Chapter 3

He moved faster than I thought possible.

Gustav caught my wrist in a grip of steel, the glass award stopping inches from his face. The force of it sent a jarring shock up my arm. He didn't even flinch. He just stared at me, his eyes wide with something that looked like hurt.

"Janey," he breathed, his voice a raw whisper. "You would... you would do this to me?"

He twisted my wrist, and I cried out, dropping the award. It hit the plush carpet with a dull thud.

"I'm going to kill you," I spat, my voice shaking with rage and despair. "For what you did to them. I will kill you."

"No, you won't." His face hardened, the hurt vanishing, replaced by that familiar, cold control.

With my free hand, I grabbed the jagged edge of the broken award from the floor. Before he could react, I slashed it across my own throat.

I didn't want to die. I wanted him to feel the panic of losing me.

He shouted my name, a sound of pure terror. He dropped my other wrist and lunged, his hands clamping over mine, trying to pry the shard of glass from my fingers. It was a clumsy, desperate struggle.

"Stop it! Stop it, Janey!" he yelled, his voice cracking. "Don't you dare leave me!"

His strength was overwhelming. He pinned me against the wall, his body caging mine, and ripped the glass from my hand, tossing it across the room. Blood, warm and sticky, trickled down my neck. It was a shallow cut, but it was enough.

"You are mine," he hissed, his face inches from mine, his breath hot and smelling of whiskey. "You don't get to die unless I say so."

He grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him. "Do you think I can't get to him? Your little friend, Amit? The one who makes your special pills? I can have him disappeared so completely no one will even remember his name. Do you want that, Janey? Is that what you want?"

The threat was real. I knew it. He could do it. He would do it.

The fight went out of me, replaced by a wave of cold, bottomless despair. My legs gave out, and I slid down the wall to the floor, a puppet with its strings cut. I was trapped. Utterly and completely trapped.

The world went dark at the edges.

I woke up in our bed. The sheets were cool and smelled of lavender. The cut on my neck was cleaned and bandaged. For a moment, a disoriented, foggy moment, I could almost pretend none of it had happened.

Then I saw him, sitting in the chair by the window, watching me.

"You're awake," he said softly. He came over and sat on the edge of the bed, reaching out to stroke my hair. I flinched.

He pulled his hand back, a flicker of pain in his eyes. "I'm sorry, Janey. I'm so sorry. I lost my temper. Your parents... they pushed me. But it will never happen again, I promise."

He was a child, apologizing for breaking a toy. He had no concept of the magnitude of what he had done.

"I have to go out for a little while," he said, standing up. "Estelle needs me. She was very shaken by your parents'... aggression."

The name was like a slap. He had destroyed my family, and now he was going to comfort the woman who helped him do it.

"Rest," he said, leaning down to kiss my forehead. "I'll be back soon. We'll have dinner. Just the two of us."

He left, the lock on the bedroom door clicking shut behind him. A prisoner.

I lay still, listening to his footsteps fade. The despair was still there, a cold stone in my stomach, but something else was growing alongside it. A tiny, hard seed of resolve.

He thought he had won. He thought he had broken me. He was wrong.

I slid my hand under the pillow. My fingers closed around the new pill bottle Amit had given me. Not the one for a fake death. This was different. A series of them. Meant to be taken over days. A drug that would slowly, undetectably, stop my heart. It would look like a suicide. A real one this time.

I would take one every day. And on the last day, I would make sure he was the one to find me. It was a pathetic revenge, but it was the only one I had left.

I swallowed the first pill without water. It was bitter, but I welcomed the taste. It was the taste of the end. His end.