Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
Tessa
I was folding a t-shirt, one of Daniel’s spare grey ones that hung to my mid-thigh, when the world ended for the second time.
It was a quiet moment, or it was supposed to be.
The house was settling around me, the timber and steel contracting as the temperature dropped back to its usual coastal chill.
I was alone, but for the first time in a decade, the silence didn't feel predatory.
It felt full. It felt like the pause between heartbeats.
I smoothed the fabric over my knee, my fingers lingering on the cotton. It smelled of him. Warm yeast, sandalwood, and heavy spice. It was a scent that made my stomach flutter with a ghost sensation of weight and friction.
I looked at the satellite phone Anders had placed on the nightstand. It sat there like a brick of black plastic, ugly and industrial and utterly reassuring.
Two hours.
That was the promise. They were just going to town. They were buying eggs. They were buying heating pads. They were coming back to box up my life and move me to a brownstone with a library and a lock on the door.
For years, I had believed that safety was a wall. Last night, three men had dismantled that wall brick by brick and showed me that safety was actually a formation. A phalanx.
I picked up the sat-phone, just to hold it. To feel the weight of Anders’ protection.
Bzzzzzzzt.
The sound came from the living room.
I froze, the phone heavy in my hand. It wasn't the phone vibrating. It was a distant, mechanical hum, like a wasp trapped against a windowpane.
I walked out of the bedroom, my bare feet silent on the hardwood corridor. The living room was bathed in the flat, slate-grey light of mid-morning. The fire Daniel had built was down to embers, glowing faintly in the hearth.
Bzzzzzzzt. Whirrrrr.
It was louder now.
I looked at the floor-to-ceiling glass wall that overlooked the ocean. The view I had paid millions for. The view that was supposed to be endless, private, and empty.
Something black rose up from the cliff edge.
It hovered there, suspended against the grey sky like a severed head. Four rotors spun in a blur of violence. A camera lens, bulbous and unblinking, swiveled on a gimbal, locking onto the glass.
A drone.
My breath hitched in my throat, a sharp, ragged sound.
Go away, I thought, a childish, frantic instinct. It’s just a land survey. It’s just the DOT checking the bridge.
But then a second one rose up beside it. Then a third.
They moved with a jerky, synchronized aggression, buzzing closer to the glass until they were hovering only ten feet away. They looked like giant, angry insects, their mechanical whirring penetrating the insulated glass.
I took a step back, clutching Daniel’s t-shirt to my chest.
The center drone dipped lower, the camera lens adjusting, seeking focus. I saw the red tally light blink on.
Recording.
"No," I whispered.
I backed away, stumbling over the corner of the rug where Simon had made love to me less than an hour ago. I scrambled for the kitchen, for the shadows, for anywhere out of the line of sight.
But the glass house was a fishbowl. I had designed it to let the light in. Now, it let the eyes in.
I reached the kitchen island, seeking cover behind the marble, when I heard the tires.
It wasn't the smooth purr of the pack’s black SUV. It was the heavy, rattling crunch of a commercial van hitting the gravel of my driveway.
I peeked over the counter.
A white van had pulled up right to the edge of the property line, bypassing the private road gate, which must have been forced open. It was parked sideways, blocking the exit. The side door slid open.
I expected men with cameras. I expected telephoto lenses that looked like sniper rifles.
Instead, I saw a speaker stack.
It was rigged to the roof of the van, pointed directly at the house. Black, ugly boxes wired for amplification.
Crack. Hiss. Pop.
The feedback whined through the air, piercing the walls of the house.
And then, the audio started.
It wasn't music. It wasn't a demand for an interview.
"Please..."
The voice was high, broken, and wet with tears. It cracked in the middle of the word, dissolving into a jagged sob.
"Just let me go! Get off me!"
My blood turned to ice in my veins. The room spun. I gripped the countertop, my fingernails digging into the stone until they threatened to snap.
I knew that voice.
I heard that voice every night in my nightmares. I heard it in the silence between my keystrokes. I heard it every time I looked in a mirror.
