I force myself to look up. My nurse brain does what it always does: reads the room as a triage bay. East has gone still, the bouncing knee locked. Darla's hand has tightened on his shoulder, knuckles blanching. Maggie's fingers press harder into James's knee, her circle-rubbing stopped. Candace's jaw is set, eyes sharp, cataloging, and I recognize the look because it's the same one I wear when I'm assessing whether someone is about to code.
"By the third or fourth girl, I knew. The secrecy was too heavy, the exams too specific, Alice Brighton showing up after every clearance I signed. But I was too afraid to refuse. So I kept signing those forms until I found Anna on that table and I couldn't lie to myself anymore."
The silence that follows is deafening, the kind that has texture and weight, and I can feel it pressing against my chest.
"My friend Anna," I say, and my voice softens without my permission, the way it does when I'm talking to a patient's family and the news is bad. "Her father's a senator. You'd know the name." James' mouth thins. Nash's eyes sharpen. Malachi's jaw ticks. "She was a freshman. Hopeful. We were supposed to meet for lunch over break, and she didn't show."
The memory slides cold under my skin, clinical and invasive.
"My father called. Told me the hospital needed me. I went up, and she was on a table with an IV in and monitors beeping. Nurses I'd never seen, a doctor who never charted anything. They were talking about flight plans, security logistics, and how much time before the handoff. They were doing it in the same flat, procedural tone I use when I'm coordinating a patient transfer. As if it was routine."
Ruby has stopped fidgeting entirely, which might be the most unsettling thing in the room. East is forward with his elbows on his knees. Darla presses her lips together. James covers Maggie's hand with his own.
"I panicked. Ran to Tobias, her security guard. He'd been with her for years. He believed me without a single question, grabbed his keys and his gun, and we went back. She was gone. Bed stripped. Room clean. As if she'd never been there."
My throat burns. I swallow past it.
"My father found me. Dragged me into his office. Told me I was overreacting, that Anna was fulfilling her purpose. That this is how things have always been done, just cleaner now."
A sound tears out of East, low and obscene. James mutters something that sounds as though a prayer and a promise got braided together. Nash's jaw flexes hard enough that I can see the muscle jump from across the room.
"He told me it was time I became useful. Walked me into another room where a girl sat on a table, younger than me, terrified. I had a chart in my hands and a syringe. The doctor told me what to do: dose, protocol, beautification schedule." The word tastes of poison. "I stood there trying to talk myself into it the way I've talked myself into hard procedures before, telling myself if not me then someone worse, if I did it I could at least make it hurt less."
"My hand shook," I whisper. "I dropped the syringe and ran." I take a breath that scrapes on the way in. "Later that night I heard him on the phone. He thought I'd gone to bed. He said I'd become more trouble than I was worth. That he'd sell me instead."
The clubhouse is silent, the kind of silence that roars. I can feel my pulse in my fingertips the way I feel it when I'm running a code and waiting for the monitor to tell me whether someone lives or dies.
"I knew he meant it. So I left. Grabbed cash, keys, a bag. I drove into the city and got a hotel room where the clerk didn't care about my last name." My gaze flicks toward Knox. His eyes are on me, hot and steady. There's hunger and fury and love alltangled in a look that nearly knocks me sideways. "That's where I met him."
No one says anything. I check my breathing. Shallow but functional. My hands have stopped shaking, which surprises me until I realize I've been gripping my hem so hard my knuckles ache.
"I didn't stop my father." The quiet words land heavier than everything before them. "Those girls still went where they were sent. Anna never made it back. I was there, and I tried, but not enough. While I ran, more girls were brought in, scrubbed, dressed, and flown away."
My vision blurs and I blink it back, because if I start crying now I won't be able to finish.
"You all keep getting hurt because of people who operate the way he does. Candace. Darla. Olivia. Girls at the docks. And I used to stand in rooms where those deals started. I was part of it." I suck in a shaky breath. "So if you want me to leave, if you don't want your patch associated with whatever stain my name carries, I get it. I won't fight you."
The words hang in the room, raw and ugly, while I wait for the verdict the way you wait for lab results you already know are bad.
Then Candace moves.
She sets her mug down with quiet precision and steps forward, stopping across the table from me. Her shoulders are relaxed, but her eyes are anything but. Flint and fire, with an edge that looks inherited.
"So your father and Alice Brighton swim in the same muck," she says, cool and stripped of surprise.
"Candace—"
One hand lifts, a clean interruption. "Don't apologize to me for him."
The room holds its breath.
"We're clear on one thing. Alice is my problem. My blood. My ghost. Yours is your father. They did business in the same rooms, but we're not confusing who's responsible for what." Her mouth tightens. "You signed forms because a man who was supposed to protect you put a pen in your hand and called it duty. That's coercion. That's his crime wearing your initials. You walked away from it before he could make you into something worse."
The way she says we has weight, and I feel it settle into my chest, a hand pressing down on a wound to stop the bleeding.
"You got out. Now you're standing in this room handing us the map to burn it all down." Her chin lifts. "We don't leave our own."
Heat pricks behind my eyes, and I stare at a gouge in the table so I don't burst into tears just from her claiming me.
