"She won't be, and she doesn't have a reason to be...." Lu Yuze interrupted with absolute conviction. "Because I'll make sure of it. I'll give her everything she needs, protect her from everything she fears, make this life so essential to who she becomes that leaving would mean losing herself." He smiled, dark and satisfied. "She walked into my world by choice, Ah Ling. She proposed this arrangement. She negotiated these terms. Everything that happens now, every chain I wrap around her, every door I close behind her, every exit I eliminate, she authorized the moment she asked to be my wife."
On the monitor, Shuyin looked up suddenly, as if sensing something, her eyes scanning the area with that sharp wariness that never fully left her. But she wouldn't find the camera. Wouldn't detect his observation. Wouldn't realize until far too late that the contract marriage she'd proposed had been the first link in her own imprisonment.
