My name is Lilith. I’m twenty years old — a woman who’s been clawing her way through life, fighting for every piece of freedom I can claim. All I ever wanted was to succeed on my own terms, far from the poisonous grip of my family.

But fate has a cruel sense of irony.

One ordinary evening at the office, as the glow of my computer screen blurred before my tired eyes, everything shattered in an instant — the echo of a gunshot ripped through the air. For a moment, I couldn’t even process it. The world tilted, my heartbeat drowned out the noise, and all I could think was how did I end up here?

It wasn’t random. It was them. My family — the ones I tried so hard to escape. They wanted me back in that mansion, trapped in their gilded cage. So they sent people to bring me home… one way or another

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So in Brief lemme explain this !!

They said it was for the family — for honor, for business, for the ties that keep their empire standing. But I knew better. It wasn’t about relationships. It was about control.

They wanted me to marry a stranger — a man I’d never met, someone chosen not for love, but for power. A name, a deal, a signature that would merge fortunes and bury me in a life I never wanted.

When I refused, I became a liability. A problem to be fixed. They smiled to my face, but I could see the warning in their eyes. And now, as I lay here in the aftermath of that gunshot, blood pounding in my ears, I realize they never intended to give me a choice.

They don’t want me free. They want me obedient

to be continued here we goo !!

But as you know, I’m not the obedient type. I never was.

Now, I’m in their car — wrists bound, the air thick with the scent of leather and gasoline. Two men sit in the front, silent, their faces cold and unreadable in the rearview mirror. The city lights flicker past the tinted windows, blurring into streaks of gold and red. Somewhere beyond them lies that cursed mansion — my family’s golden prison.

They think they’ve won. That I’ll sit quietly, accept my fate, and play the role they’ve chosen for me.

But they don’t know me.

Every mile that passes only feeds the fire inside me. I’m already counting — the seconds between turns, the rhythm of their voices, the way the driver’s hand tightens on the wheel when the road curves. I’ve run away before. I can do it again.

This time, I’ll make sure they never find me.

Because if they do… I won’t be the one running next time.

At the mansion!!

The car finally stops.

The iron gates of the mansion rise before me like the jaws of some sleeping beast, waiting to swallow me whole. Floodlights sweep across the courtyard — tall men in black suits stand at every corner, their eyes sharp, their hands never far from the guns tucked beneath their jackets. My family calls this place home. I call it hell.

As the door opens, the night air hits my face — thick with the smell of rain and roses, just like I remember. Nothing has changed. The marble steps still gleam like they’re polished with secrets.

Inside these walls lives the family I tried so hard to forget.

My younger brother, Aiden — too clever for his own good, always pretending to be loyal while playing both sides. My sister, Seraphina — the perfect angel in public, the devil’s whisper in private. And then there’s my father — the man who built this empire and believes every life within it belongs to him. The head of the estate. The king of this gilded cage.

His word is law. And his law has always been the same: Family first. Freedom last.

They think bringing me back means the game is over. But they’ve forgotten something important — I’m not that scared little girl anymore.

They lead me inside. The mansion is colder than I remember — too perfect, too polished, like a museum of lies.

My heels echo on the marble floor as portraits of my ancestors stare down at me, their painted smiles mocking. The air feels heavy, like it’s hiding something — a secret waiting to claw its way out.

Then I see him — my father, seated at the long dining table, a glass of red wine in his hand. The man who rules this empire of shadows.

“Welcome home, Lilith,” he says, his voice calm, deliberate. “We missed you.”

The words crawl under my skin. Around him, the others stand — my brother, my sister, the family lawyer — each face hiding something. A plan. A lie. Maybe even guilt.

Because I can feel it now — something’s wrong. The marriage isn’t the real reason they brought me back. There’s more. Something darker.

And before this night ends, someone in this room will die.

But it won’t be me

Here comes my siblings..

The silence in the mansion is suffocating. Every breath feels like a test, every step like trespassing on forbidden ground.

My father’s voice cuts through the air — smooth, controlled, and terrifyingly calm. “You’ve caused enough trouble, Lilith. Running away, disobeying, shaming our name… It’s time you understood your place.”

I want to spit back a hundred words, but something stops me — movement, subtle but real.

Aiden meets my eyes across the room. Just for a second. A silent message passes between us. He looks the same — sharp jaw, cold eyes — but I can see it in his gaze: fear. And loyalty. To me.

