Chapter 37
Lottie
Everywhere from my shoulder down to my hand feels like liquid fire, burning beneath my skin. It’s not broken, I can still move my fingers, but something’s wrong. Dislocated, maybe. Wrenched out of place when they dragged me from the car.
Archer…
The last thing I saw was him trapped behind the wheel, shouting my name while they tore me away. The image won’t leave me. It plays like a cruel loop, the way his voice cracked and the shattered look on his face as they dragged me out through the broken glass.
My chest aches, but I can’t fall apart now. Not here. Not when I know exactly where I am.
The walls are too familiar. The heavy curtains, the too-big windows, the same carpet… the only new thing is the bed I’m currently sitting on.
I know this room. I’ve seen it a thousand times in my nightmares after I had my voice stolen.
I’m in Lorenzo’s house… in that room.
My breath catches, and I force myself to move, to try to find a way out, even if every move I make is agony. Every detail in this room makes me sick. The ornate mirror on the wall. The wall-to-wall bookcase. The silver tray with two glasses—one half full, one untouched.
I’m back in the place that broke me…
“You’re awake.” His voice slithers through the room, smooth and poisonous like a snake. I flinch before I can stop myself, turning toward the sound. He’s standing in the doorway, hands in his pockets like this is some kind of casual reunion.
I edge back until my back hits a wall, hissing when it jostles my shoulder. He tilts his head, studying me the way someone studies a prize they already own. “Still a silent little bird, are we?”
“No,” I force my voice to be steady. “I just have nothing to say to you.”
He smiles, slow and cold. “That’s fine, Scarlett. It won’t be much of a hardship to break you again once you’re my wife.”
For a second, all I can do is stare at him—at the smug curve of his mouth, at the delusion in his eyes. And then, despite the pain clawing through my shoulder, a sharp, humorless laugh escapes me. “Your wife?” I echo, mocking him. “That’s never going to happen.”
His smile falters, just slightly. “You don’t have a choice.”
I want to laugh in his face. I’ll never be his wife. I’m Elijah’s, and even though I was mad at first when I found out he married me without my consent, I’m thankful for it now.
He studies me for a long moment, and I realize something that makes my stomach twist… he looks different.
He looks hollow. His eyes are wild and unfocused. His hands twitch at his sides like he doesn’t trust himself to stay still.
The man who ruined me… the monster who stole my voice and fed on my fear looks broken. Like his sanity has been bleeding out of him for years, and whatever is left is barely human.
It should make me happy, but instead, it makes my skin crawl.
He takes a breath, forcing composure back into his posture, and smooths down his suit.
“Well, we’re getting married tomorrow, but we can’t have you trying to escape the night before, can we?
” He turns toward the door. “Besides, it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding.
” My stomach turns. His hand rests on the doorknob, and then that smile stretches wider. “So, I brought you some company.”
He opens the door.
For a moment, my brain refuses to catch up. She looks the same as before—the same hair, the same burnt plastic smell that seems to cling to her, the same hollow eyes pretending to hold warmth.
“Hello, Scarlett,” she says with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.
Every nerve in my body goes taut. I don’t move.
I just shift my gaze past her, scanning the room, the mirror, the curtains, the weird spot on the floor, anything but her face.
But I keep her in my peripheral vision, I make sure of it, because Tracey is unpredictable when she wants something, and I know Lorenzo will have promised her a lot to hold me here.
“Are you not going to greet your mother?” she asks, tilting her head like I’m a petulant child.
A bitter laugh slips out before I can stop it. It’s sharp, humorless. “You stopped being my mother the moment you sold me to erase your debt.”
Tracey rolls her eyes. “Always with the dramatics.”
For a moment, there’s silence. Even Lorenzo doesn’t speak, he just watches, the corner of his mouth twitching as if he’s enjoying this performance.
“Hardly. You traded your daughter for drugs. You let him and his friend do whatever they wanted to me because it was easier than admitting what kind of mother you really were.” I meet their eyes now, fury burning through every drop of fear.
“You can dress me up tomorrow in the pretty white dress. You can try to break me… but I’ll never be yours. Not again.”
