Something hits the floor in front of me. It’s heavy, judging from the way the impact makes the floor under my feet tremble. I can’t open my eyes, though. They weigh a million pounds, like the rest of me. It’s bad enough my awareness came back first—the inability to move is killing me.
A hand touches my face, and my eyelid is lifted. I get a blurry view of a basic, almost-empty room, and then my eyelid is lowered again.
Silence.
So much silence, it’s never-ending. I strain to hear anything outside of my shallow breathing—the breathing of another, maybe. Footsteps. A ticking clock.
Eventually, whatever held my muscles hostage ebbs away. My system burns through it slowly, my fingers first twitching back to life, then my ability to swallow. My eyelids flutter, and I force my eyes open all the way.
There is a body on the floor in front of me.
Someone in a suit, curled away from me in the fetal position.
“You’re awake.”
The voice—familiar and terrible, with a rasp that rivals mine—draws my attention to the doorway. I shudder, then immediately regret it. I shouldn’t show fear.
My father steps forward, his green eyes locked on me.
I get most of my features from him. My eyes, my dark hair. My complexion, even. My sisters are blessed to share more of my mother’s physicality. Her blonde hair and golden skin, always sun-kissed even in the dead of winter.
“You’ve grown up into a stunning young woman,” he says.
I wet my lips. I don’t trust myself to talk, or… try to bargain for my freedom. I look around more. The room really is simple. I’m not tied to a chair or bed, not like I originally expected when my limbs were too tingly or numb to get a lock on. Instead, I’m positioned in an armchair like I had fallen asleep watching television, or something equally… normal. My legs are pulled up under me, my arms at my sides. I think my head was left to rest against the back cushion.
“Come with me,” Dad says, offering his hand.
I stare at him without comprehending.
Where we are, how I got here. Why I’m here. And the man on the floor—
“Don’t look at him, babydoll.” Dad jars my thoughts. He takes my feet and puts them on the floor, then picks up my hands. He tugs me upright, holding my arms as I wobble. “You’re like a kid learning to walk again.”
My stomach twists. I know all about how he treats kids. Me as a kid. His grip on me is firm and unrelenting, and he leads me through the doorway, into a kitchen and dining room area.
Actually…
I squint at it, then glance back over my shoulder. If there wasn’t a wall dividing the two, it would be an exact replica of my apartment. And the hallway is positioned in the same spot, too.
“Go on.” Dad suddenly releases me.
“Wh—” I clear my throat. “Where?”
He gives me an odd look. “To your room.”
Um…
He shakes his head and points. “The door on the left.”
“Okay,” I whisper. I walk on unsteady legs down the hall, running my hand along the wall. There are picture frames that I refuse to look at, although I catch a passing glimpse of one: my parents and me when I was barely three months old. All smiling.
That was before, of course. Before my father fell in with the wrong people, then turned further into the world of child pornography. That has to be it, right? That explains the camera flashes in my memory.
The more I don’t want to think about it, the more my brain wants to suck me back there.
The door on the left is painted eggshell blue. I touch it, running my fingernails down one of the grooves, then grasp the handle. Turn the knob, open the door.
Should be just that easy, but I can’t do it. My limbs get stuck.
There’s something bad on the other side of this door.
Something I don’t want to know.
I glance back down the hall, to where my father stands. His arms are by his sides, loose, relaxed. That’s always the persona I knew him to exude.
My knees buckle, and my weight opens the door for me.
I practically fall inside. My knees hit the plush blue carpet first, and I can only stare at the familiar color. There was a rug like that in one of the apartments we lived in, in the room I shared with Dakota and Len when I was maybe nine or ten. We’d roll around on it, giggling about pretend, alien invaders trying to shoot us out of the sky. Because on it, we were fighter pilots. Civilization’s last hope.
My throat closes.
It’s the same layout as my apartment bedroom, but so, so different.
There are three beds. A double bed against a window with an achingly familiar comforter, maybe torn right off my real bed, and a set of twin bunk beds opposite it. The closet doors are open, clothes from my apartment. The CPU hoodie I was missing, a few sweaters and t-shirts. I stagger toward it, rifling through the clothes.
There are smaller-sized items, too. Things that would fit my sisters.
I wheel around and go to the dresser, yanking it open.
It’s filled with kid things. Underwear and sleep shirts and shorts, play clothes.
