Page 125 of Damsel in Disguise

The transition was seamless to the point of being unsettling—signatures exchanged, doors opened, protocols overridden without so much as a ripple of resistance.

The ease with which it happened made one thing painfully clear—Halcyon Institute for Neurocognitive Rehabilitation also works under the Triarch Dominion.

My phone started vibrating the second I crossed the threshold of the psychiatric institution.

Calls. Messages. Notifications stack over each other in relentless waves. The screen lit up again and again until it felt less like communication and more like pressure.

The Keinstons.

I didn’t bother checking in then—didn’t have the energy in me to brace for their inquiry.

Alistair drove me to my apartment. I sat in the passenger side of his Aston Martin for the first time in my life. Instead of feeling butterflies and giddy, the normality of it felt too jarring.

Like the entire ordeal at Halcyon was nothing more than a brief interruption in a much larger plan, neither of us had fully spoken out loud yet.

Right now, I’m kicking the door shut and dropping my bag onto the couch.

Next, I’m heading to the kitchen to get myself a glass—no, jar—of water before finally picking up the phone.

I gulp down the water straight from the jar. Suddenly, I’m as thirsty as I was when I first woke up at Alistair’s place.

Once I’m done quenching my thirst, I select the only name that’s bugging me the most right now. Asher.

He answers on the first ring. “What the hell did you do?”

No greeting. Not “Are you okay?” Not “Where are you?” Straight to the point.

I lean against the kitchen counter, letting my weight settle onto it.

I exhale slowly. “That’s a very loaded question.”

“Ariella,” his tone tells me he’s already running through scenarios in his head. “You got yourself dragged into a situation that’s already escalating beyond what we can control.”

“You were supposed to take care of it.”

“I did, but when whispers about some shady organization are being involved, your secrets are bound to come out in the light,” he exhales. “Fucking Triarch Dominion? Seriously? The fuck were you even thinking?”

A pause. Did Adrian tell him anything? But I don’t ask him how he knew. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Learned by lesson the hard way.

“I didn’t know—”

“Do you know some creepy fucker is feeding me encrypted information about this Triarch Dominion ever since you were being detained?”

That’s weird.

“The worst part is that neither Adrian nor I can track the IP address. Our guess is it’s someone inside the organization, but I don’t trust their motive.”

My first thought is Alistair. But I push it aside.

“Whatever Adrian and I are working nonstop to clean this up before it sticks to the family name, and now I’m hearing me—what? That you just walked out? From HINR?!”

“I was let out, Asher,” I correct lightly.

A sharp exhale tears through the line. “Fucking Jesus, you’ve got to be kidding me. By who?”

I push myself off the counter. “My professor.”

“Your… what now?”