It was me.
"I can't... oh god, it hurts... please help me..."
It was the audio from the graduation video. The viral clip. The "Graduation Girl" breakdown.
But it was amplified. It was distorted by the loudspeakers, booming across the cliffside, bouncing off the glass walls of my home. It filled the world. It turned the sky into a mouth that was screaming my own humiliation back at me.
"Look at her! Oh my god, she's leaking!"
The crowd noise swelled in the recording, the laughter, the jeers, the disgust.
My knees hit the floor. I didn't decide to kneel; my legs simply refused to hold me up. I clamped my hands over my ears, pressing hard enough to bruise, trying to physically block out the sound.
But I couldn't block out the vibration. The bass of the speakers rattled the windowpanes.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It synced with the frantic, terrified beat of my heart.
"No one touch her," a voice on the recording sneered. "Disgusting."
"Stop it!" I screamed, curling into a ball on the kitchen floor. "Stop it! Turn it off!"
The drones buzzed closer, tapping against the glass like moths trying to get to a flame. Tap. Tap. Tap. They were filming me. They were getting the reaction shot. "Reclusive Author Breaks Down Again." "Ten Year Reunion Tour."
Why? How?
Anders said he scrubbed it. He said he killed the links. He said he built a digital firewall that no one could breach.
The firewall.
A cold, sick clarity washed over me, displacing the panic with something far sharper and crueler.
Anders knew the security protocols.
Daniel knew the layout of the house.
Simon knew the exact emotional buttons to push to make me shatter.
They had been here. They had been inside.
I looked at the satellite phone lying on the floor where I had dropped it.
Two hours.
Anders had been so insistent. Efficiency. Strength in numbers. They all had to go. They couldn't leave one person behind to guard me? Not even Simon? Not even Daniel?
We have to resupply.
No. They had to clear the blast radius.
The timeline illuminated in my mind like a crime scene under a blue light.
The arrival. The perfectly timed breakdown of the car.
The forced intimacy. The way they had peeled me open, layer by layer, until I was raw and exposed.
Simon’s sketches, capturing the "truth" of me. Daniel’s voice, learning the exact frequency that made me compliant. Anders’ data mining, getting access to every password, every account, every secret I had.
They hadn't been fixing the leaks. They had been cataloging the assets.
And then, this morning. The rush to leave. The sudden need to be gone.
"Ten minutes," I whispered, the realization tasting like copper and ash.
They had been gone for ten minutes. Just enough time to get down the access road. Just enough time to signal the van that the coast was clear.
It was a setup. It was the long con.
The "Pack" wasn't real. It was a production team. T.L. Rose was the ultimate IP, the golden goose, and they needed the climax of the reality show. They needed the footage of the breakdown to sell the game, to sell the movie, to sell the lie.
Unless you beg.
The memory of Daniel’s voice twisted in my gut like a knife. He had made me beg. He had made me open the door. He had wormed his way into my bed and my body to ensure that when they finally destroyed me, I would be soft enough to break completely.
"Help me... someone please help me..." my teenage voice wailed from the speakers outside.
The drones buzzed louder, sensing movement, sensing the prey.
I couldn't stay in the kitchen. The kitchen was glass. The kitchen was on display.
I scrambled up, slipping on the slick floor, my limbs flailing. I ran.
As I ran past the living room where we had fucked on the rug I realized that every inch of the house was tainted. Every surface held the ghost of their touch, and now those ghosts were laughing at me.
The bedroom.
I slammed the door and threw the bolt.
But the sound was still there. The speakers were powerful enough to punch through the walls.
"Is that a heat? Look at the floor!"
"Get out," I sobbed, tearing at the t-shirt I was wearing. It smelled like Daniel. Sandalwood and lies. I ripped it off, fabric tearing. I couldn't have it on my skin. I couldn't have them on my skin.
