Chapter 4

They decided to "cleanse" me one last time before taking me to the institution.

It was a return to the pool. My father and Marcus, his head now bandaged, dragged me out onto the patio. The water looked dark and menacing under the gray sky.

I didn't fight this time. I was a doll in their hands, my body limp, my mind elsewhere. I was thinking of the service tunnel. A forgotten, crumbling passage that ran from the cellar to the woods beyond the estate walls. One of the maids, a quiet woman from the mountains who recognized the look of a trapped thing in my eyes, had shown it to me weeks ago. She was my only ally, placed here by my true family from the Hollow.

They pushed me into the icy water. The shock was immense, but I endured it. As my father lectured me about my sins, a car pulled up the long driveway. It was the transport for the psychiatric hospital.

The distraction was all I needed.

While my father and Marcus turned to speak with the drivers, the sympathetic maid, Maria, appeared at the edge of the pool. She wasn't looking at me, but she dropped a small, heavy bundle wrapped in cloth near the patio door.

Fang's fur coat. And the leftover meat.

I pulled myself from the pool, silent as a shadow. They were still talking, their backs to me. I grabbed the bundle and slipped through the patio door into the house.

The house was quiet. I ran, dripping water on the polished floors, down to the cellar. The lock was broken from my earlier fight. The entrance to the service tunnel was hidden behind a stack of old wine crates.

I pushed them aside and pulled open the heavy iron door. The air that hit me was damp and smelled of earth and freedom. I didn't look back. I plunged into the darkness, clutching the remains of my friend, and ran.

The tunnel was long and dark, but it led me out into the woods at the edge of the Winston property. I was free.

I hitched a ride with a trucker heading south. Then another. I walked for miles, my city clothes in tatters, my feet bleeding. I ate the last of Fang's meat, not as a victim, but as a hunter taking back what was mine, honoring him in the only way I knew how.

Days later, I stumbled into the familiar territory of the Appalachian mountains. I was home.

My found family, the community from the Hollow, took me in. They didn't ask questions. They saw the look in my eyes, the fur coat I clutched like a child, and they understood. They cleaned my wounds, gave me warm clothes, and let me grieve.

We buried the coat at the base of an old oak tree, on a ridge overlooking the valley where Fang and I used to run. I mourned him with my true family, their quiet strength a balm on my shattered soul.

Meanwhile, back in Boston, Ethan discovered I was gone. He also discovered the full extent of Chloe's deception. He found her medical records. Her degenerative disease wasn't as severe as she'd claimed. She had manipulated him, played on his ambition and his family's desire to be allied with the Winstons.

He hadn't just been a monster. He'd been a fool.

Guilt, obsession, and a twisted kind of love consumed him. He used his family's immense resources. He hired the best private investigators money could buy.

It didn't take them long to trace my path back to the mountains.