Her words slice clean through the quiet tension that’s been hanging between us from the moment she walked in, drawing a shocked scoff from me before I can stop myself.
“Look at me for a second,” I say. I wait until her dark eyes finally lift to mine before I continue. “I don’t hate you, Gianna. But I didn’t ask for this any more than you did.”
She lets out a bitter laugh, raw and fractured. The flash of venom in her eyes, and the curl of her lip might be the realest emotion I’ve seen from anyone in this family.
“And you think that matters?” she snaps. “You’ll still have far more freedom than I ever will.”
“Not always,” I say, my voice barely more than a breath.
Her head tilts, eyes sharp. “Name one choice you lose when you marry me.”
This isn’t for you.
No. It’s not. Not anymore.
And if her reaction to Beg was that visceral, I can’t even imagine what she’d do if she knew it was me behind the login.
Gianna watches me closely but doesn’t press. Instead, she reads me like a book as her dark eyes watch me with resigned understanding, and her whole body deflates as any hope at a happy ending leaves her.
“You won’t love me,” she whispers, but it’s a statement all the same.
“No,” I admit, the truth hitting the air like ice water.
Pain flits across her face, fast and fleeting, before she schools her features into something colder, shoving her feelings behind a mask no eighteen-year-old should have mastered so effortlessly.
“Then don’t lie to me.”
“I won’t. And I’ll never hurt you,” I tell her. “But I can’t save you from this either.”
Silence stretches out between us, heavy as chains. She nods, her dark hair falling like a curtain around her face with the movement, as though she’d already braced herself for this outcome.
“Fine,” she says, her voice low and firm. “As long as we understand each other.”
She turns and slips out the door, her bare feet whispering over the tiles like a secret. The moment the door clicks shut, I sag against the wall, finally exhaling the breath I’ve been holding since Lily vanished from my life.
My laptop still lies on the floor, its cracked screen flickering, and the webcam blinking like it’s mocking me.
I crouch and pick it up, pressing my thumb over the spiderweb of shattered glass.
She wants to play games? Fine. I invented games. I don’t lose. Not in the Pit. Not in the Points. And sure as hell not to the girl who once cried my name into a pillow while I promised her the world.
Chapter 22
The studio lights hum low, a faint, persistent sound that fills the silence around me as I stare at the ragged sketch on my desk. Class ended hours ago, yet I’m still here, trapped by the fabric swatches scattered like fallen leaves across the table. They’re meant to be my future, more than just designs for streams on Tempt. They’re supposed to be pieces that walk into high-end boutiques one day, garments stitched from years of stubborn hope.
But today, that future feels brittle, fragile. Like one careless word could snap it clean in half.
Madame Adele André’s voice still echoes, sharp and unrelenting.
“You want to launch your own brand? Ma petite rêveuse, that’s cute, but completely unrealistic. Why waste time chasing a pipe dream when you could focus on something practical?”
My little dreamer.
Pretty words with teeth.
The curl of her lip as she surveyed my sketches said everything she didn’t bother to voice. Years of late nights, every sleepless, caffeine-fuelled hour, every inch of myself I’d poured into these designs, reduced to a scoff.
I chew my lip, fingers curling over the edge of the sketchbook. I want to throw it, to feel something break that isn’t me.
