CHAPTER 1
POV: Vivienne
I forced myself up.
Knees screaming. Palms burning where the clay dust had ground into the cuts. My legs felt like someone else was operating them—jerky, unreliable. The room kept tilting left, then right, like the whole cliff had come loose and was sliding into the Pacific.
Earthquake.
That was the first lie I tried.
A small one. Localized. The kind that only hits one building and leaves the rest of the coast untouched. I told it to myself twice, three times, while my eyes dragged across the wreckage again.
Kids.
Maybe teenagers. Bored. Looking for something to smash. The studio sat alone on the point; no neighbors for half a mile. Easy target.
Accident.
A shelf failure. One heavy piece falling, triggering the rest like dominoes. The red paint could be… I didn’t finish that thought. Even my own mind wouldn’t let me.
None of it fit.
The destruction was too clean in its cruelty. Too complete. Every single piece I had ever loved was broken on purpose. The message on the wall still dripped, slow and thick, like it had all the time in the world.
My skin started buzzing.
Tiny electric pops under the surface, starting at the base of my neck and racing down both arms. The hair there stood up. My throat locked. I could feel the muscles tightening, one by one, until swallowing became a conscious decision I had to force.
I took one step toward the overturned wedging table.
Then the second creak came.
Softer than the first. Closer.
I spun so fast the room smeared into gray streaks.
A hooded figure filled the doorway.
Tall. Broad. Blocking the only way out. The early light turned him into a black cutout, edges blurred by the hood. I couldn’t see a face. Only the shape of a man who had been standing there long enough to watch me fall apart.
My heart slammed once against my ribs, hard enough to hurt, then took off at a sprint.
“He doesn’t even look at what you make.”
The voice was low. Male. Unfamiliar. It scraped across the quiet like gravel.
“Why should anyone else?”
The words landed in the exact center of my chest.
I lunged for my phone.
My coat was still on. Pocket on the right side. Fingers closed around the cool edge of the case—
He was faster.
A gloved hand clamped over my mouth from behind.
The leather was cold and slightly damp from the sea air.
Another arm banded around my waist and yanked me backward.
My boots scraped across shattered porcelain.
Clay dust exploded up around us in a fine gray cloud that coated my tongue and the back of my throat.
I couldn’t scream.
I couldn’t bite.
The glove sealed tight. My nose filled with the sour scent of sweat and something chemical underneath. Panic flooded in so fast my vision tunneled. The walls of the studio seemed to lean inward. The spinning got worse.
He walked me backward like I weighed nothing.
My shoulder blades hit the kiln.
The metal was cold even through my coat—deep, permanent cold that sank straight into bone. He pressed harder. The kiln door handle dug into the small of my back. My lungs tried to drag air through the tiny space left under his palm and failed.
“This is only the beginning,” he whispered against the shell of my ear.
His breath was warm. The only warm thing in the entire room.
“Stay quiet, Mrs. Reed. Or the next thing that burns is the house.”
Mrs. Reed.
The name sounded wrong in his mouth. Like he had practiced it.
My pulse was a wild, irregular hammer in my neck, right under the edge of his glove.
I could feel every separate beat. Skin buzzing harder now, full-body static.
The room kept shrinking. Concrete floor, broken sculptures, red dripping words—all of it compressed into a single tight box with no air left.
I clawed at his wrist.
Short nails. Useless. The leather didn’t give.
Outside, somewhere down the path, a second set of footsteps started pounding.
Heavy. Fast. More than one person.
The man behind me went completely still for half a second.
Then he moved.
He released me so suddenly I staggered forward and almost went to my knees again.
By the time I spun around, he was already at the side door that led to the cliff trail—the one I almost never used because the drop was sheer.
Hood still up. No face. Just the dark shape of him slipping through and vanishing into the gray morning like he had never been solid at all.
I sucked in one huge, broken breath.
Then another.
My hands were shaking so hard I had to press them flat against my thighs to make them stop. Clay dust and blood streaked the fabric. My throat still felt locked, like someone had left fingerprints on the inside.
The main door burst open.
Two of Cassian’s security team—dark suits, earpieces, the permanent expression of men who expected trouble—filled the space the hooded man had just left. They took in the destruction, the red paint, me standing in the middle of it with dust on my face and blood on my fingers.
“Mrs. Reed—”
I didn’t answer.
I couldn’t.
One of them was already on the radio, voice clipped and urgent. The other moved past me to the cliff-side door, weapon drawn, but I knew it was too late. Thirty seconds. Maybe less. The trail down to the rocks was steep and full of blind turns. Whoever he was, he was gone.
My phone was still in my coat pocket.
I pulled it out with fingers that didn’t feel like mine.
The screen lit up the second I touched it.
A news alert from the tech wire Cassian’s company monitored every second of every day.
Breaking: Reed Dynamics Names Sienna Hale Chief Strategy Officer
The words sat there in clean black type, bright against the cracked glass of my phone case.
Sienna Hale.
The one who got away.
I stared at the screen until the letters started to swim.
Outside, the security team was still talking, still searching, still too late.
Inside the studio that used to be mine, the red paint kept dripping, slow and steady, and the only sound left was the ragged pull of my own breathing as the walls closed in another inch.