Chapter 4

My vision went dark at the edges.

...

Two days later, Adrian came to collect me for the wedding.

The whole trip he'd been unsettled, without knowing why.

He told himself a few days in the dark would have taught me. I'd know my place. I'd leave Vivienne alone. If I behaved, he'd be a good husband after the wedding.

He pushed open the cellar door.

What he saw gutted him.

The smell hit him first. Iron and something worse.

He threw up his hand to shield his eyes. When his vision adjusted, his pupils shrank.

The floor was a mess. Tissues. Condoms in every color, twisted into the stained paper.

Dark blood, dried black into the concrete.

Claire's dress, torn to pieces, tossed beside it.

The cellar was empty.

What had happened in that room was unmistakable.

Adrian stood frozen. Something inside his chest seized so hard he couldn't breathe.

He stumbled in. He was shaking.

"Claire—Claire—"

Then Vivienne walked in, heels clicking, wrapped in his suit jacket.

She took in the scene and made a show of covering her mouth.

"Adrian... look at this floor... Claire..."

She paused. Timid.

"She must have done this to punish you."

"There's no way she wasn't here sleeping with someone else. Otherwise how could she be gone, with all this left behind..."

Adrian shuddered.

The agony in his chest surged up, threatening to tear him open.

A metallic taste flooded his mouth. He doubled over, coughing.

Fury churned underneath.

Vivienne's words were the fuse. The lie his mind lit on fire to save himself.

Yes. That had to be it.

Claire couldn't handle being alone. She'd let another man touch her.

After all—she'd been with a dozen of them before.

"Claire!"

His voice was hoarse.

"You shameless bitch! Sleeping with someone else behind my back!"

He stood slowly. Then he ran out of the cellar like he was being chased.

Back at the manor he destroyed everything he could get his hands on. It didn't help. The panic under his ribs wouldn't stop.

He pulled out his phone. His fingers were shaking too hard to unlock the screen.

After a dozen tries, he snapped into the call.

"Find her! Turn the entire city upside down! Bring her back!"

He hung up. Leaned against the wall. Tried to breathe.

Vivienne came up behind him and rubbed his back, soft.

"Adrian, don't work yourself up. When you find her, just talk to her. She'll see she was wrong."

Adrian closed his eyes. The pain in his chest was bad enough that he almost went to his knees.

He knew. He knew what she feared. The dark. Pain. The nightmares that had already broken her.

But he'd parroted Vivienne's story anyway. Pinned the whole thing on Claire.

He sank into a crouch. Both hands in his hair.

"Claire... come back... come back and I can forgive you..."

Sunlight filtered in through the window and warmed my face.

This was Lucian Sterling's estate.

Every corner of the place felt deliberate. Careful. Gentle.

I held the teacup between my hands and thought about the cellar.

The day I thought the dark would finally finish me, the iron door had been kicked open.

Lucian had walked in against the light and lifted me into his arms without a word.

The scent of him was clean in a way that made my eyes burn.

Lucian and I had met before.

Three years ago, when I was still being dragged through the mud, he'd been the first to find me.

He'd stood over me—untouchable, perfectly dressed—and said, without warmth:

"Forget the past. Come with me."

Back then I was a ruined thing with only one defense left. Spines.

I'd looked at him—the heir to the Sterling fortune—and decided he was no better than the men who'd held me down.

I'd shouted at him with everything I had left:

"Get out! You're no different from the rest of them! Don't touch me!"

My voice was a knife.

His expression darkened. He didn't get angry.

In the weeks after, he tried. He sent medicine. Clean clothes. I flinched from him every time, like a wounded animal, and finally buried myself in Adrian's arms instead.

I still remember the afternoon Adrian held my hand in public and Lucian watched us from inside his car. His face was blank.

The last time he came to see me, his eyes—usually glacial—were rimmed with red.

He sat quiet for a long time. Then he said, clearly:

"If he ever fails you, come to me. Name your terms. Anything."

Back then I assumed it was wounded pride.

Later I'd learn Lucian had been diagnosed with an emotional avoidance disorder as a child.

He didn't know how to do soft. Didn't know how to do gentle. He only knew how to say what he meant, bluntly, and hope someone understood.

The night before the wedding, after I overheard Adrian, I dug out the number I'd buried and sent him a single text.

I didn't think he'd reply.

I'd been cruel to him.

But he'd been in New York when he read it, and he'd booked the first flight home and flown through the night.

He'd found me the moment Adrian had dragged me underground. Pulled me out of hell with four words—"She's mine. Touch her."—and thunder underneath.

He saved me, and he kept saving me where I couldn't see.

Every video and photo of me the internet had kept alive disappeared in a single night.

Every man who'd touched me three years ago was found, charged, and locked up.

The experimental drug Adrian had quietly cut off from Grandmother—Lucian had had people flying it in from Zurich for weeks.