He doesn’t respond, just closes the door behind him as he leaves, leaving me alone with Tracey.
She stands there for a long moment after the door shuts, her arms crossed and face pinched with disdain.
She’s always looked like that, like she’s the one who was wronged, like she’s owed something for giving birth to me. I stay where I am, pressing my back against the wall even though the pain in my shoulder is sharp enough to make me feel nauseous.
“I see you haven’t changed,” she sneers. “Still so ungrateful. You should be thanking me, you know. You’re alive because of me.”
The laugh that slips out of me sounds foreign, bitter. “Alive? You call this alive?” I gesture to the room, to the locked windows, and the familiar suffocating air. “You call this saving me?”
She sighs dramatically, flopping down onto the bed, as if I’m the one being unreasonable. “You were a burden, Scarlett. I had debts. I was being threatened. Lorenzo offered me a way out. You were… a fair trade.”
The words hit like a slap, but I don’t let her see it. I don’t even blink. “You sold me for some crack, and a few months of pretending your life wasn’t falling apart while you racked up more debt. I wasn’t a fair trade. I was a sacrifice.”
Her nostrils flare, and I catch the faint flex of her hands before she stretches them out. “You don’t know what it’s like, what I went through—”
“I—” The word catches in my throat, splintering under the weight of everything I’ve held in for years. My hands tremble, but the anger rising in me burns hotter than the fear ever did. “I don’t know what it’s like?” I repeat, my voice sharper, louder now.
I take a step forward and point to the bed. “That’s where the sofa used to be, the one they pinned me to.” My finger trembles, but I don’t stop. “Right there, Tracey. That’s where it started.”
I turn, pointing to the floor, the same patch of carpet I’ve seen a thousand times in my nightmares.
“And there… that’s where I clawed at the ground, trying to get away.
I can still see the marks if I look hard enough.
” My voice cracks, but I force it steady.
“That’s where they silenced me. That’s where I was raped by the men you sold me to.
Men who thought my pain was a transaction.
Where I realized shouting for help was useless and silence was safer. ”
I point to the door next. “That’s where they dragged me out when they were done. Threw me in a car, bleeding and half-conscious, and dumped me back at our doorstep like garbage.”
Finally, I point at her. My hand doesn’t shake this time. “And you. You watched me walk through that door. Bruised, torn apart, and barely standing. Do you remember what you did?”
Her mouth opens, but I don’t give her the chance.
“You smiled.” The word rips out of me, all the hurt I felt back then rising. “You told me it’s what all girls go through. That I should be grateful because it meant I was pretty enough for men to want me.”
Tracey flinches, but I’m not done. I can’t stop. The dam’s broken.
“And Dad—” My throat tightens around his name.
“He found out what you did. What your debt cost me. And do you know what it did to him?” My voice cracks, tears sting my eyes.
“He drank himself half to death trying to forget it, because the guilt was eating him alive. You don’t know what surviving is, Tracey.
You only know how to run from the things you cause.
But I learned how to live with them. I learned how to turn what you, Lorenzo, and James did to me into something that couldn’t be used to hurt me anymore. ”
I take a deep breath and look at her, really look, and I hate what I see.
Her eyes glisten, but I don’t care. “I’m not the scared little girl you left in this room,” I finish, voice trembling.
“You broke me. But I built myself back, piece by piece, and every single one of those pieces hates you for what you let happen.”
Tracey doesn’t move or say anything for a long time. She just sits there, her eyes flicking from the carpet to the bed to the door as if seeing them through my eyes for the first time. Then, finally, a single tear slips down her cheek.
She wipes it away almost immediately, quick and irritated, like it’s a betrayal. Another follows, slower this time, and for a heartbeat, I see something human in her.
Regret, maybe… or shame.
“Don’t. Don’t you dare cry.”
Her eyes snap up to mine, and the mask slides right back into place—like it was never gone.
The softness vanishes, swallowed whole by that familiar sneer.
The same look she used to give me when she was too high to care.
“You think I wanted any of that?” she snaps.
