And watching them.
Eli stepped in first, quiet and careful not to crowd her. Delaney followed a second later, just as silent.
Olivia blinked, her gaze moving between them. “You’re real,” she whispered. Her voice was hoarse and barely there.
Eli offered a soft nod. “Yeah. We’re here.”
“You pulled me out,” she said.
“We did,” Delaney answered, her voice low and steady. “You’re safe now.”
Olivia swallowed hard, her throat working. “I remember… the trees, and one of the men, he was going to drag me into the SUV.”
“You stopped him,” Eli said. “You fought. You gave us time.”
She didn’t respond right away. Just stared at them like she was trying to decide if it was safe to believe anything anymore.
Then her lower lip trembled, and she whispered, “Is Ava okay?”
Eli and Delaney shared a look, neither of them wanting to say the words out loud. Eli stepped closer to the bed.
“We don’t know yet,” he said gently. “But we’regoing to find her.”
Tears welled in Olivia’s eyes, spilling over onto the bruised curve of her cheek. She didn’t try to wipe them away.
“I shouldn’t have left Ava,” she whispered. “I tried to find her. I looked everywhere. But they had already separated us, and I couldn’t—” Her voice cracked. “I couldn’t find her.”
Delaney moved a little closer to the bed, her presence quiet but grounding. Eli stayed steady, watching Olivia fight to hold herself together.
“You did what you had to do to survive,” he said gently. “No one blames you.”
“I should have done more,” she said, her fingers gripping the edge of the blanket. “I knew something was wrong. I told Ava we needed to get out of there, but she didn’t want to believe it at first.”
Olivia looked up at them, eyes glassy and fierce.
“You have to get her out. That place… it’s not what they say it is. There are girls who cry all night, and no one comes. People disappear. They tell you it’s your fault if you can’t get better, and then they take things away. Phones. Letters. Food.”
Eli felt the heat build low in his chest. Rage, controlled but sharp.
“They punish you if you speak out. And some of the staff just… watch. Or worse.”
Olivia’s voice dropped to a near whisper. “One of them drugged Ava once. She told me, after. Saidshe woke up not remembering a full day. And she was scared. More scared than I’ve ever seen her.”
Delaney’s hand curled into a fist.
Olivia sniffed, her voice turning bitter. “Our grandfather should have never sent us there. He told Mom he was getting us help, that we needed structure. But it wasn’t about us. It was about control. Just like always.”
She let out a shaky breath and sagged back against the pillows, trembling from the effort.
Eli took a slow step forward. “You’re not going back there,” he said. “We’re going to find your sister.”
Olivia wiped at her face with the corner of the blanket, her hands shaking. “What about the men who were guarding me? Ty and… the other one, Jackson?”
“They’re going to be fine,” Eli said. “Ty had surgery, but the doctors say he’ll make a full recovery. Jackson’s banged up, but he’s already giving the nurses hell.”
That earned the faintest flicker of a smile from Olivia.
Delaney stepped a little closer. “Can you tell us how you got away from the institute? You said they had separated you from your sister.”
