The words landed somewhere above her, disconnected from the reality of what was happening. A shoe-expensive, the heel catching the dim light-nudged at something small and still lying just beyond Arla's reach. She could not turn her head to see it. She did not need to.
Caden. Her son. Five years old. She knew, with the certainty that comes only at the end of all things, that he was already gone.
"Don't be too hard on her, Blair." The voice was smooth, almost gentle-the same voice that had whispered goodnight to Caden only hours earlier. "She's about to learn."
Arla's vision collapsed to a single point of grey. The two figures-the woman who had tormented her, the man who had sworn to protect her-blurred into indistinct shapes against the basement's yellow light. Clinton wiped something dark from his hunting knife with a white handkerchief, the motion unhurried, almost fastidious.
A sound clawed its way up Arla's throat. It was not a word. It was the shape of everything she had lost, pressed into a single ragged breath.
Then darkness-heavy, absolute-swallowed her whole.
*In the void between what was and what came next, one thought crystallized, sharp as broken glass: If I had known sooner. If I had come home earlier. *
Air punched into her lungs.
Arla jerked upright, her hands flying to her chest, fingers scrabbling against skin that should have been wet and warm and was instead dry, overheated, covered in silk. The slick slide of expensive sheets tangled around her legs. Her pupils contracted against the dim yellow glow of a wall sconce, her brain misfiring, unable to reconcile the absence of pain, the absence of concrete, the absence of her son.
Thunder cracked overhead, shaking the floorboards. Lightning flooded the room for a heartbeat-sprawling, unfamiliar, impossibly luxurious.
And with the thunder came a sound that turned the blood in Arla's veins to ice.
A growl. Low, animal, vibrating with something suppressed and agonizing. It came from the space beside her.
She turned. Her neck moved stiffly, as though the muscles had forgotten how to function.
A man lay on the other side of the massive bed. His upper body was bare, every muscle pulled taut as steel cable on the verge of snapping. He was built like something designed for violence-broad shoulders, lethal lines, a predator even in stillness.
But it was his hands that stopped her breath.
Heavy steel cuffs locked his wrists to the brass headboard. The metal had bitten deep, and the evidence of his struggle was smeared across the polished brass in streaks of red. His eyes were squeezed shut, veins standing out against his forehead. His chest heaved with the rhythm of someone fighting a battle no one else could see.
Arla scrambled backward. Her spine hit the cold headboard with a hollow thud.
The man's ragged breathing stopped for a single, terrifying second.
Then memory crashed into her-the luxury hotel, the thunderstorm, the man in the restraints. She knew this night. She knew this room.
This was the night the Sargent family had forced her to drink. The night she had stumbled into the wrong suite-the suite where rumor said a madman was kept hidden by powerful men.
If this was real. If she was back.
Today was the day Blair's cruelty would cross a line from which there was no return. The day Arla would discover the truth about the attic.
The thought of her son crushed every other fear. She had to get back to the manor. She had to reach Caden before Blair did.
She threw the duvet aside. Her bare feet hit the thick wool rug, and she dropped to her knees, hands shaking as she grabbed the black evening gown crumpled on the floor. She pulled it over her head, shoved her arms through the sleeves, reached behind her back. The zipper caught. Sweat beaded on her forehead. She pulled-hard-and the sound of tearing fabric cut through the room as the seam gave way. She did not care.
She turned toward the door.
Behind her, the violent energy in the room shifted. The thrashing stopped. The silence that replaced it was heavier, pressing down on her shoulders like a physical weight.
Her survival instincts screamed at her to run. She did not look back.
She crossed the room, her cold fingers closing around the brass doorknob. She pressed down. The lock clicked, and a rush of freezing air from the hallway hit her face.
Then came the sound-the shriek of metal pulled to its breaking point.
The man's eyes snapped open in the dark. Bloodshot. Wild. Sharper than they had any right to be.
He stared straight through Arla's back.
"Overwatch," he rasped, his voice raw and ruined. "Hold the line."
The words meant nothing to her. She was already gone.
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