Chapter 2. Secrets That Bind Us

And so it began. First the cable car was renovated so that materials could easily be brought up the mountain. Larger materials were transported by helicopter. Elize ordered a luxury passenger cabin from Switzerland so that guests could reach the castle in stately fashion.

The café was the first major investment. Elize wanted a good large kitchen and dining room because she often wanted to receive guests. By setting up a café she got both and generated income while the renovation continued.

Elize often went to the castle alone, but in recent years the twins wanted to come along more and more often. They found it fascinating, that mix of dilapidated history and the clever renovations their mother carried out step by step. Nikolas already helped with practical things, such as selecting materials and checking the contractors, while Katarina was especially fascinated by the hidden spaces that slowly took shape.

In the eyes of her children Elize was a near-boomer with an inexplicable obsession with an old, remote castle. They sometimes teased her about it. Lovingly, but with a touch of surprise. Elize carefully kept the deeper secrets to herself. Her hidden desires were never allowed to come to light. Not for her children. Never for her children. How quickly that would change...

A few months before their eighteenth birthday, Katarina found a dusty black leather diary during a cleanup in the old basement of their house in the Netherlands. It was hidden behind a loose plank in the cupboard where Elize kept her private things. A place where no one ever went, she thought.

Curious, Katarina opened it and immediately recognized her mother’s handwriting. The pages were filled with detailed descriptions: fantasies about dominance, punishment, surrender, and how she wanted to set up the castle to make those desires reality. There were sketches of crosses, benches, hooks, and notes about how liberating it would feel to finally live openly as she was.

She quickly went upstairs, found her brother and told him what she had found. Together they read it with pounding hearts in one sitting. As they read, Katarina felt the familiar tingle rise again, lower this time, warmer. Nikolas shifted uncomfortably in his chair. They felt no shock or disgust, rather recognition. For years Katarina had played games with Nikolas. Light dominance, subtle humiliation, sensual assignments. It had started as innocent brother-sister play but had become increasingly intense. She had never named it out loud, but it felt good, exciting. And now it turned out her mother felt the same?

That evening Katarina waited until Elize was sitting alone in the living room with a glass of wine. Nikolas was upstairs gaming. Katarina sat down opposite her mother. She had to get it off her chest. “Mom ... I found this,” she showed the diary. Elize looked at it and turned deathly pale. Her hand trembled as she picked it up. This was her intimate diary. Private and certainly not suitable for her children.