Didn’t acknowledge the weight of what I’d just said.
“Elena, it’s time to accept your fate,” he said, quiet but piercing.
“In a few minutes, you’ll be on the table in the third-floor lab, offered for Violet. I’ll tell everyone you did it willingly—so your name is remembered forever.”
Panic clawed through me.
My pulse surged.
Every fiber of my body screamed.
“Like I said,” he added, voice cold as steel, “I’m giving you a choice. Don’t make it difficult. We can do this the easy way—or the hard, painful way.”
He turned the wheel sharply.
The truck veered off the main path, bypassing the grand academic buildings entirely.
Instead, he guided us toward a separate structure at the back of the campus—a sleek, windowless white building that stood apart from everything else.
Cold. Clinical.
Wrong.
It rose four stories into the sky, its surface reflecting the pale morning light like a blade.
Like something built for one purpose only.
I stared at it.
Then slowly—almost unconsciously—my fingers curled into my palm.
No.
Not like this.
Not here.
Not now.
My pulse hammered so violently I could feel it rattling in my teeth, a frantic, trapped rhythm that refused to slow.
The Hilux rolled into the shadowed loading bay beneath the building and came to a stop with a final, decisive thud.
Vincenzo cut the engine.
The silence that followed was absolute.
It pressed against my ears, against my chest, as if the world itself had paused to witness what was about to happen.
He opened his door and stepped out without a word.
The sound of his boots hitting concrete echoed once, then faded into the hollow stillness.
I didn’t move.
My hands were clenched in my lap so tightly my nails dug crescents into my palms, the pain grounding me just enough to keep me from spiraling completely.
Through the rearview mirror, my eyes drifted—almost against my will—to the perimeter beyond.