I was naked again, shivering in the cold air, but the scent was still there. Bourbon. Chocolate. Spice. It had seeped into my pores. They had marked me. They had branded the merchandise before putting it up for auction.
Refuge. I needed a bunker.
I threw myself at the door of the en-suite bathroom.
It was the only room in the house without floor-to-ceiling windows. Just a small, high frosted pane for ventilation.
I slammed the door and locked it. Then I dragged the heavy teak towel hamper in front of it. Then I grabbed the bathmat and shoved it into the crack under the door.
I huddled in the furthest corner, wedged between the toilet and the bathtub, my bare back pressed against the cold slate tiles.
This was my safe space. This was where Anders had washed me. Where he had looked at me with those piercing blue eyes and told me I was sustainable.
Liar. Liar. Liar.
I squeezed my eyes shut, rocking back and forth, my hands clamped over my ears.
But the psychological warfare was precise. The audio wasn't just noise; it was a trigger key.
Flash.
I wasn't in the bathroom.
The smell of slate and expensive soap vanished, replaced instantly by the cloying, suffocating stench of floor wax and stale popcorn.
The light shifted. The grey gloom exploded into the blinding white glare of stage lights.
I was eighteen. The microphone stand was digging into my palm. The heat was a tidal wave crashing over my head, pulling me under.
Don't look at them. Don't look at the crowd.
I turned my head to the left, seeking an anchor. Seeking authority.
In the memory, Anders was sitting in his chair behind the podium. He was wearing his charcoal suit. He was looking at his watch.
He looked up. He met my eyes.
But this time, in the flashback, he didn't freeze. He smiled.
It was a cold, shark-like smile. He held up a phone, the camera lens pointed right at me.
Smile, Tessa, the phantom Anders whispered, his voice merging with the recording outside. Think of the engagement metrics.
"No!" I shrieked, banging my head against the tile wall behind me. "I’m not content! I’m a person!"
My wrist burned.
I looked down. The bite mark. The bruise Anders had left on my inner arm. It looked purple and angry against my pale skin.
It wasn't a claim. It was a receipt.
He had tagged me. He had marked the asset so the salvage crew would know which body to drag out of the wreckage.
My stomach heaved. A violent, spasmodic contraction that had nothing to do with withdrawal and everything to do with betrayal. I leaned over the toilet and wretched, spitting bile and acid into the water.
They had used my body against me. They had used my loneliness as a weapon.
Simon. The way he looked at me in the mirror. You're the main character.
Yes. The main character in a tragedy. The sacrifice.
Daniel. The way he hummed against my throat. I'm filling the silence.
He filled it so he could sell the recording rights.
My heart was beating so fast it hurt. A fluttery, erratic rhythm that made my vision spot with black. The panic attack was a living thing, a parasite tightening its coils around my lungs.
Bzzzzzzzt.
A shadow fell across the frosted glass of the high window.
A drone. It was hovering right outside the vent. Trying to peek in. Trying to get the money shot of the naked, broken author cowering on her bathroom floor.
I let out a sound that wasn't human. It was the sound of a trapped animal realizing the cage has no door.
I grabbed the first thing my hand touched. A heavy glass jar of bath salts sitting on the tub ledge.
I threw it.
It smashed against the frosted window, shattering the glass of the jar and cracking the pane. Bath salts exploded like crystal shrapnel, raining down on the tile floor, mixing with the pieces of my sanity.
"Come and get me!" I screamed at the buzzing shadow. "Come and finish it! I'm right here!"
I crawled into the bathtub, curling into a fetal ball on the cold porcelain. I pulled the shower curtain down, ripping the rings from the rod, burying myself in the plastic folds.
I waited for the drones to break the glass. I waited for the van to drive through the wall.
But mostly, I waited for the door to open and for Anders, Simon, and Daniel to walk in, cameras rolling, to tell me that the performance was over and they had everything they needed.
I squeezed my eyes shut and wished, with everything I had left, that I had drowned on that stage ten years ago. At least then, I wouldn't have known what it felt like to be loved before I was destroyed.