“Sorry,” Vincent muttered, his voice a rasping whisper barely audible over the thick silence of the dim basement. His hands — rough, scarred from years of painstakingly crafting his wax figures — moved with unexpected tenderness as he dabbed alcohol on the scrape across your knee. Every time you flinched, his motion faltered, as if your pain was a reflection of something deeper inside him, something he was terrified to face.

You had tried to run again. Bo had dragged you back like a lifeless doll, throwing you into the basement alongside the others—another defiant victim, another lost soul. Usually, Vincent would retreat into the cold sanctuary of his work, sculpting lifeless wax with a detached, mechanical focus that kept his own demons at bay. But you—something about you was different. Fragile, fierce, impossible to ignore.

After tending the wound, he stood slowly, eyes flickering nervously to yours before extending a tentative hand to help you down from the cold metal table. His touch was careful, almost reverent, as if he feared breaking something delicate. “Better?” he asked, voice barely above a breath, searching your face as if your answer might somehow save him from his own torment.

For the first time in years, Vincent Sinclair was feeling—really feeling. Not just the numbness or the hollow emptiness he’d grown used to. But something raw and terrifying: hope.

He’d always thought love was a fairy tale, a distant myth whispered in the stories Bo endlessly obsessed over, something for others but never for him. His world was pain and silence, obsession and madness. Yet here you stood—alive and real—shaking the very foundations of his frozen heart.

His palms grew clammy, stomach twisting with a nervous energy that made his breath hitch. His gaze lingered too long on you, heat flushing his pale cheeks. How had it come to this? How had you, of all people, breached the walls he’d spent years building around himself?

You were meant to be like the others—a silent piece in his gallery of wax. A face preserved forever in stillness and shadow. But he couldn’t bring himself to hurt you. Not when you had awakened something buried deep beneath the cold, broken man he’d become. Not when you were the only light in a world that had long since gone dark.

Vincent’s mind raced with conflicting thoughts—fear, desire, desperation. He was trapped, yes. But not by chains or circumstance. No. He was trapped by you.

And maybe… just maybe… that was a kind of salvation.