The knock on the door the next morning wasn't loud, but it woke Bella instantly. She had slept in her clothes, curled in a tight ball.

Hansel stood in the doorway. He looked worse than the night before. His skin was pasty, and beads of sweat had collected along his receding hairline. He tossed a simple, gray maid's uniform onto the bed. In his hands, he held a silver tray. On it sat a porcelain teacup and a syringe filled with a clear liquid.

"Change. Now," he said. It wasn't a request.

"What's happening?" Bella asked, scrambling to pull on the stiff, unfamiliar uniform.

"No questions."

They walked fast. The house seemed even larger in the daylight, though the heavy curtains were drawn, keeping everything in a perpetual twilight. The staff they passed were practically pressing themselves into the walls to stay out of the way.

As they approached the mahogany doors of the West Wing, the sounds began. A low, guttural roaring. The sound of heavy furniture being overturned.

Hansel stopped at the bottom of the staircase leading up to the double doors. He shoved the silver tray into Bella's hands. The china rattled.

"Take this up," Hansel said. His voice wavered.

Bella stared at him. "You want me to go in there? He sounds... he sounds dangerous."

"He doesn't know your face," Hansel said, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. "He's been in seclusion for months, and he never bothered to look at your file. He knows us. He knows the guards. Seeing us right now triggers the violence. You are a variable. A new variable might buy us time."

"I can't," Bella said, stepping back.

Hansel grabbed her arm. His grip was bruising. "Your stepmother signed a contract, Miss Miller. If you don't go up those stairs, I make a call. Your father goes to prison for fraud, and your grandfather is evicted by noon."

Bella felt the blood drain from her face. It was a checkmate. She looked at the stairs. The carpet was a deep, blood red.

"Fine," she whispered.

She took the tray. Her arms trembled, making the teacup dance in its saucer. She took a breath and started to climb.

Every step was a battle against her own instinct to run. The roaring grew louder. She could hear words now, nonsensical shouts of rage. Stop it! Make it stop!

She reached the landing. The double doors were ajar. The smell hit her first-stale whiskey and the metallic tang of fresh blood.

Bella pushed the door open with her foot. The hinge gave a muffled groan, the sound absorbed by thick acoustic seals.

The room was a disaster zone. A four-poster bed had been stripped of its linens. An antique vanity lay on its side, the mirror smashed.

And there he was.

Adonis Morton IV stood by the window, his back to her. He was shirtless. His back was a landscape of tension, muscles coiled tight like steel cables. Scratches marred his skin, self-inflicted red lines that crisscrossed his shoulders. He was panting, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

Bella tried to navigate the debris field of broken glass. She took a step. A shard of porcelain crunched under her slipper.

Adonis spun around.

Bella stopped breathing. His eyes were wild, the pupils blown wide. There was no recognition in them, only a raw, animalistic fury. He looked like a man being tortured by invisible demons.

"Get out!" he roared. The sound was a physical blow. He clapped his hands over his ears as if her presence itself was a deafening siren.

Bella froze. The tray shook violently. Clink-clink-clink.

Adonis's eyes locked onto the sound. He grabbed a heavy crystal ashtray from the desk beside him.

"Quiet!"

He hurled the ashtray directly at her head.

The crystal projectile whistled through the air. Bella jerked her head to the right, instinct taking over. The ashtray grazed her cheekbone, a stinging line of fire, before smashing into the wall behind her. Shards of crystal rained down on her shoulders.

Bella screamed. Her hands flew up to protect her face, and the silver tray crashed to the floor.

The sound was cataclysmic. Metal hitting wood, china shattering. To Bella, it was loud. To Adonis, it was a nuclear explosion.

He staggered, a raw shriek tearing from his throat as he clawed at his temples. The sound didn't just enrage him; it physically assaulted him. For a moment, he seemed to lose all coordination, stumbling blindly like his strings had been cut.

Bella didn't even have time to turn. Fueled by pure, agonizing instinct, Adonis slammed into her, pinning her against the wall. His hand, large and calloused, wrapped around her throat. He lifted her off the floor.

Bella kicked her legs, her toes scraping against the wall. She clawed at his wrist, but his arm was as unyielding as an iron bar.

"Make it stop," Adonis hissed. His face was inches from hers. His eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with exhaustion and madness. "Why is it so loud? Make it stop!"

Black spots danced in Bella's vision. Her lungs burned. She couldn't breathe. She was going to die here, strangled by a billionaire lunatic in a room that smelled of despair.

Think. Think.

Her right hand flailed, brushing against the pocket of her newly-donned apron. The herbs. The emergency sachet she always carried for her grandfather's anxiety attacks.

Adonis squeezed tighter. Bella's vision tunneled.

