didn’t cry. The fear, panic, and fragility on my face dissolved completely, like a thin layer of snow doused in boiling water.

I raised my hand and gently wiped away the blood smudged on my cheek.

A smile—a soft, polite, yet bone-chilling smile that could freeze the entirety of the Aspen canyon—slowly bloomed on my lips.

I looked at Ethan. My eyes were no longer those of a captive victim. They were the eyes of a lucid lunatic, an artist admiring the ultimate masterpiece she had orchestrated with her own hands.

“You realized a bit too late, Ethan,” I spoke up. My voice was no longer raspy or trembling. It was clear, ice-cold, and as sweet as poison. “Though you got one thing wrong…”

I stepped closer to Ethan, the sharp glass shard in my hand reflecting the pale yellow light.

“I didn’t just want the 10 million dollar insurance payout. I wanted both of you… you men who always believed you could own, manipulate, and cage me…”

I twirled the glass shard between my fingers, glancing up at the largest slashed portrait on the wall.

“…to tear each other apart with your own hands inside this glass cage.”