Alana POV

I arrived at my father's house looking less like a daughter and more like a car crash survivor.

My ribs were bound tight with tape, restricting every breath.

My hand was a throbbing mess.

Although my dress hid the bruises on my torso, my walk was a dead giveaway.

Robert McNeil opened the door.

He looked at me with unmasked disdain.

"Fix your hair," he hissed. "You look like a stray dog. You're embarrassing the Don."

"Nice to see you too, Dad," I muttered, limping past him into the foyer.

The dining room was set with gleaming crystal and china.

Austen sat at the head of the table.

Joyce sat to his right.

My mother's seat.

Diana, Joyce's mother, was fawning over them like a court jester.

"Alana," Joyce smiled, fingering a massive sapphire necklace. "You made it. Did you trip on the way here?"

"Something like that," I said, gripping the locket in my pocket as if it were a lifeline.

I sat down stiffly.

"Show us your little purchase," Joyce said. "The million-dollar tin can."

I didn't move.

"Show us," Austen commanded, his voice cold and detached. "Since you spent my money on it."

Reluctantly, I pulled the locket out.

Joyce snatched it from my hand before I could react.

"Oops," she said.

She let it slip from her fingers.

It hit the floor with a dull clatter.

Before I could move, she smashed her stiletto heel down on it.

The soft silver crumpled.

The hinge snapped.

"Oh no," Joyce giggled, feigning shock. "Clumsy me."

Something inside me snapped.

The tether that held my sanity to the earth finally broke.

I stood up.

I swung my good hand with everything I had left.

Crack.

My palm connected with Joyce's cheek with a force that vibrated up my arm.

It was the sweetest sound I had ever heard.

The room went deadly silent.

Joyce touched her face, eyes wide.

"She hit me!" she shrieked. "Austen! She hit the Savior!"

Austen stood up, his face thunderous.

"Alana!"

Diana shoved me hard.

I stumbled back, tripping over the edge of the rug.

I fell backwards into a glass sculpture on the side table.

It shattered.

Shards sliced into my back through the silk of my dress.

"Get her out of my sight!" Robert roared. "Lock her in the basement until she learns respect!"

Two of my father's guards grabbed me.

They dragged me toward the basement door.

"No," I pleaded, digging my heels in. "Not the basement. Please."

It was where Robert used to lock me whenever I got better grades than Joyce.

It was dark. Damp.

Full of spiders and memories.

They threw me down the stairs.

I tumbled, landing hard on the concrete.

The door slammed shut above me.

The lock clicked.

Darkness swallowed me whole.

My breath came in short, panic-stricken gasps.

The smell of mold triggered it.

Flashback.

Fifteen years ago.

The crawlspace.

The choking smoke.

The boy bleeding next to me.

"Don't let them find me," he had whispered, his voice trembling.

"I won't," I had promised. "I'm your Little Star. I'll shine for you."

I curled into a ball, rocking back and forth on the cold floor.

"I won't let them find you," I whispered to the empty room.

Time dissolved.

I didn't know how long I was down there.

Suddenly, the door at the top of the stairs exploded inward.

Light flooded in.

Austen stormed down the stairs.

He looked frantic.

"Alana!"

He scooped me up into his arms.

He smelled like rain and gunpowder.

"I've got you," he said, his voice rough. "I'm here."

He was playing the hero again.

Saving me from the hell he had allowed to happen.

I was delirious with pain and fear.

I looked up at his face.

The shadows made him look like the boy in the crawlspace.

I reached up and touched his cheek with a trembling hand.

"It's okay," I whispered, my voice slurring. "You're safe now, Stellen."

Austen froze.

He stopped halfway up the stairs.

His body went rigid as stone.

He looked down at me, his eyes wide with shock.

"What did you call me?"

"Stellen," I murmured, closing my eyes. "Your real name. The one you only told the Little Star."

I felt his heart hammer against my chest.

Joyce had never known that name.

Nobody knew that name.

Only the girl in the crawlspace.

The girl he had been torturing for five years.

"Alana?" his voice broke.

But I was already drifting away, leaving him alone with the truth that was about to destroy him.

Alana POV

"Stellen."

The name hung in the damp air of the basement, suspended like a guillotine blade waiting to drop.

Austen froze on the stairs.

His arms, which had been anchoring me tight against his chest, turned to stone.

He looked down at me, his eyes wide, the pupils dilating until they swallowed the irises completely.

For a second, the monster was gone.

Only the terrified boy from the crawlspace remained.

"What did you say?" His voice was a jagged whisper, barely audible over the drumming of my own heart.

My head swam.

The pain in my ribs was a dull roar, drowning out my survival instincts.

I had slipped.

I had shown a card I was supposed to keep hidden until the game was over.

