I pad back to the room and pull on my mask, then my clothing. It feels like hours that I wait, though it’s probably only fifteen minutes.
The door opens. “Nik?”
“Ana,” I say, oddly relieved to hear her voice. “I thought you were…were you crying again when you left?”
She sighs. “I’m fine,” she says. “It’s just been an emotional night.”
“Am I to blame?”
“A little,” she says, almost shyly. “But I, too, have a complicated life and thinking about my family…it’s just…”
“It’s just what?”
“It’s a story for another time. Maybe. No, probably not. It’s not sexy.”
“Well, yes. I understand.”
“You’re right,” she says. “This should be a safe space for you. A place where nothing matters but feeling good. I’m sorry I ruined that for you tonight. Goodbye, Nik.”
Before I can answer, I hear the door quietly click closed again, and I am alone, left wondering if I will ever see her again.
17
LEANNA
The Commission meetingand graduation seem to take equal weight in my life at the moment. I should be studying and getting ready for finals.
If I were a normal person, I’d be interviewing for jobs and thinking about starting my career.
My roommates are all doing that. Rylee already has something lined up in New York. Makayla is interviewing for jobs here in Chicago. Charlotte is starting grad school in the fall.
Me? I’m attending more and more meetings with my father, sitting in like a dutiful successor-in-training for a job I don’t really want.
It’s not that it’s all boring; some of it is actually fascinating.
My father runs a sprawling network of legitimate businesses, all neatly tucked under the umbrella of a single holding company. And I’ll admit, it fascinates me.
The structure, the scale, the strategy. I genuinely want to learn how it all fits together.
But the truth? It’s overwhelming.
I tell him all the time there’s no way I’ll be ready to manage even that side of the operation straight out of college. I’m too green, too inexperienced. Just trying to wrap my head around the moving parts makes me dizzy.
He always laughs and waves me off.
“Oh, honey,” he says, “I didn’t build this in a day. It took years—smart investments, long nights, the right people around me. That’s what I’m giving you: a team, a foundation, and time. I’m fifty-seven, not eighty. I’ve got plenty of good years left to teach you.”
He’s not wrong. But that doesn’t mean I’m not conflicted.
Because while the business side genuinely interests me, the part cloaked in shadows and blood still makes my stomach turn.
I haven’t forgotten what I saw in that walk-in cooler. Christina Petrella’s lifeless body. The chill in the air. The weight of it.
That moment branded something into me.
I’m no closer to accepting violence now than I was then.
I can’t picture a future where I’d ever give the order to torture someone… let alone kill.
