Prison·forbidden text
"If love is a prison, I would like to forge the most gorgeous key for you - and then use it to pierce your heart."
1924, New York in late autumn.
Art historian Eliot Winters received a gold-rimmed invitation to appraise Laurel Manor's private collection of books.
He thought it was an ordinary academic commission.
What he doesn't know is:
The cloisters of this manor move on their own late at night.
The eyes of the ancestors in the portrait follow the living person.
The host who invited him—Sebastian van der Linden, with platinum blond hair and ice-blue eyes—had already stared at him for a full ninety minutes during a lecture at Columbia University.
"You belong here." Sebastian put on the diamond-encrusted handcuffs for him, and his tone was as gentle as love. "I knew it from the look in your eyes when you analyzed the light and shadow of the rose window."
Since then, Eliot has become the most precious "collection" of Laurel Manor.
During the day, they cultivated dying black orchids in the greenhouse and played distorted Bach on the organ.
At night, Sebastian designs a cruel "choice game": the left-hand tray is the free key, and the right-hand tray is poisonous sugar cubes.
"If you choose the wrong one, you will die. If you choose the right one..." His cold fingertips brushed across Elliot's neck, "it will make me want to destroy you even more."
But Eliot discovers something more important than escaping:
Sebastian would touch the mysterious tattoo on his left hand before each torture session.
A woman's cry came from the locked chapel in the west wing.
In the family's account books, huge sums of money have been paid to a "spiritual medium association" for thirty years.
When the economic collapse swept through the Jazz Age like a plague, the servants dispersed and the candles dimmed.
Power began to shift silently.
"Let me take care of you." Elliot put on the velvet-lined handcuffs for Sebastian, who was suffering from high fever, with a gentle smile, "just like you took care of me."
Only then did they really see each other clearly:
One learns to love in captivity.
One learns to be imprisoned in love.
This book is suitable for you to read:
Intention: ability dilemma type
