Sophie’s POV
The next evening, Bellamy picks up Noah from school. It's the weekend, which means Noah stays with us instead of at Marie's.
The apartment transforms the moment he arrives—suddenly full of energy, noise and the uncomplicated joy of a five-year-old who’s too young and naive to understand the real reason we moved to Switzerland.
"Miss Sophie!" He launches himself at me the moment he walks in, backpack still on. "I learned French words today! Want to hear?"
"Bring it on," I say, catching him before he can knock me over.
He rattles off a list of basic French phrases with enthusiastic pronunciation that's probably terrible but endearing. Bellamy watches us with something soft in his expression, and I hate that I notice. Hate that I care.
Noah eventually settles in the living room with his toys while Bellamy and I start making dinner. It's become routine when Noah's here—Bellamy cooks and I help, like we're a functional family unit instead of captor and captive.
The domesticity disturbs me.
This isn't what captivity should look like. There should be chains and darkness and constant fear. Instead, I'm chopping vegetables while Bellamy prepares chicken, with a child's laughter floating in from the other room.
It's so normal it makes me feel sick.
"Can you dice the onions?" Bellamy asks, passing me a cutting board.
I take it without comment. We work in silence for a few minutes, the only sounds the knife against the board and Noah's imaginative play in the background.
"Tell me about the warehouse," I say suddenly.
Bellamy's hands still on the chicken he's seasoning. "What?"
"Adrian told me once that he saved your life. Something about a warehouse. But he never gave me details." I keep my eyes on the onions I'm dicing. "I want to hear the real story, the whole thing."
The silence stretches. I think he's going to refuse. But he starts talking, his voice quiet.
"I was twenty-one. Stupid and broke and desperate. Got involved with some people I shouldn't have—smuggling operation. Small-time stuff, or so I thought."
He rinses his hands, dries them on a towel. "It went wrong. They locked me in a warehouse with a few others as collateral while they negotiated payment. Then someone decided fire was a good way to solve problems."
I stop chopping, look at him.
"The building was set to burn, accelerant everywhere. We were tied up, couldn't get out." His jaw tightens. "Adrian was doing something, I still don't know what, in that part of the city. Saw the smoke, found us by accident. Pure chance."
"He pulled you out."
"Minutes before the whole thing exploded. Literally minutes. He got all of us out—me and two others. Then went back in to check for more people. The building came down while he was still inside. He barely made it."
I try to imagine Adrian doing that: young and reckless and brave. It fits with who he is, who he's always been underneath the polished exterior.
"He didn't just save me," Bellamy continues, his voice rougher now. "He gave me a future. Got me out of that life, used his father's connections to get me into legitimate security work. That's how I met Olivia—she was working at one of the companies he connected me with. Everything good in my life came after that day."
The weight of that settles over us both. The magnitude of what Adrian did, what Bellamy owes him.
I set down my knife. Turn to face him fully. "And now you've repaid him by stealing his fiancée."
Bellamy flinches like I've struck him. His hands grip the edge of the counter. "I know."
"Then why?" The question comes out sharp. "How do you justify this? How do you reconcile taking me from the man who literally saved your life? Who gave you everything?"
"I can't." His voice is barely above a whisper. "I don't. There's no justification, no way to make it right."
"Then why?" I repeat, stepping closer. Demanding an answer. "If you know it's wrong, if you know what you're doing to him, why are you still doing it?"
Bellamy looks at me finally. His eyes are raw with something I can't quite name—pain, desperation, self-loathing.
"Because I couldn't watch you marry him." The words come out rough, honest. "Because I tried to talk myself out of it, tried to let you go, tried to do the right thing. But I couldn't. Every time I thought about you walking down that aisle, saying vows, becoming his wife… I couldn't breathe."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have." He turns to face me fully. "Because I know, I'm certain that you can be happier with me instead. That what you have with Adrian isn't what you need. That I can give you something he can't."
The audacity of it makes me want to scream.
"You kidnapped me, Bellamy. You drugged me and took me to another country and locked me in an apartment. That's what you've given me. That's what you think will make me happy?"
"No. But maybe, eventually…"
"Eventually what? Fall in love with my captor? Forget about my daughter and the man I chose and the life you stole?"
"I don't know!" His voice rises, matching mine. Then, quieter: "I don't know. I just know I couldn't let you go, couldn't watch you marry him knowing I never even tried."
"This isn't trying. This is taking."
"I know that too."
From the living room, Noah calls out something about needing help with his toy. Bellamy doesn't move. Neither do I.
We stand there in the kitchen, surrounded by half-prepared dinner, the smell of onions and raw chicken, the domestic scene that shouldn't exist.
And I see the full picture now.
He's not evil, not some cartoon villain twirling his mustache. He's just broken and selfish. Damaged by loss and twisted by grief into someone who can justify the unjustifiable because he's convinced himself he's doing it for the right reasons.
He's a man who owes everything to Adrian and still chose to betray him because his own pain outweighed his gratitude.
He's a father who loves his son but teaches him lies.
He's someone who watches me with that hunger in his eyes, who looks at me like he's memorizing every detail, who probably does things I don't want to think about when he's alone.
He's human—flawed and broken. And that makes everything so much more complicated.
Because I can hate a monster. I can rage against pure evil. But this? A man who knows what he's doing is wrong and does it anyway because he's drowning in grief and loneliness and misplaced hope?
I don't know what to do with that.
"Daddy?" Noah appears in the doorway. "Is dinner almost ready? I'm really hungry."
The moment shatters. Bellamy turns away from me, his shoulders tight. "Almost, buddy. Go wash your hands."
Noah scampers off to the bathroom. Bellamy and I return to our respective tasks—him finishing the chicken, me the vegetables—working in heavy silence.
But something has shifted. I understand him now in a way I didn't before. Understand the layers of his motivation, the depth of his betrayal, the complexity of his brokenness.
And understanding doesn't forgive. Doesn't make any of this okay. Doesn't change what he's done or what he continues to do every day he keeps me here.
But humans are so much harder to hate than monsters.