Outside, the cameras click and flash like they’ve been starved for something shiny. I give them exactly what they came for.
My smile is toothpaste-commercial perfect—white, radiant, humble.
Like I’m not planning to devour the world with it.
Within an hour, my release is processed. My few personal items are dumped into a cheap tote, and I’m walking out to Harper, waiting by her little Subaru with her hands clasped like she’s about to meet her prom date instead of the woman whose public image she resurrected from the ashes.
Her trench coat flutters. Her curls bounce. She looks younger than she is.
Innocent.
Or at least… easy.
“You’re free,” she breathes, pulling me into a hug that lasts two seconds too long.
I pat her back like I’m grateful. Like I haven’t been orchestrating this moment for one-thousand-and-eighty days from a concrete slab beside a plastic toilet and a blanket too thin to qualify as mercy.
Harper smiles like nothing bad has ever happened to her, and something slow and hot stirs in my chest.
From the corner of my eye, I catch Declan near the gate—jaw tight, hands balled, uniform too neat, eyes too full of whatever he’ll never say out loud. He doesn’t wave. Doesn’t nod.
But I know that look.
He wants to come with me.
He can’t.
But he will. Eventually. They always do.
Declan thinks he saw the real me. What he saw was the version I needed him to see. He wanted to save me. That was his first mistake. Men who need to be heroes always end up villains.
Blake’s lens glints in the sunlight as we head toward the waiting SUV. Evelyn sits in the passenger seat behind dark sunglasses, her expression artfully neutral. She gives me a small nod—measured, professional.
But the way her gaze lingers isn’t neutrality.
It’s awe.
I slide into the back seat. The door shuts with a luxurious thunk. For the first time in nearly three years, no bars clang. No lock bites.
I’m free.
And the world believes I deserve it.
Harper chatters from the front about schedules, interviews, how Netflix wants to fly us to New York for a press blitz.
“They think you’d be perfect onLate Night with Sloan,” she says, twisting around to beam at me. “You’ll be the face of second chances.”
Second chances. I almost laugh. Like I ever needed the first one.
“I’m honored,” I say, voice low and syrupy. “None of this would’ve happened without you, Harper.”
She blushes. Actually blushes.
It’s like watching a lamb prance into a slaughterhouse.
“I just told your truth,” she says.
No, sweetheart.