There’s a makeup bag on top of it. Without thinking, I overturn it. My makeup—my makeup—spills out. Spills everywhere. Tubes of mascara and lipstick roll off the dresser. My eyeshadow palette clatters to the floor and shatters.
“Careful, Aspen!” Dad tows me away from the shards of glass and plastic, almost lifting me completely off my feet.
I kick and squeal, unnerved at how easy he carries me away. His arm banded around my waist gives me no leniency.
He tosses me down on the double bed, his expression fierce. “You can’t destroy your stuff like that.”
He’s angry. But not just that—disappointed.
“What is this?” I have to ask.
Dad squints at me. Confused. “This is ours, babydoll. Just temporary, of course, while I get your sisters and mother. We’ll set up at a bigger house back in Chicago, get you your own room. But we’re going to be a family again. That’s all I’ve wanted.”
I can’t do this.
I sit there and stare at him, my mind turning over the horrors of a reality I’d live out if he succeeds. What he would do to my fourteen- and twelve-year-old sisters. Or me.
How many debts does he have?
How many mobsters want him dead?
My mind goes to Steele. Just picturing his face gives me an ounce of room in my lungs for air. I suck it in greedily, and I snap out of being coy, or scared, or fucking weak. I didn’t survive all that shit with him just to turn around and bend my head for my father. Not when he’s talking about ripping my sisters away from their lives. And what, kidnapping my mother along with us?
I rise from the bed. “You can’t do that. I have a life. A good life. And so do my sisters, and my mom. Are you seriously so delusional to think that any of us will last? You’re trouble incarnate.”
He retrieves a brown paper bag out of the closet, from the top shelf, and tosses it at me. “Why didn’t you spend this?” His voice rises, his face reddening. “I gave this to you—my brother passed it along. And yet I found it untouched in your closet while you took handouts from some other man?”
I flinch. “I don’t want anything from you.”
Dad stares at me. The seconds tick by… and his expression morphs.
From a sympathetic, caring Dad, straight into the face of a madman.
“Foolish girl,” he whispers.
Ah.
Ice trickles down my spine. I should’ve remembered that when he went quiet was the worst. The deep, dark monsters that lived under his skin never made much noise—but they always made an impact.
He leads me out of the room and back toward the kitchen. There’s a piano on the wall that divides the kitchen and the living room. And my music binder sits on top of it.
“I went through so much trouble for you,” he growls. “You ungrateful child.”
He pulls a matchbook from his pocket and snatches the binder. He marches to the sink and holds the binder so all the pages fan out.
My heart goes into my throat. All those carefully written notes, my handwriting cramped between the bars of music. All the practice and rehearsal that went into it.
He strikes the match and sets it to the pages, and all my hard work goes up in flames.
I lunge for it, but he drops the burning music into the dry sink basin. The pages blacken and curl, and I let out a ragged noise. He comes around and drags me closer, forcing me to watch up close.
Tears burn my eyes. The smoke gets in my nose, scratching my throat. I blink, and the tears drip down my face.
“This is why you should listen to your father, babydoll,” he says in my ear.
He drags me back into the living room and throws me in the armchair I woke up in. He positions himself right in front of the man curled on the floor, a grim smirk overtaking his face.
Evil. Now and always.
He kicks over the suited man in front of me, and my throat closes all over again.
Steele’s dad.
He’s unconscious, but he lets out a low wheeze at the kick to his ribs. Dad crouches and pulls something from his jacket pocket. A length of cord, which he uses to tie Stephen’s wrists together. He lets Stephen’s hands fall to his chest, then slaps him.
Stephen’s eyes crack, barely glancing off my father and coming straight to me. “Are you okay?”
I nod quickly. I mean, I’m not—but for his sake, I can be.
But Dad has more things in his hands. A clear plastic bag, a mostly used roll of tape. I stare at him in confusion, until he snaps the plastic bag open and drags it over Stephen’s head.
Stephen immediately bucks, trying to get it off, but Dad moves fast with the duct tape. He loops it tight around his neck, then sits back on his haunches.
“Every action has a consequence.” Dad eyes Stephen with disdain.
Steele’s father is trying to get the tape off his neck, but with his hands bound he’s not making much progress.
Dad rises. “Will you help him, Aspen? Because he’s going to die tonight, one way or another. But I’m feeling charitable, so I’m going to leave the method up to you.”