"I..." I stammered, my tongue thick and clumsy. "I saw it."

"Saw what?" He shook me, just a little. "Where did you see that name? No one knows that name."

I had to lie.

If I told him the truth now, while I was broken and bleeding in his arms, he wouldn't believe me.

Or worse, Joyce would twist it.

She would say I stole her diary. She would claim I was trying to steal her glory again.

"An old ledger," I wheezed, closing my eyes against the harsh light spilling from the open door. "In your study. It said Stellen."

The tension in his shoulders didn't ease.

"Liar," he breathed, though the conviction was missing from his tone.

"Austen!"

The shriek tore through the moment like shattered glass.

Joyce appeared at the top of the stairs.

She was clutching her cheek, her face contorted in a mask of fake agony.

"She's manipulating you!" Joyce screamed, pointing a manicured finger at us like an accusation from God. "She attacked me! She tried to kill your savior, and now she's playing the victim!"

The doubt in Austen's eyes vanished.

The boy was gone.

The Don returned.

He looked from me to Joyce, his jaw tightening until a muscle ticked violently in his cheek.

"You are too much, Alana," he said coldly.

He didn't drop me, but he might as well have.

The way he held me changed instantly.

It wasn't protective anymore.

It was a captor transporting cargo.

"I didn't touch her," I said, but my voice was too weak to carry the weight of the truth.

"Enough," he growled.

He carried me up the stairs and set me down in the hallway.

Not gently.

My feet hit the floor, and agony shot up my legs like lightning.

"Go to your room," he ordered. "I need to tend to Joyce."

He turned his back on me.

He walked toward her, reaching out to cup the cheek I had slapped.

The cheek that deserved to be bruised.

Something inside me hollowed out.

It wasn't anger.

It was the finality of a door locking.

I didn't go to my room.

I turned and walked toward the front door.

"Alana," Austen barked without looking back. "Bedroom."

I opened the heavy oak door.

Rain lashed against the porch, a torrential downpour that smelled of ozone and freedom.

I stepped out.

"Alana!"

I kept walking.

I stepped off the porch and into the driveway.

The rain soaked my dress instantly, plastering the silk to my battered ribs.

The cold was shocking.

It numbed the throbbing in my hand.

I walked until my legs gave out, collapsing onto the wet asphalt of the driveway.

I didn't try to get up.

I just lay there, letting the water wash away the blood on my arm.

Darkness took me before he did.

I woke up in the infirmary again.

Austen was sleeping in the chair next to the bed.

His hand was resting near mine, but not touching it.

He looked exhausted.

Good.

I hoped he never slept peacefully again.

I didn't speak to him when he woke up.

I didn't speak to him the next day.

Or the day after.

I became a ghost in my own home.

A week later, I was walking in the garden.

My ribs were still taped, my breathing shallow.

I stumbled on an uneven paver near the rose bushes.

A hand caught my elbow.

"Careful, Mrs. Ballard."

It was the new gardener.

A boy, barely twenty.

He had kind eyes and dirt under his fingernails.

"Thank you," I whispered.

It was the first time I had spoken in seven days.

He smiled. "These stones are tricky when they're wet. Let me help you to the bench."

He didn't grip me.

He supported me.

"Get your hands off her."

The voice was a low rumble of thunder.

Austen was standing on the terrace.

He moved faster than a man of his size should be able to move.

He was on us in seconds.

He didn't ask questions.

He didn't look at me.

He grabbed the boy by the throat and slammed him into the trellis.

Wood snapped.

Thorns tore into the boy's skin.

"Austen, stop!" I screamed.

He didn't stop.

He punched the boy in the stomach, then the face.

The sound of fist meeting flesh was wet and sickening.

"She is mine!" Austen roared, his eyes wild. "You do not touch what is mine!"

The boy slumped to the ground, unconscious.

Austen turned to me, his chest heaving, his knuckles bloody.

He reached for me.

"Did he hurt you?" he asked, his voice trembling with adrenaline.

I didn't flinch.

I stepped forward and slapped him.

It was weak-my hand was still healing-but the impact was enough to snap his head to the side.

"I am not a thing," I hissed. "I am not a possession you can guard with your fists while you sleep with the woman who destroys me."

He stared at me, shock replacing the rage.

"Alana-"

"Don't."

I turned to leave.

Joyce was standing by the fountain.

She had watched the whole thing.

She was smiling.

As I passed her, she leaned in close.

Her perfume was cloying, suffocating.

"He knows," she whispered.

I stopped.

"He knows I lie," she purred, her voice dripping with venom. "He knows I didn't save him. But he chooses me anyway. Because he owes me a life debt, and in his twisted head, paying that debt means destroying you."

She laughed softly.

"You're just the collateral damage, sister."