With her last ounce of strength, she jammed her hand into her pocket and grabbed the small fabric pouch. She didn't try to pull it out. She squeezed it, crushing the dried leaves and resin beads inside.

She ripped her hand out and shoved the crushed sachet right under Adonis's nose.

A cloud of peppermint, lavender, and concentrated valerian root exploded into the air between them. It was sharp, cold, and piercing.

Adonis froze. His nostrils flared. The scent cut through the sensory overload in his brain like a laser.

Bella saw the hesitation. She saw the pupil contraction. She remembered her grandfather's lessons. The reset button.

She forced her left hand up, reaching behind Adonis's ear. She found the soft depression just behind his earlobe-the Yifeng point. She dug her thumb into it with everything she had left.

Adonis groaned. It wasn't a sound of anger anymore. It was a sound of relief. The pressure point sent a numbing signal straight to his overactive nervous system.

His grip on her neck loosened. Bella gasped, sucking in a ragged breath of air.

Adonis blinked, the red haze in his eyes receding, replaced by a heavy, drugged fog. His eyelids fluttered. The tension drained out of his body all at once.

He slumped forward.

Bella wasn't ready for the weight. He collapsed against her, his forehead landing in the crook of her neck. He pinned her to the wall, not with aggression, but with dead weight.

"Quiet," he mumbled against her skin.

Then, he went limp. His breathing leveled out, deep and rhythmic.

Bella stood there, pinned against the wall by the sleeping body of the man who had just tried to kill her. The room was silent again, save for the sound of their synchronized breathing. She was alive.

Bella tried to shift her weight, but Adonis was like a boulder. His arms hung loosely at his sides, but his chest was pressed firmly against hers. His hair tickled her chin.

She could feel his heart beating against her ribs. It was slowing down, finding a calm rhythm that matched the rise and fall of his heavy breaths. He smelled of sweat and expensive soap, and beneath that, the sharp, cooling scent of the herbs she had unleashed.

The door flew open.

"Master Adonis!" Hansel shouted, rushing in. Two large security guards flanked him. Hansel held a taser raised, the prongs sparking blue.

They skidded to a halt. The tableau froze them in place.

Hansel lowered the taser, his mouth gaping. He looked from the shattered ashtray on the floor to the shards of the tea set, and finally to his master, who was sleeping peacefully while standing up, propped against the new girl.

"Is he...?" Hansel whispered.

"He's asleep," Bella croaked. Her throat felt like sandpaper. She pointed a trembling finger at Adonis's back. "Help me. He's heavy."

One of the guards stepped forward, reaching out to grab Adonis's shoulder.

"Stop!" Hansel hissed.

The guard froze.

Hansel crept closer, sniffing the air. He caught the scent of the peppermint and valerian. He looked at Bella with a new, sharp intensity. "He hasn't slept without sedation in three days. He's in a state of total collapse. If you wake him, and he wakes up violent..."

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.

"So I'm just supposed to stand here?" Bella whispered furiously. "My legs are going numb."

"Adjust her," Hansel ordered the guards. "Slowly. Infinitely slowly. Do not wake him."

The absurdity of it almost made Bella laugh. The guards moved with surgical precision, as if defusing a bomb. Every shift of weight was infinitesimal, every breath held. One gently supported Adonis's back while the other slid a velvet ottoman behind Bella. They guided her down until she was sitting, Adonis sliding with her until he was kneeling between her legs, his head resting on her lap, his arms wrapped loosely around her waist.

It was an incredibly intimate, compromising position.

"Comfortable?" Hansel asked. He didn't care about the answer.

"No," Bella snapped.

"Endure it," Hansel said. He picked up the taser. "We will be outside. If he stirs, if his breathing changes, you call out."

They retreated. The door clicked shut.

Bella was alone with the beast again. She looked down at him. In sleep, the lines of cruelty and pain had vanished from his face. His lashes were long, casting shadows on his cheekbones. He looked younger. Human.

Adonis shifted. Bella held her breath, her body tensing for another attack.

He didn't wake. He just burrowed his face deeper into her stomach, inhaling sharply. His hand tightened on the fabric of her dress at her hip.

"Mom..." he murmured. The word was a broken fragment of sound.

Bella felt a strange pang in her chest. It wasn't forgiveness-he had nearly strangled her-but it was understanding. He was broken. Just like her family. Just like her.

She sighed, her hand hovering over his head before gently, tentatively, landing on his hair. She waited. He didn't recoil. He sighed, sinking deeper into sleep.

Bella leaned her head back against the wall. She watched the dust motes dance in the shaft of light from the window. She was trapped, literally and metaphorically, serving as a human pillow for a monster.