Chapter 3

They left me in the chemical bath for what felt like hours. When the maids finally pulled me out, my skin was raw and inflamed. They half-dragged me, dripping and shivering, to the small, bare room in the attic that had been my prison for three years.

I collapsed onto the thin mattress, every bone screaming in protest. The pain was a living thing, a fire that consumed me from the inside out. But underneath it, a cold clarity was setting in.

I was going to die. Soon.

And I would die on my own terms.

I spent the next day gathering the few things that were mine. Old photographs from before the coma, a pressed flower Caleb had given me on our first date, letters from my parents from a time when they still loved me.

I wanted to leave this world clean, with no ties to these people.

I carried the small box of memories to the fireplace in the main library, a room I was usually forbidden to enter. I lit a match and dropped it in.

The flames licked at the edges of the photographs, turning my smiling face to ash. The fire consumed my past, my love, my life. It was a funeral pyre for the girl I used to be.

"What do you think you're doing?"

The voice, sharp and venomous, cut through the crackle of the fire. Hailie stood in the doorway, her arms crossed, a sneer on her pretty face.

I didn't answer, just watched the last of my memories burn.

She strode over to me, her eyes glittering with malice. "Trying to get attention again? You're pathetic. Burning a few old pictures won't make Caleb love you again."

She kicked the fire basin. It tipped over, scattering embers across the expensive Persian rug. A small flame ignited, then began to spread with alarming speed.

"No!" I scrambled to my feet, trying to stomp out the fire with a blanket.

Hailie grabbed my arm, her nails digging into my skin. "Let it burn! Let everything that was yours turn to ash!"

Smoke filled the room, thick and acrid. My lungs, already so weak, seized. I coughed, a deep, rattling sound that tore through my chest.

"Help!" I choked, my vision blurring.

Hailie just laughed, a high, unhinged sound. "Scream all you want. Nobody will help you. They'll just think you're trying to burn the house down. Another sin for your list."

Just then, Caleb and Fitzgerald burst into the room.

"Hailie!" Caleb yelled, rushing to her side, ignoring the flames and my desperate gasps for air. "Are you okay?"

"Caleb!" she cried, throwing herself into his arms. "Ericka... she tried to kill me! She set the room on fire!"

I tried to speak, to deny it, but all that came out was a wheezing cough. I sank to my knees, the world spinning.

Caleb's eyes, when they finally turned to me, were glacial. "You never learn, do you?" he snarled. "You are a disease, a cancer in this family."

The irony of his words was a physical blow.

He turned to the household staff who had gathered at the door. "Take her to the sauna. Turn it all the way up. It's time she felt some real heat."

Two men grabbed my arms, dragging me from the smoky room. I was too weak to resist.

They threw me into the small, wood-paneled sauna in the basement. The door slammed shut, and a moment later, I heard the hiss of steam and felt the temperature begin to climb.

The heat was suffocating. It pressed in on me, stealing the air from my lungs. Sweat poured down my body, stinging my raw skin.

I pounded on the door, my voice a hoarse scream. "Please! Let me out! Caleb! Fitz!"

There was no answer.

The heat intensified. It felt like my skin was melting. I remembered happier times in this house, family barbecues in the summer, Christmas mornings by the fire. The love I had felt from these people, the love I had given them.

How had it come to this? How had their love twisted into something so monstrous?

The pain became unbearable. I couldn't scream anymore. I slid down the wall, my body convulsing.

Just as I felt my consciousness slipping away, the door was thrown open.

Hailie stood there, silhouetted against the dim basement light.

"Had enough?" she asked, her voice dripping with amusement.

Then she picked up a bucket of ice water that was sitting nearby.

"Time to cool off," she said with a vicious smile, and threw it on me.

The shock of the ice against my burning skin was a new kind of agony. My body went into shock, and the world went black.