“This isn’t a fucking game anymore,” Raf snaps.
Ford heaves a sigh as he begrudgingly pulls his phone out, unlocking it with quick, practiced flicks of his fingers. His expression shifts as he scrolls. “Tracker still shows her at the apartment.”
My brows draw in, eyes scanning the room again. Then I cross to her desk and start opening the drawers, searching for the collar.
I find it in the second one down, the silver chain coiled around the glittering crown like a snake.
“She ditched it,” I mutter as I lift it from the drawer, the diamonds catching the light. From the way the necklace looks, you’d never guess there was a tiny tracker embedded in the charm. “She’s smarter than we thought.”
Ford shakes his head, expression twisting with anger and admiration in equal measure. “Or ballsier.”
Raf doesn’t respond. He’s already pulling out his own phone, dialing and putting the call on speaker.
Campus Security picks up on the first ring.
“Mr. Romero, what can I do for you?”
“Did Ava Morrow leave campus?” Raf asks, voice razor sharp.
“Yes, sir,” the man replies easily. “Your father came to collect her this morning. Said he’d cleared it with you.”
My stomach drops as silence slams down on the room.
Raf ends the call without another word, shoving his phone into his pocket and dragging a hand through his hair like he’s trying to hold himself together.
“Well,” he mutters. “There’s our answer. He took her home.”
The quiet creeps back in, heavier now. Final.
She’s really gone.
“So, we go get her,” I say, looking between them. “Right?”
“No,” Raf replies flatly.
“The fuck we don’t,” Ford snaps, snatching the necklace from me and clutching it tightly in his fist. “She’s our Doll. She can’t just–”
“No, she’s not,” Raf cuts in. “She was never initiated.” His voice is tight, every word measured. “This was all supposed to be temporary, remember? Just a way to keep her under our control until Gideon came back.” He exhales slowly, fingers digging into his hair. “She was a fucking distraction. Now that she’s gone, we can focus on finding a way to bring that asshole down for good.”
A familiar coldness threads through my veins as his words settle.
I look around the room– at the hollow places where Ava’s things used to be, the negative space she left behind– and something uncomfortable coils in my chest. Regret, maybe. Or something close enough to make me uneasy.
Knowing it was always supposed to end this way doesn’t make the reality any less jarring. This was always the plan, but plans don’t usually leave this many loose ends.
And games don’t usually end with silence.
CHAPTER 4
AVA
I’ve lostall sense of time.
There are no clocks in here, no windows, nothing to anchor me to the world outside of this room. My circadian rhythm now relies on a manufactured cycling of the lights– the backlit landscape across from the bed fading to dark just before the overhead fluorescents switch off, then an artificial sunrise as the image gradually illuminates before they come back on. By that count, I’ve been here for two nights and three days.
Or maybe that’s just what they want me to believe.
There’s no way to know whether the cycle is honest or just another layer of manipulation, but I catch myself counting anyway, because the alternative is worse. If I lose track, it means I’ve given up. It means I’ve accepted being stripped of my most basic freedoms and resigned myself to whatever fate this place has planned.
