Chapter 3

I remembered an incident from a year ago. I'd been riding one of my horses on the estate grounds when the saddle suddenly came loose. I was thrown, my arm breaking in the fall. It was agony.

Liam had been the one to find me. He' d scooped me up and carried me back to the house, his face a mask of grim concern. For a fleeting moment, I had thought, He does care. He had stayed by my side until the doctor came, his presence a silent, comforting weight.

Now, I saw it for what it was. The saddle hadn't just "come loose." Chloe had been "helping" me tack up the horse that day. She must have tampered with it. And Liam' s "rescue" wasn't a heroic act of love; it was damage control. A dead heiress was no use to them. An injured, grateful one was much more pliable.

The thought made me sick. I drove away from the mansion, the place I called home, and headed toward a new, uncertain life with Ethan Miller. I didn't know him, but he couldn't possibly be worse than the vipers I'd left behind.

His penthouse was stark and modern, all glass and steel, with a panoramic view of the city. It was the complete opposite of my family's warm, cluttered mansion.

Ethan was waiting for me. He was taller than I expected, with a calm, steady presence. He didn't smile, but his eyes were kind.

"Welcome, Ava," he said simply. "I've had a room prepared for you. Let me know if you need anything."

"Thank you," I said, my voice barely a whisper. I felt emotionally exhausted, adrift in a sea of my own making.

That night, alone in a strange bed, the full weight of my situation crashed down on me. I had run from one cage, but had I just locked myself in another?

A few days later, while exploring the city on my own, I was careless. I turned down a dark alley, a shortcut I thought I knew, and suddenly two men were blocking my path. They were rough, their eyes cold and greedy as they looked at my designer handbag.

"Just give us the purse, lady, and no one gets hurt," one of them growled.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I clutched my bag, ready to run, but the other man grabbed my arm, his grip like iron. Fear, pure and primal, seized me.

Then I saw it. A glint of metal in the first man' s hand. It wasn' t a knife. It was a phone, angled just so. He wasn't just robbing me. He was filming it. And in the reflection on the dark screen, I saw a familiar face watching from the end of the alley.

Chloe.

Despair washed over me. This was her doing. She wanted to humiliate me, to show me how helpless I was without her precious "brothers" to protect me.

"Help!" I screamed, struggling against the man's grip. "Somebody, help me!"

The men just laughed. From the end of the alley, Chloe smiled, a cold, satisfied little smirk, before melting back into the shadows. She was leaving me here.

Just as one of the men ripped the purse from my shoulder, I heard the screech of tires. A black sedan swerved into the alley's entrance, its headlights pinning us in their glare. The doors flew open.

It wasn't Liam. It wasn't any of my so-called boyfriends.

It was Ethan.

"Let her go," he said, his voice dangerously low. His security team fanned out behind him, professional and silent.

The muggers froze, their bravado evaporating. They dropped my bag and ran, disappearing into the darkness.

Ethan rushed to my side, his hands gently checking my arms. "Are you hurt?"

I shook my head, unable to speak, the shock and the betrayal still choking me. He put his jacket around my shoulders. It was warm and smelled faintly of sandalwood. He didn't ask questions. He just led me back to the car, his hand a steady presence on my back.

Back at the penthouse, as he was putting a bandage on a scrape on my arm, my phone buzzed. It was a text from an unknown number. A video file.

With trembling fingers, I opened it. It was the footage from the alley, filmed from the mugger's perspective. It ended with a close-up of my terrified face. Then, another text came through.

This is what happens when you're all alone, Ava. You need us. Come back.

It wasn't signed, but I knew who it was from. Liam. He was trying to scare me, to manipulate me into coming back so their plan could continue. He didn't save me. He let it happen, and then sent the video to rub it in my face. The pain was so sharp, so absolute, it felt like my heart was physically breaking.

Later that week, Liam showed up at the penthouse. He said he was worried about me. He brought my favorite soup from a restaurant near home.

"I heard what happened," he said, his voice laced with concern. "You shouldn't be out on your own. It's dangerous."

I looked at him, at his handsome, earnest face, and felt nothing but ice in my veins. I was confused for a moment. He seemed genuinely worried.

"Why are you here, Liam?" I asked, my voice flat.

"I miss you," he said, his eyes searching mine. "We all do. Chloe cries every night."

I almost laughed. The performance was flawless. But the doubt was a nagging whisper in my mind. What if I was wrong? What if he really did care, in his own twisted way?

My doubts were erased a few days later. I was in my room when I overheard Ethan on the phone in the hallway. I couldn't help but stop and listen.

"Yes, I have the footage from the alley's security cameras," Ethan was saying. "The two men were hired. I have their bank records. The payment came from an offshore account, but I traced its origin." There was a pause. "It was set up by Liam Hayes."

I leaned against the wall, my legs weak.

"And there's more," Ethan continued. "He wasn't just watching. The footage shows him meeting with the men beforehand and giving them instructions. He orchestrated the whole thing."

The world went silent. It wasn't just that he'd let it happen. He had planned it. He had hired those men to terrorize me. The soup, the concerned words, they were all part of the act. He had stood by and watched me be attacked, all to drive me back into his arms, back into their web of lies.

The last flicker of hope I had for him died in that moment, replaced by a cold, burning certainty. I wouldn't just escape them. I would destroy them.