Chapter 2

The first person I called was my father.

He picked up on the second ring. "Ava, sweetheart. Is everything alright?"

I couldn't speak. A choked, ragged sound came out of my throat. The dam of my composure, so carefully constructed in the hallway, finally broke.

"Dad," I whispered, the word cracking.

"I'm on my way," he said immediately. No questions asked. That was my father, Richard Miller. A quiet, unassuming history professor who would go to war for me without a moment's hesitation.

While I waited, I walked through the opulent penthouse that had been my gilded cage. Every object was a lie. The abstract sculpture in the foyer he' d bought me for my birthday? A gift to celebrate "Prank #56." The silk scarf draped over a chair? A replacement for the one Chloe had "accidentally" snagged and ruined at a cafe.

I had given this man two years of my life. I had cooked for him, cared for him, sketched his face from memory a thousand times. I had poured my genuine, unfiltered love into the empty vessel of his feigned amnesia.

My love was just another game to him. My heart was the playing field. And I had lost spectacularly.

When my father arrived, his face was etched with worry. I didn't cry. I told him everything, my voice flat and empty. I told him about Liam, about Chloe, about the ninety-nine pranks. I told him about the pregnancy test still in my pocket.

He listened, his expression hardening from concern to a cold, controlled fury I had rarely seen. When I was finished, he simply said, "What do you need me to do?"

"I need to disappear," I said. The words felt heavy, but right. "I want him to think I'm dead."

My father's eyes widened slightly, but he didn't argue. He saw the gaping wound in me, the part of my soul that had been methodically tortured. He understood this wasn't about running away. This was about justice.

"It will be my final prank," I told him, a bitter smile touching my lips. "The hundredth. The one he wanted so badly. A grand finale."

I started packing a small bag, my movements robotic. I cleared my art supplies, my clothes, anything that was truly mine. As I emptied a drawer of my sketchbooks, I found one I didn't recognize. It was a small, leather-bound Moleskine, not my usual brand.

Curiosity got the better of me. I opened it.

It was Liam's handwriting. But it wasn't a list of pranks. It was full of sketches of me. Me sleeping, me painting, me laughing at something he'd said. The drawings were detailed, intimate.

Under one sketch of me concentrating on a canvas, he had written: Her brow furrows when she' s focused. She bites her lower lip. It' s distracting.

Under another, a drawing of my hand: She has paint under her nails almost all the time. She says it' s messy, I think it' s beautiful.

My breath hitched. What was this? Was this part of the game, too? A prop left for me to find, to sow more confusion?

Tucked into the back pocket of the sketchbook was a folded receipt. A jewelry store. Dated six months ago. The item: a custom-designed engagement ring. The description matched a design I had idly sketched myself once, a unique, asymmetrical band that I' d told him represented two orbits colliding. He had been watching me draw it.

My heart twisted in a new kind of agony. Did he love me? Was it possible that in the midst of his cruel game, some part of him had developed real feelings?

The thought was a dangerous poison. It offered a sliver of hope, and hope was a luxury I could no longer afford. Because even if he did love me, it was a love built on a foundation of lies and cruelty. It was a love that coexisted with his willingness to destroy me for another woman. That wasn't love. It was a sickness.

I tossed the sketchbook and the receipt into my bag. They were evidence. Not of his love, but of the depth of his deception.

The final piece of my past I had to deal with was the most painful. I took the pregnancy test from my pocket and looked at the two blue lines. This baby was conceived in love on my side, but in deceit on his. It was a living, breathing part of his game.

I couldn't bring a child into this world as an extension of his sick joke. I couldn't look at my child every day and be reminded of the man who broke me.

With a shaking hand, I called the women' s clinic my friend had recommended months ago. I made an appointment for the next morning. It was a brutal, gut-wrenching decision, but it was mine. It was the first step in taking my life back.

That evening, Liam came home. He was beaming, oblivious. He wrapped his arms around me from behind as I stood staring out the window.

"Thinking about our future?" he murmured into my hair, kissing my neck.

I didn't flinch. I felt nothing. Just a cold, empty space where my heart used to be.

"I was thinking we should get a dog," he said. "Maybe a golden retriever. The kids would love it."

The casual mention of "kids" was a new kind of torture. He was painting a beautiful picture of a life he had no intention of living with me.

"Ava, my love," he whispered, using the pet name that now sounded like an insult. In his prank journal, he' d written: #74: Call her 'my love.' She melts every time. Easy.

I remained silent, a statue in his arms.

He turned me around, his brow furrowed with fake concern. "Is everything okay? You seem distant tonight."

He placed a hand on my stomach, a gesture that would have thrilled me just this morning. Now, it felt like a violation. "Did you eat? You feel thin."

"I'm fine," I said, my voice a monotone. "Just tired."

"Let's go to bed," he said, his voice soft. "I'll hold you. You always sleep better when I hold you."

That night, I lay awake in his arms, his steady breathing a mockery of the storm inside me. He was a monster who thought he was a prince, and I was the fool who had believed him. But the fool was about to burn the whole kingdom down.