Chapter 4

The car was a warm, silent cocoon, a stark contrast to the storm raging outside and the one that had just torn her life apart. Dr. Drake drove with a focused intensity, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.

"They were once good to me," Alicia said softly, breaking the silence. The words felt necessary, a defense of a past that now seemed like a dream. "Before Ava came. They were my world."

Dr. Drake glanced at her, his expression softening with pity. "I don't doubt that, Alicia. But the people they are now... they are not the people you remember."

She knew he was right, but the memories were insistent, rising like ghosts.

Their parents, both brilliant researchers, had been ghosts in their own way, always consumed by their work. They loved their children, but from a distance, their presence more of an idea than a reality. It was Julian and Dante who had raised her.

She remembered being six, a small, shy girl with glasses too big for her face, cornered in the schoolyard by a group of older boys. They had knocked her books to the ground, called her names. She had run home and hidden in her room, crying silently into her pillow.

Dante, then a lanky, hot-headed teenager of sixteen, had found her. He hadn't said much. He had just sat with her, and then, with a dark look in his eyes, he had left. The next day, the lead bully came to school with a black eye and two missing teeth. Dante was suspended for a week, but he never said a word about it. He just ruffled her hair and told her no one would ever bother her again.

And they never did.

Julian, always the more pragmatic one, had found him later, tending to his bruised knuckles. Julian hadn't scolded him. He had simply cleaned the cuts, his touch surprisingly gentle, and then made them all hot chocolate, a silent acknowledgment of their pact to protect their own.

They were her protectors, her heroes. They had filled the void their parents had left.

They had promised to take her to Hawaii, a promise made over a worn-out travel magazine when she was ten. "One day, Lissy," Julian had said, pointing to a picture of a volcano. "When you're all grown up, we'll go. Just the three of us."

That promise, like all the others, had died with their parents in the fiery wreckage of a car on a lonely highway. The official report called it an accident. But the family knew better. Their parents' research was groundbreaking, and dangerous. Others wanted it. The accident had been an assassination, one that also claimed the life of their father's business partner and closest friend, Daniel Meyer.

Overwhelmed by guilt and a misguided sense of duty, Julian and Dante had sought out Daniel' s only child, Ava. They brought her into their home, a broken, grieving girl of sixteen, and swore to protect her as they had once protected Alicia.

But Ava' s grief was a weapon. Her vulnerability, a disguise.

The change was gradual. A favorite sweater of Alicia's would go missing, only to be found later, cut to ribbons, at the back of Ava's closet. Ava would cry and say she had no idea how it got there. A research paper Alicia had spent weeks on would be "accidentally" deleted from the family computer. Ava would apologize profusely, blaming her lack of tech skills.

Each time, Alicia would try to explain, and each time, her brothers would side with Ava.

"She's been through so much, Lissy," Julian would say, his voice weary. "Give her a break."

"Why are you always so mean to her?" Dante would accuse. "She looks up to you. Can't you see you're hurting her?"

They couldn't see that it was Ava who was hurting her, slowly and methodically poisoning their love for her.

The final, irrevocable break came a year before her birthday. Alicia had found Ava in her room, wearing her mother' s pearl necklace, a piece Alicia was never allowed to touch.

"Take it off," Alicia had demanded, her voice shaking with rage.

Ava had clutched the pearls, her eyes wide with feigned innocence. "I just wanted to feel close to her. To feel like I had a mother again."

"She is not your mother!" Alicia had screamed, the injustice of it all finally boiling over. "You have no right!"

She had reached for the necklace, and in that moment, Ava had done the unthinkable. She had thrown herself backwards, down the short flight of stairs leading to Alicia's sunken study area.

It was a calculated, theatrical fall.

Alicia had stood frozen in shock as Ava let out a piercing scream.

Julian and Dante had come running. They saw Alicia at the top of the stairs, her face a mask of fury, and Ava crumpled at the bottom, sobbing, clutching a "broken" ankle.

They didn't ask what happened. They assumed.

It was the first time Dante had ever laid a hand on her. He had grabbed her arm, his grip like iron, and shoved her against the wall. "What did you do?" he had roared, his face inches from hers, spittle flying from his lips.

Julian had pulled him back, but his own eyes were filled with a cold, terrifying disappointment. "Go to your room, Alicia," he had said, his voice deadly quiet. "We'll deal with you later."

They never did. They had simply taken Ava to the hospital, fussing over her sprained ankle, and when they returned, they acted as if Alicia didn't exist.

That was the night they took her entire savings, her Cambridge fund, and used it to book Ava a "getaway" to a luxury spa in Arizona to "recover from the trauma."

That was the night Alicia realized she had already lost them.

Her birthday, the fight over the cosmetic surgery, Dante telling her to get out-it wasn't the beginning of the end. It was just the end.

The car slowed, pulling up to a large, imposing gate. A guard checked Dr. Drake's credentials and the gate slid open, revealing a sprawling complex of modern buildings nestled in a secluded valley.

The National Research Institute.

Her new home. Her new life.

Her prison and her salvation.

"Are you ready for this, Alicia?" Dr. Drake asked, his voice gentle.

Alicia looked at the buildings, stark and emotionless under the receding storm clouds. There was no warmth here, no love, no family.

There was only work. Science. The cold, hard pursuit of facts.

It was exactly what she needed.

"I'm ready," she said, and for the first time in a very long time, she felt a flicker of something that was not pain.

It was peace.