“You think I had a choice? Lorenzo owned me, Scarlett. He would’ve killed me if I didn’t pay it back. I did what I had to do.”
“No,” I say quietly. “You did what was easiest for you.”
Her lip curls. “You always thought you were so much better than me. So righteous, but don’t act like you’re perfect. You survived by opening your legs for men just like him.”
I take a step toward her, and she flinches like she expects me to strike her just like she used to do to me. “I survived in spite of men like him. And you.”
She exhales, shaking her head, trying to laugh, but it comes out brittle and wrong. “You really think you’re untouchable now, don’t you? You’re still that broken little girl, Scarlett, who wants her mommy to save her.”
I stare at her for a long moment, taking in the woman who gave me life and then sold it. The smell of cheap perfume, the faint tremor in her hands, the emptiness behind her words. “No. You’re wrong. I learned how to survive when I realized my mommy didn’t care.”
Tracey’s face twists, but I don’t stay to see what she says next. My body moves before my mind can catch up. The pain in my shoulder is white-hot as I lunge forward, catching her off guard. She stumbles back into the dresser, letting out a startled shriek that echoes off the walls.
“You little—”
I shove her hard before she can finish, the impact sending agony shooting through my shoulder, but I don’t stop. I can’t. Not this time. I grab the lamp from the bedside table and hurl it at the wall, glass shattering as I make for the door.
Tracey’s still screaming my name, but her voice fades behind me as I run. The door isn’t locked—stupid mistake—and I rip it open, bolting down the hall barefoot.
Every step sends a jolt through my arm, but adrenaline drowns the pain. The corridor is dimly lit, familiar in the worst way. I know this house. I memorized its bones in my nightmares. The smell of cologne and whiskey. The marble floor that’s too cold, too clean.
Two guards stand near the staircase. They watch me sprint past them, their faces expressionless. Not one moves. Not one tries to stop me—of course, they don’t, they know I won’t get far.
They don’t even blink.
I hit the bottom of the stairs, breath ragged, and the front door is right there. For a second, my heart dares to hope, until the shadows shift.
Lorenzo stands between me and freedom, dressed in black, his tie undone, sleeves rolled to his elbows. His expression is calm—too calm—and that’s worse than rage.
“Scarlett,” he says softly, like he’s trying to coax me, “Going somewhere?”
I take a step back, shaking my head. “Stay away from me.”
He sighs, almost pitying. “You make everything so difficult.”
When I bolt for the door, he’s faster. His hand closes around my injured arm, wrenching it behind my back. I scream, falling to my knees as his grip tightens, sending fire racing through my shoulder.
“Stop fighting me!” he growls, his breath hot against my ear. “You’ll only make it worse.”
I twist, try to elbow him with my good arm, but he catches that too. The world tilts as he slams me against the floor, and I cry out.
“Little birds,” he murmurs, his breath hot on my neck. “They always try to be free. It’s in their nature.”
His fingers dig into my good shoulder until I hear a sickening pop, and I scream again, the sound raw and animal.
“That’s why we break their wings,” he finishes, his voice almost tender.
The room spins. The pain is blinding. I can barely breathe as he drags me back down the hall, my feet scraping against the floor, every movement a white flash of agony. He pushes open the door to that room and throws me inside. I hit the floor hard, gasping, curling around the pain.
Lorenzo stands in the doorway, straightening his sleeves like nothing happened.
“Tomorrow,” he says, voice smooth again, “you’ll be dressed in white.
You’ll smile for the cameras. You’ll say your vows.
” He looks down at me, and his smile turns sharp.
“Or I’ll make sure you never speak again.
” He turns to Tracey. “Make sure she doesn’t try to leave again. ”
Then he shuts the door, the lock clicking into place. I clutch my ruined shoulder, tasting blood, and force myself to breathe.
Tracey sighs and lifts me onto the bed. “Go to sleep, Scarlett. It’s better this way… for everyone.”
I lie down on my back, staring at the ceiling. They think they’ve broken me, but I’ve survived this house once before. And this time… This time, I’m not leaving without making sure it burns to the ground.