I’ve seen monsters. I was raised by one. But Anthony Falco is something worse. He’s not just violent. He’s entitled. And he’s deluded enough to believe that the day I’ll wear his ring will be areward.
The silence around me deepens.
I set the envelope on the nightstand and stand, one hand braced on the edge as I try to quiet the panic flaring just beneath my skin. There’s no one to call. No one to scream to. The guards are loyal to my father. The staff are paid too well to interfere. And the only person I ever trusted is dead.
But I’m not helpless. Not yet.
My eyes fall on the desk drawer, and I pull it open. Pens. Pencils, sharp and gleaming. No weapons—but tools. Tools that can become weapons if I need them to.
I don’t know when the wedding is, not exactly. But if Anthony Falco thinks he’ll slide a ring on my finger without losing something first, he hasn’t been paying attention. I didn’t survive my father to be handed off like livestock. I didn’t risk my life for freedom just to fall back into a cage.
Falco’s namehangs over me like a death sentence. I can almost hear my father’s voice, already sealing the deal, already congratulating himself on securing another alliance with my body as the bargaining chip. The thought makes my skin crawl.
I’ve been held before. Not like this. Not with marriage vows being sharpened into shackles. This isn’tconfinement—it’s a countdown. And I know better than to waste energy on panic. Panic clouds your eyes, makes you miss the small openings, the cracks in their arrogance. Survival isn’t about screaming. It’s about watching. Waiting. Taking back what little control they think they’ve stripped away.
But waiting is wearing me down.
I’ve spent hours mapping out possibilities in my head. Testing every version of an escape plan I can think of. What I’d say if I got one of the staff alone. How I might slip out during a shift change. Where the cameras might be hidden. But every route ends the same way—shut down. Patrolled. Covered. The security here is layered, and my father’s reach is worse than I remembered, and I know it’s because he’s prepared for me to test his control this time. He’s not just trying to keep me here. He’s already sold me like a goddamn heirloom to the Falcos.
And I’m supposed to sit here quietly and wait to become the wife of a monster. My hands curl against my thighs. My nails leave crescent moons.
Every part of me wants to move. To act. To smash the glass vase on the dresser and see if the shard could make someone bleed. But that would be impulsive, not strategic. And impulse is how you die in a house like this.
So I breathe. I sit. And I think.
I imagine going to my father directly. Asking him, flat-out, what he expects from this marriage beyond control and politics. But I already know the answer. He wants loyalty. He wants legacy. He wants the Falco name tied to ours so tightly that I can’t cut it loose without tearing my own skin in the process.
There’s no mercy in this house.
I look down at my hands. They’re shaking again. Just slightly. The tremor of someone who’s trying to pretend she isn’t unraveling.
There has to be a way out.
I need a weapon. A signal. A name to call out to. Someone onthe outside who still gives a damn. Someone willing to come looking.
But there’s no one I trust. Except maybe the man I shouldn’t.
Theo.
The memory of him feels reckless now. Dangerous. It presses at the edges of my control like heat behind my ribs. He doesn’t even know my real name. He said he searched for me once, and I pray he will do it again.
I close my eyes and tilt my head back, breathing through the ache rising in my throat. The grief. The isolation. The fury I can’t act on. I shove it all down, lower, into the part of me that knows how to wait. Knows how to endure. Knows how to make silence look like surrender.
Because they think I’m just the girl they locked up again.
They think I’ve been stripped of everything that made me a threat.
But what they don’t know—whatno onein this house knows—is that I still remember. Every name. Every dirty transaction whispered in rooms. Every secret Declan ever told me in the dark when we were too scared to sleep.
And the flash drive still exists.
ICU.Room 718.
I move through the hospital with purpose. Trying to stay calm, no need to draw attention. I make it to the nurses’ station without a single glance that lingers too long. Most of them are too busy, too exhausted to care who’s asking questions—until they look up and see me. Then suddenly, they all find something else to do.
So I approach.
“Good morning,” I say smoothly, letting my voice drop into a measured tone that gets results without threats. “I’m hoping you can help me.”
