They call it protection, but the locks tell a different story.
The room I wake up in is too elegant to be a cell—silk curtains, antique dresser, a bed so soft it feels like an apology. The door, however, is steel-reinforced oak with a keypad instead of a handle. I test it anyway, because denial is a reflex.
It doesn’t budge.
A tray waits on the bedside table. Tea gone lukewarm. Pills arranged with surgical precision. Vincent’s idea of kindness.
I wrap my arms around myself and breathe. In. Out. This is temporary. This is controlled. This is not a kidnapping, I tell myself, even as my pulse argues otherwise.
The door opens without warning.
Vincent steps in, tailored suit replaced by a simple black shirt, sleeves rolled to his forearms. He looks less like a kingpin and more like a man who hasn’t slept.
“You should eat,” he says.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You should anyway.”
That’s how it is with him. Commands dressed as concern. I hate how quickly my body relaxes when he’s near, how my brain interprets his presence as safety simply because he hasn’t hurt me yet.
“This ends when?” I ask.
“When I’m sure you didn’t kill our father.”
Our father.
The words still scrape.
He gestures toward the door. “Your evaluation starts in an hour. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”
“Evaluation?” I scoff. “You mean interrogation.”
He pauses, something like guilt flickering across his face. “I mean answers.”
The man waiting in the sitting room introduces himself as Dr. Sebastian Hale, which is almost funny because nothing about him feels medical. He’s handsome in a quiet, unsettling way—soft voice, sharp eyes, the kind that linger a second too long.
“Dr. Foster,” he says warmly. “Or do you prefer Elara?”
“I prefer my freedom,” I reply.
Vincent ignores that. “She has memory gaps,” he says to Sebastian. “Trauma-related. I want to know what she remembers. And what she’s hiding.”
Sebastian smiles faintly. “The mind always hides something.”
We sit across from each other, leather chair to leather chair. No clipboard. No recorder. That alone should terrify me more than it does.
“Close your eyes,” he says gently. “If you’re comfortable.”
“I’m not.”
“Humor me.”
Against my better judgment, I do.
His voice lowers, smooth as a blade sliding from its sheath. “Think of your mother. The last time you saw her.”
Darkness rushes in.
I’m small. The air smells like gun oil and cheap cologne. My mother’s hands are on my shoulders, shaking me hard enough to hurt.
“Don’t come out,” she whispers, shoving me into a narrow space. A closet. Darkness. Wood splintering my cheek. “No matter what you hear.”
A bang splits the air.
I scream.
My eyes fly open. My chest heaves as if I’ve been underwater too long.
“There,” Sebastian murmurs. “Good. Stay with it. What did you see?”
I swallow bile. “His hand,” I say hoarsely. “The man who shot her. He reached for the door. He had a tattoo. A spider. Black. On his wrist.”
The room goes very still.
Vincent’s jaw tightens. “A spider?”
I nod. “I’ve never remembered that before.”
Sebastian’s gaze sharpens, something dark glinting beneath the calm. “Fascinating.”
The session ends abruptly after that. Vincent leaves to take a call, his anger radiating like heat. Isabella appears as if summoned by it, her heels silent on the marble.
“You should rest,” she tells me kindly. “This family has a way of exhausting its women.”
Before I can respond, she leans in, voice dropping. “Joseph was looking into your mother’s death before he died. Digging where he shouldn’t.”
My heart stutters. “Why tell me this?”
Her smile is pitying. “Because truth has a way of surfacing. Even in locked rooms.”
That night, I don’t sleep. I wait until the house settles, until the guards’ footsteps space out like a predictable heartbeat. Then I move.
Joseph’s study smells like old books and smoke. I know exactly where to look—behind the painting of Saint Michael, fingers brushing over the carved wood until something clicks.
A hidden drawer slides open.
Inside is a photograph.
Me. As a baby. Wrapped in a blanket too big for my body. On the back, written in my father’s sharp hand: If I do not die naturally, the killer is within the family.
My knees give out.
The truth isn’t outside these walls. It’s woven into them.
The next day, Vincent insists I see Sebastian again—this time at his downtown clinic. Glass walls. Neutral colors. Too clean. Too quiet.
As he leads me down a private hallway, something shifts. The air thickens.
He stops suddenly, studying me like a specimen.
“I remember you,” he says softly.
My blood turns to ice. “We’ve never met.”
“Oh,” he replies, smiling. “But you watched me kill a man. You were hiding. Just like you described.”
The room tilts.
“You were supposed to forget,” he continues, almost fondly. “Children usually do.”
A door closes behind us with a click that sounds final.
In that moment, I understand something terrifying.
I am not just a suspect.
I am evidence.
And everyone in this family is deciding whether I’m worth keeping alive.