Chapter 4
The news of my parents’ crushed vehicle was still echoing in my skull when the heavy iron deadbolt of my door threw with a deafening clack.
I didn’t scramble. I didn’t flinch. I stood perfectly still in the center of the freezing room, the frigid air no longer registering against my skin. The ice in my veins had flash-boiled into pure, white-hot adrenaline.
The heavy oak door swung open. Flora Warren stepped over the threshold, wrapped in a sweeping vicuña wool coat that cost more than her parents had made in a decade. She held a steaming ceramic mug of coffee, a calculated prop meant to flaunt the warmth and sustenance I had been denied for weeks.
She paused, expecting to find me huddled on the floor, shivering and broken. Instead, I stood tall, smoothing the frayed cuff of my silk blouse with steady fingers.
Flora’s delicate, practiced smile faltered for a fraction of a second before she forced it back into place. "Still standing, Quinn? Edison asked about you this morning. I told him you were still too unstable to see reason. He kissed my forehead and told me not to worry my pretty head over you."
Before the news broadcast, I might have held my silence. But the woman who had patiently endured this cage was gone, burned away by the image of my parents bleeding in an intensive care unit.
"You bought that coat off the rack," I said, my voice dropping into the quiet, resonant space of the room. It didn't tremble. It was a blade sliding from a sheath.
Flora blinked, the non sequitur throwing her off balance. "Excuse me?"
"The shoulders are puckered. The hem is uneven. It’s a very good imitation of the Hernandez Fall line, but it’s still an imitation." I took a slow, deliberate step toward her. "Just like you."
"Careful, Quinn," she warned, her breathy tone tightening. "I control whether you eat tonight."
"You control nothing," I replied, taking another step. The temperature in the room seemed to drop, yet I was the one radiating absolute zero. "You think you’ve conquered Edison. You think you’ve infiltrated a world that spent your entire life locking you out. But you don’t have his love, Flora. You have his guilt. And guilt is a depreciating asset."
Flora’s grip on the mug tightened. Her knuckles bleached to the color of bone. "He’s mine. He worships me."
"He worships a phantom," I said, my voice dropping to a lethal whisper as I closed the distance. I was inches from her now, towering over her despite my bare feet. "You grew up watching us from the cheap seats, pressing your face against the glass. You learned to play the piano because it was the only way they’d let you through the service doors. You built this entire pathetic fiction of stolen innocence because you have absolutely nothing else to offer."
"Shut up," Flora hissed, the soft, doe-eyed victim vanishing beneath a sudden, violent snarl.
"You are terrified," I continued, my gaze locking onto hers, stripping her down to the hollow core. "Every time he looks at you, your stomach turns, doesn't it? Because you know that the second the lie cracks, you are nothing. You have no self, Flora. You are just a parasite feeding on a man's misplaced conscience. And when I walk out of here, I am going to expose every cheap, fabricated piece of you to the light."
Flora’s chest heaved. The perfectly manicured mask shattered entirely. Her eyes went wild, darting around the room as if the walls were closing in on her. She took a stumbling step backward, the coffee sloshing over the rim of the mug and scalding her wrist. She didn't even register the pain.
"You're never walking out of here," she breathed, her voice trembling—not with practiced fragility, but with genuine, unadulterated terror.
She spun on her heel and fled into the corridor, slamming the heavy door behind her.
But in her panic, she forgot to throw the deadbolt completely. The metal latch caught, but left a fraction of an inch of space—just enough for the sound of her frantic, clicking heels to echo back to me.
I pressed my ear against the freezing wood. She was pacing just outside, her breathing ragged. I heard the sharp, desperate tapping of a phone screen.
"Pick up," she muttered frantically. "Pick up... Listen to me. The Jensen guards aren't enough. I need this handled tonight. No, not by his people! If Edison finds out, it’s over."
A pause. The coastal wind howled against the glass behind me.
"I don't care what it costs," Flora spat, her voice dropping into a guttural, vicious register. "Find outsiders. Street trash. Send them to the cliffside estate immediately. I want her beaten to death. Break the window. Throw her out of it. Make it look like she tried to escape and fell. Just make sure she stops breathing."
The call ended with a sharp click. Her footsteps retreated rapidly down the hall, fading into the cavernous silence of the mansion.
I stepped back from the door. The death warrant had been signed. They were coming to kill me.
I looked around the barren, freezing room. There was no furniture. No weapons. Just the heavy ceramic bowl that usually held my oats, sitting in the corner.
My parents were fighting for their lives in a hospital bed. I was not going to die in this cage. I picked up the heavy bowl, wrapped my bleeding knuckles in the trailing silk of my torn sleeve, and walked back to the door to wait in the dark.
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