A blindfold covered her eyes.Cloth, not plastic.Someone had been considerate enough to make sure she could still breathe.
That thought didn’t help.
She swallowed and tasted fear, dust, and the metallic tang of hunger that told her she’d been here longer than she wanted to admit, longer than she could afford.
Okay, Danica, breathe.Panic wasted oxygen.
Her own advice, once given to Chloe during a meltdown over late leggings shipments, echoed back at her now with a bitter edge.Funny how wisdom always sounded better when it wasn’t being tested on a cold floor.
She focused on sound.There was nothing obvious.She couldn’t hear any traffic or voices, or even any hum of machinery.Wherever she was, it wasn’t anywhere people casually wandered past.But every once in a while, she heard a heavy metallic thump overhead and wondered if the roof was going to cave in on her.
Reality slid into place with horrifying clarity.She had been taken.
She squeezed her eyes shut beneath the blindfold, hoping to rewind time and put her back in her apartment.Or Chloe’s office.Or even the damn gym she hated at first but was slowly starting to appreciate.
Fear enclosed her in an icy grip.This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.
It wasn’t supposed to end at all.
It had all started so small.A flicker.A spark she’d told herself was justified.
Jealousy had always lived within her, tucked away like a bad habit she refused to quit.It grew with Chloe’s success, fed on headlines, subscriber counts, and on the way people looked at her stepsister as if she were sunlight incarnate.From the clothing line to television commercials to billboards and millions of followers, that jealousy festered.The gym, gleaming and modern, would soon be full of people who adored her.
People never looked twice at Danica.
That truth settled heavy inside her, as familiar as the cold.
Their father had followed Chloe’s life as if it were his own private religion.He watched videos of her and saved every article ever written about her.He talked about her accomplishments with a softness he never used at home.Oh, he was careful and never said Chloe’s name in front of his wife, but Danica always knew.
She saw it in the way he smiled at his phone.In the pauses when Chloe’s name hovered unspoken in the air.
Danica had learned early what it meant to be second best.Or worse, invisible.
Chloe hadn’t even known.That was the cruelest part.She’d grown up loved and supported by her adopted family, blissfully unaware of the resentment fermenting in the shadows of a life she never asked to intrude on.
Danica had known, though.And she’d hated her for it, slowly at first, then all at once.
The photo she’d left on Chloe’s car had been her first attempt to rattle that unflappable composure.Her fingers had trembled as she altered it, scrawlingdie bitchwith a satisfaction that made her stomach flip.She told herself it was just a warning.Fear was deserved, wasn’t it?
What had Chloe done?She’d blown it off as if it were nothing.
Then came another bruising, brutal gut-punch: Kayne Serruto.
The jealousy had sharpened the moment Chloe introduced him.Boyfriend.
Danica had not been prepared for that.Forhim.The way he filled the room without trying.His quiet, competent confidence.The lethal calm wrapped in Southern charm.One look and she’d been knocked off center.It was a humiliating rush that felt too big for a man she’d just met.
She told herself it was attraction, simple, shallow, and temporary.Surely it would pass.
It didn’t.
Because once again, Chloe had everything.Success.Loyalty.The effortless goodness.And nowhim, that gorgeous, protective boyfriend who looked at Chloe as if she was something worth guarding with his life.Danica had watched them together and felt the heat of it, the inevitability.She’d flirted shamelessly, pushed boundaries, and smiled too wide, hoping, just once, that something might choose her instead.
Nothing ever did.Not their father, not fate, and not him.
The realization burned worse than the cold seeping into her bones now.It hadn’t just been envy.It had been grief for a life she thought she might finally touch.For a man she never had a chance of stealing.Chloe hadn’t even known she was winning.She never did.
After that, it escalated.