Then Seraphina steps forward. Her tone is sweet, almost mocking. “Father, she’s been through enough. Maybe we should let her rest before… anything else.” But I hear the shift in her voice, the quiet warning buried beneath the words: be careful. They’re listening.

I realize it then — I’m not alone. My siblings might still be trapped here, but they haven’t given up. They want out too.

My father doesn’t notice the undercurrent in the room. He’s too busy pouring himself another glass of wine. “Rest?” he repeats. “She’s had too much freedom. From now on, she stays where I can see her.”

His tone leaves no room for argument. But in my chest, something burns brighter — hope mixed with vengeance.

If Aiden and Seraphina are truly with me, then maybe… just maybe… we can tear this empire apart from the inside.

Because when blood turns against blood, no king — not even my father — can keep his throne.

Thoughts for 7s

They waited until the house finally breathed out — the last of the staff’s footsteps slipping away like water down a drain. When the corridor fell into velvet silence, the three of us moved.

Aiden slipped the lock and we eased into my room like conspirators in a play. The door closed with a soft click that sounded louder than thunder. For a heartbeat we just stood there, three shadows under the lamplight, the portraits in the hallway keeping their smug watch.

“We cut them all,” Aiden said, fingers already on the bedside table. He worked fast, practiced — a roll of black tape, a coil of wire, a small tablet glowing with schematics of the house. He’d been the one to map the security months ago, pretending to be the dutiful son while he learned where every eye and ear in this place hid. “Main feed, perimeter cams, motion sensors. Blind for thirty minutes. That’s our window.”

Seraphina closed the curtains with theatrical slowness and then laughed, the sound brittle and sharp. “Thirty minutes isn’t much. Make it count.” She moved to the wardrobe and came back with a jacket she’d stolen from a guard — heavy, too big, smelling faintly of cigarette smoke and cologne. She handed it to me.

I hugged the jacket to my chest and felt the sewing of the plan take its first real shape. We weren’t running. We were doing something more dangerous, more delicious. We weren’t merely escaping a mansion — we were going to make my father taste what it felt like to lose control.

“We don’t just leave footprints,” I said, voice low. “We leave wounds.”

Aiden nodded. “First, we get the files. The ledgers, transfer logs, encrypted drives — everything that ties him to the accounts the lawyer keeps hidden in Paris and Geneva.” He tapped the tablet. “There’s a safe behind the portrait in his study. Two minutes to crack if we use the biometric override Seraphina swiped from the gala last month.”

Seraphina’s face hardened. “And if he’s not alone? If he wakes up and finds us gone?”

“Then we make him believe I never left.” I felt the words like a blade. “We stage a trail — enough to convince the palace that I ran and was taken. The whisper-net will do the rest. He’ll deal with scandal while we take everything he values.”

It was brazen. It was reckless. It was perfect.

“We’ll need an exit,” Aiden said. “The gardener’s route — the old service gate. I can cut power to the eastern lights for fifteen minutes longer by looping the relay. After that, it looks like an electrical fault. No one will think it’s anything but bad timing.”

Seraphina set a small recorder on the nightstand, thumbed it on. “If anything goes wrong, we have truth recorded — confessions, orders, anything. We leak it. We don’t need to kill him to ruin him. People fear shame more than death.”

My breath evened. I pictured the portrait of my father in his study, the way he smiled like a man who never learned how to be surprised. The thought of him staggered by loss — reputation, power, the polite collateral that sustained him — made a cold, bright thing bloom in my chest.

“We move at midnight,” I said. “No hesitation. We split: Aiden, you go for the safe and the drives. Seraphina, you take care of the recorder and the lawyer’s office — grab whatever paper trail they have. I’ll go to Father’s study. I know where he keeps his papers. If I can get a confession — even a hint of it — we can make sure no court will let him walk.”

They exchanged a look, the kind siblings have when they decide to become a single blade.

“After that?” Seraphina asked.

“After that,” I smiled without humor, “we burn the bridges he uses to cross into the world.” Not literal fire — not yet. We would burn him in a way that mattered: money, influence, names whispered in the right ears. He would lose the things that had always bought his loyalty.

Outside the door, a clock chimed eleven. The first chime sounded like warning. The second sounded like a heartbeat. The third — just as Aiden reached for the doorknob — sounded like a bell tolling for the old order.

We moved as one. The hallway was a dark mouth; the mansion exhaled its servants into the night. We hugged the walls, ghosts among wealthy ghosts, and slipped into the belly of the house.

