“I understand,” I say.
“Good. Hold on.” A rustle, and then her voice cuts through—slick syrup, smooth and heavy. “Beatrice wants to speak to you.”
Sickness coils in my gut, colder than fear. I almost hang up, my thumb hovering over the red button, tight enough to make my knuckles throb.
“Declan?” Her voice is honeyed—it drips intimacy, heavy and wrong. “Are you all right? Your father is just worried. You know how he gets about the brand.”
“I’m fine, Beatrice.”
“Oh, you’re never fine.” Her laugh is breathy, wrong in all the right ways. “I heard about the locker. I didn’t know you had that kind of fire left in you. I’ve always admired your intensity.”
I stiffen, the image of her perfect lipstick, perfect hair, perfect everything etched in my mind. Nothing about her is real. She’s my fiancée in the way a contract is a promise—signed for leverage, not love. Forced on me, packaged as a merger. She won't be marrying me; she'll be buying the Reid name, and I’m just the asset that comes with it.
“I have to go,” I say, each syllable a lifeline.
“Don’t be like that,” she croons, her tone shifting, becoming sharper. “I like it when you’re difficult, Declan. It makes the investment worthwhile. A tame asset is boring. Just don’t damage the merchandise before the wedding.”
Disgust rises, hot and acidic.
She wants the monster. She craves the danger because she thinks she holds the leash.
I hang up.
The silence that follows slams down, thick and absolute.
I grip the steering wheel, my split knuckles screaming as they press into the leather. The ache spreads up my forearms, into my shoulders.
I think about the fight. Rylan’s sleazy mouth.
I think about my father’s cold disgust.
I think about Beatrice’s warm, parasitic need.
Psycho.
Headcase.
Rylan throbbing those words out from the floor, and they’re not wrong. Not entirely.
Love in my house comes with conditions: obey, perform, endure. My father’s love is a contract. Beatrice’s is a cage. I learned young that stillness is survival. Control is the only way to keep the walls from shaking.
The curse isn’t superstition. It isn’t the ritual. It’s inheritance.
And Talia—her name, her fear, the scent of peppermint and old paper—wedges between the links of that chain, pressure on the weakest point.
A fracture.
I drop the phone into the console. My pulse is a tight, uneven beat in my throat, the cab too silent, too static. I’m about to put the truck in gear when a hard rap hits the passenger window.
I flinch.
Adrian’s face appears through the glass—hood up, breath fogging in the cold air. His stare cuts through the dark like a blade.
I unlock the door, and he climbs in without waiting for an invitation.
He shuts it quietly. No words at first. Just takes me in—the raw knuckles, the taped residue on my hand, the posture like I’m holding the world up with my spine.
“You saw,” I say.
