“What?” I was confused.
“I knew you got the wrong idea from me saying I wanted freedom and no marriage or kids. You saved me. I feel safe with you. I want you with me, if you can be. But none of it matters until everything is settled.”
Before I could respond, she carefully lifted herself off my dick. My cum immediately started trickling down her inner thigh as she climbed back into the front passenger seat, smoothing her skirt down and fixing it neatly, like we hadn’t just fucked in the back seat.
“We need to get back to the house. Elara, her husband, and Grandpa left at least twenty minutes ago.”
I followed, tucking myself away and sliding into the driver’s seat, my legs still shaky, heart still pounding from the intensity of it all. She pulled out her phone and unlocked it.
“Oh shit,” she said as she scrolled.
“What?”
She handed it over to me. It was an Instagram post about Olivia making an appearance at a Black-owned bookstore in Brooklyn.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment,” she said quietly, watching my reaction. “Olivia’s too vain to give up the spotlight, even at a time like this.”
Chloe reached over and laced her fingers with mine, giving them a gentle squeeze. “Can you go to New York with me, or do I need to ask Elara?”
I stared at the screen. The image of Olivia smiling in front of a display of "her" books made my blood run cold. She looked perfectly composed for someone who had stolen her sister's words.
"I'm going," I said, my voice finally finding its weight. "You don't need to ask Elara. I'm not letting you out of my sight, especially not where Arthur's reach might be."
He had been calling and threatening her.
"What's the plan?" I asked, starting the engine.
"She’s doing a live reading of her first indie poetry collection, followed by a Q&A at 7:00 PM in two days."
"I’m going to walk into that room. I’m going to let her see me. And then I’m going to read the original draft—and I'm going to point out that the poem she's reading is an acrostic for Chloe."
"You want to ambush her in front of her fans," I stated. It wasn't a question.
"Yes. I’m going to take back my words in the place where she feels most powerful," Chloe corrected. "I want the recording to go viral. I want every person who ever bought a book with her name on it to know they were reading the diary of a prisoner. I’m going to post my blog with all the poems she stole that tell my story, then sue her for intellectual property theft. I want the public to be on that bitch’s head."
I studied her for a second. This wasn’t the girl in the attic. This wasn’t even the girl from a week ago. She was developing before my eyes.
“Alright,” I said finally, pulling out into traffic. “Then we do it your way.”
Chapter 37: Chloe
I’d gone from the attic for fourteen years to my second time on a private jet in the span of a month. That first time, I’d touched everything—ran my fingers along the leather, stared out the window too long.
This time… I was more composed.
Killian was sitting across from me. He had been real contemplative for the last two days. Too much had happened too fast, so I understood why he was in his head. I shifted slightly, tucking one leg under me.
His eyes came up to stare at me.
"What?" I asked.
He spoke up. “Your transformation in such a short time is giving me whiplash.”
I tilted my head slightly. “It’s not a transformation.”
“In that attic, I had to be small,” I said. “Quiet. Easy to control. Easy to ignore. This is who I’ve always been. The other me wasn’t me. I was a doll.”
He nodded and drifted back into his head. I leaned back slightly. I had a question of my own.