Halfway to the study the lights stuttered — our loop doing its work — and the hum of the security system stilled. We slowed, breath held, every step mapped to a second.

At the threshold of my father’s study, Seraphina put a hand on my arm. “Promise me one thing,” she whispered. “We come back for each other. No disappearing.”

I looked at them: my brother’s jaw clenched, my sister’s eyes bright as knives. “I promise,” I said.

The door opened.

And in the room beyond, under a halo of lamp light and a portrait that always watched, something moved. Not the slow gait of a man who sleeps at peace, but the careful, measured step of someone who had been expecting trouble for a long time.

A soft cough — and a voice I recognized like a bruise.

“You three look tired.”

We froze. The plan teetered. Outside, the thirty-minute window dwindled.

The game had begun.

The night air was colder than I expected. The mansion’s walls disappeared behind me as I slipped through the garden gate, heart hammering, every step echoing like a countdown to freedom.

Aiden and Seraphina were waiting by the old service road, but for a moment, I stopped. My eyes caught something across the narrow lane — an old, crumbling house, its balcony rusted, paint peeling.

Kaseem’s house.

I hadn’t thought of that name in years. The boy from my neighborhood — the one who could make the whole street laugh just by showing up. He was older, confident, effortlessly charming. Everyone said he was a flirt, a playboy who’d never stay serious about anyone. But to me… he was everything.

I was in seventh grade when I first noticed him. He’d tease me, call me chhoti, ask if I’d done my homework before running off with his friends. I’d pretend to be annoyed, but my heart would race every time I saw him. For two years, I liked him in silence. He never knew. And then one day, he was just gone — his family moved away, no goodbyes, no promises. Just an empty house and an echo of his laughter that stayed long after he left.

Now, standing in front of that same house — broken, quiet, forgotten — I felt a strange ache in my chest.

It reminded me of who I used to be. A girl who believed in laughter, who still thought love could be simple, who hadn’t yet learned what power, fear, and betrayal could do to a person.

I took one last look at the balcony where he used to lean and laugh with his friends. Then I turned away.

Because that girl — the one who liked Kaseem — she didn’t exist anymore.

Now, there was only Lilith.

And Lilith had a war to fight.

The sound of my footsteps faded into the night. I let the memory of Kaseem’s laughter dissolve in the cold air and turned toward the waiting shadows where Aiden and Seraphina stood.

“Are you done remembering the past?” Aiden whispered, impatience edged with worry.

“Yeah,” I said, forcing a small, humorless smile. “The past can wait. The future’s running out.”

Seraphina handed me a small backpack — the one we’d packed hours ago, filled with the evidence that could destroy our father’s empire. “We have ten minutes before the cameras reset,” she said, glancing at her watch. “After that, we’re ghosts or corpses. Pick one.”

We moved fast. The gravel crunched beneath our feet as we slipped along the side of the mansion, through the overgrown hedge and toward the old service gate. The air smelled of rain and danger. Every gust of wind made the branches creak like warnings.

Aiden crouched by the power box. Sparks flashed faintly as he bypassed the final lock. “Done,” he muttered. “Go.”

We sprinted across the open path, hearts pounding, the mansion’s security lights flickering behind us. For a heartbeat, freedom was real — the gate, the road beyond, the city lights faint in the distance.

Then — a sound.

A low click.

A spotlight flared to life.

“Run!” I hissed.

We scattered. Seraphina ducked behind the shrubs, Aiden dived toward the gate’s control panel, and I froze — light flooding my face.

“Lilith.” The voice was deep. Familiar. It crawled under my skin like fire.

My father’s head of security — Malik. The same man who’d once carried me on his shoulders as a child. Now, his gun was pointed at my chest.

“Your father said you might try something stupid,” he said quietly. “But this… this isn’t just stupid, Lilith. This is suicide.”

I stepped closer, my voice low, steady. “Maybe. But at least it’s my choice.”

He hesitated — just for a second — and that was enough.

Aiden’s voice cracked through the night: “Now!”

The explosion wasn’t big, but it was loud enough — a flash of white light, a burst of smoke from the power box. The spotlight died. I didn’t wait to see who moved next. Seraphina grabbed my hand, Aiden yanked the gate open, and we ran.

Through the dark, through the rain, through the roar of alarms that began to scream behind us.

The mansion — our prison, our curse — disappeared in the distance.

For the first time in years, I was free.

But deep inside, I knew freedom wouldn’t last. My father would come for us. He always did.

And next time… he wouldn’t send guards.

He’d come himself.