Chapter 3

I woke up on a damp, concrete floor.

The air was cold and smelled of mold. A single, bare bulb hung from the ceiling, casting long, dancing shadows. My throat was raw, a searing fire that made swallowing agony. I tried to speak, to call out, but only a dry, silent rasp escaped my lips.

He had locked me in the basement.

Panic seized me. I scrambled to my feet and threw myself at the door, pounding on the thick wood with my fists until my knuckles were raw and bloody. It didn't budge.

I was a prisoner.

Hours, or maybe days, passed. I lost track of time in the dim, unchanging light. Once a day, the door would unbolt, and Liam would leave a plate of stale bread and a bottle of water on the top step, never looking at me, never saying a word.

The love I had felt for him curdled into something cold and hard. Hatred.

One evening, I heard voices from upstairs. Liam and Chloe. I pressed my ear to the door.

"She's still down there?" Chloe asked, her voice sharp with annoyance. "Liam, this is a problem. What if someone finds her?"

"No one will," Liam said. "But you're right. We need a permanent solution."

"What are you suggesting?"

There was a pause. Then Liam's voice, colder than I had ever heard it. "She's unstable. Delusional. After I broke up with her, she stole your diamond earrings to spite me. She's been having these fantasies that she's some long-lost heiress. It's sad, really."

My blood ran cold. He was building a narrative. A lie.

"We'll have her committed," Liam continued. "Involuntarily. With her 'theft' and her 'delusions,' it won't be hard to convince a doctor she's a danger to herself and others. Once she's in a psychiatric hospital, she'll be out of our lives for good."

Chloe giggled. "Brilliant, darling. Absolutely brilliant."

I stumbled back from the door, my mind reeling. A psychiatric hospital. They were going to lock me away and throw away the key. They would destroy my mind, my identity, everything I was.

No. I would not let that happen.

My hand instinctively went to the simple platinum chain around my neck. It was a necklace I' d been wearing when I was found after the accident. I' d never taken it off. It was the one thing that connected me to a past I hadn't understood until a few days ago. The pendant was a small, unassuming platinum star.

But it wasn't just a pendant. It was a Sterling-Vance emergency beacon. My grandfather had given it to me when I was sixteen. "Press the center for five seconds, and we will find you, wherever you are," he had told me.

I had thought it was just a rich man's dramatic toy. Now, it was my only hope.

The next morning, the basement door opened. It wasn't Liam. Two large, thuggish men stood there.

"Liam sent us," one of them grunted. "Time to go, lady."

They grabbed my arms. I didn't fight. I let them drag me up the stairs and out of the apartment. This was my chance.

Out in the bright sunlight, I stumbled, pretending to be weaker than I was. They dragged me toward a waiting van in the back alley. This was it.

As they shoved me toward the van's open door, I twisted my body, using the movement to shield my hands from their view. My fingers found the pendant. I pressed my thumb hard into its center.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

A tiny, almost imperceptible vibration hummed against my skin. It was activated.

One of the men pushed me into the van. "Get in there, you crazy-"

He never finished his sentence.

The squeal of tires was the first sound. Then, a sleek black town car screeched to a halt, blocking the alley entrance. Another one appeared at the other end, trapping us.

Doors opened. Men in sharp, dark suits emerged, moving with a quiet, professional efficiency that was far more terrifying than the two brutes holding me.

My captors froze, their eyes wide with confusion and fear.

The leader of the suited men, a man with a scar over his eye who I vaguely recognized as the head of my family's security, walked toward us. His eyes met mine, and a flicker of recognition, then immense relief, crossed his face.

"Miss Vance," he said, his voice calm and steady. "We've been looking for you for a very long time."

He nodded to his men. They moved. It was over in seconds. The two thugs were disarmed and neutralized with brutal precision.

The security head gently helped me out of the van, wrapping a clean jacket around my shoulders.

"You're safe now, Miss Ava," he said.

Tears I didn't know I had left streamed down my face. I couldn't speak, but for the first time in three years, I felt like I was finally home.