He leaves us. The door slams behind him.
Immediately, I launch out of the armchair and fall down beside Stephen. I go for the plastic, my nails biting into it. It’s heavy, and for all my tugging doesn’t even rip. His face is getting redder, and the bag is filling and deflating against his mouth and nose with every rapid breath.
I rip at the tape, too, joining his efforts. His movements are getting weaker, slowing down.
“No, no, no,” I whisper.
His eyes shut, and he sags fully into the floor. I get through the tape just below his ear and yank it away, enough to unwind it and get the bag off. He’s not breathing.
How the fuck would I ever tell Steele that I let his dad die?
I slap Stephen’s cheek. My next step would be CPR—but figured I’d try a shot of violence first. Right? I don’t know. I only know that CPR should be done in time to that song about living. Or believing. Anyway, my slap is successful.
Stephen sucks in a ragged breath and shoots upright.
I grab his shoulders to steady him.
“Are you okay?” I ask, mirroring his first question to me. I untie the rope binding his wrists, tossing it away from us.
He takes a few deep breaths and rubs his throat, then seems to shake it off. “I’m okay. Thanks. How are you? How long has he…” The concern flashing across his face is touching. “Has he done anything?”
“If redecorating this apartment with clothes and stuff he stole from me, remaking everything to be perfect for us to live with him, is ‘anything’, then…” I shrug and cross my arms. “How much do you know?”
Stephen sighs. “Your mother was forthcoming after our… rather sudden wedding. When we met, it was love at first sight. Or maybe lust, I don’t know. Getting married felt like diving into the ocean headfirst.”
“Terrifying and dangerous?”
“Fun, Aspen.”
He smirks, and damn it, it reminds me of Steele. They must have the same mouth structure. A pang goes through me, and I look away.
“We jumped off the point today.”
Shouldn’t have said that.
To our parents, we’re stepsiblings. We’re supposed to be doing that brother-sister bonding thing, or whatever. At the very least, Steele was supposed to move me into his house to keep watch and make sure I didn’t go crazy.
Although drugging me was his fault.
“Mari was furious with me for threatening you with hospitalization,” Stephen says in a low voice. “And I was planning on apologizing about going that route the last time we saw each other.”
That’s… nice. And a little belated on my mom’s part, but I would understand it more if he just sprang it on her at that hotel restaurant. She’s never been great at standing up for herself—or me. The fact that she said anything at all means she trusts him.
I go to the windows and peer out.
It really is an exact replica of my apartment. I’d even be convinced we were on the same street.
Wait.
I lean into the window, my forehead touching the cold glass. I recognize the cars down there. We’re high up, probably on the sixth or seventh floor, but—
Shit.
He’s been in my apartment building this whole time?
My stomach swoops, and I pivot. I eye Steele’s dad, then the door.
“How do we play this?” I ask. “There’s a fire escape in the room down the hall on the right. We could go out—”
Stephen shakes his head. “And he’d meet us at the ground level, probably with a gun. That’s how he got to me. I was checking your apartment, and he followed me in. Said he’d shoot me if I didn’t go with him upstairs. I figured he was going to kill me on the roof or something, dead either way,” he confesses. “But he just hit me over the head… And then I woke up in here.”
Shit.
“Listen, Aspen.” He takes my hands. Both of them, pressing my palms together. His hands are warm and dry, and that alone screams of confidence. “Whether or not I make it, your family will be okay. Your mom is getting everything in my will, you and your sisters have inheritances in trusts—”
“Why are you telling me this?” I try to pull my hands away. “That’s—”
“Listen to me,” he snaps in a low voice. “I will not let this man ruin your life again. So I’m going to distract him, and you’re going to go to the fire escape. Or out the front door. And scream bloody fucking murder until you get free—and don’t stop running until you find my security at the stadium.”
“Why didn’t you bring security here?” I look at the window again, then back at him. “I can’t do this. I can’t let you just… sacrifice yourself. He’ll kill you.”
“When I don’t return, they’ll move your mother and sisters to a secure location. We did this to keep them safe from him, but I didn’t think he’d find you here. Your uncle assured me that you’d be safe.”
I scoff. “Cillian? My father’s brother? He left a few days ago—he went back to Chicago—”
The door opens, and the words die on my tongue.
Dad’s upped the stakes on us.
Now, he has a gun.
