Chapter 3
Sloane
My mind comes back before my body does. I'm in the car. Still shaking.
The cabin is too small for how hard my heart slams against my ribs. Cold air seeps through the door frame, but my skin burns.
I curl in on myself, boots on the seat, arms locked around my legs, trying to hold the pieces together by force. My suitcase is still on the sidewalk two blocks back where I dropped it. Everything I took when I ran, gone.
Knox drives like he owns the road. One hand on the wheel with his jaw set and eyes scanning continuously. City lights flash over his face, gold and blue and shadow, turning him into someone I can't quite hold in focus.
The ghost of his mouth still haunts my throat, the bite of his fingers on my hips, his voice going rough when he said my name.
Humiliation crawls hot under my ribs. The ache between my thighs still pulses. My body tilts toward him before I catch it. Last night I chose him. Gave him what my father intended to sell. Knox doesn't know. He doesn't need to, not yet. But I know, and I chose right.
When I turn my head, I take in his profile. The sharp angles of his face, the faint stubble, the calm, lethal focus. His hands. The ones that held me down and steadied me when I shook apart under him.
Part of me recognizes him before my mind does, the way it did when I crashed into him in the parking lot. Danger ignited behind me, and I ran straight toward the only person who wasn't a trap.
A memory slices through the panic: my father, smoothing my collar at a charity gala, his voice a low murmur. A lie is a tool, Sloane. The best ones are wrapped in a pretty truth. Make them want to believe you.
But with Knox, the lies feel like sandpaper in my throat.
"Breathe," Knox says. "You're going to pass out."
"I'm fine," I whisper. I sound wrecked. His eyes stay on the road, but his fingers tighten on the wheel.
"You're shaking so hard the door's rattling."
He's right. Chicago blurs past in streaks of white and neon.
"Talk to me," Knox says. "Start with your real name."
"I gave you my name."
"You gave me a name," he corrects. "I want yours."
My teeth clench. "Why does it matter?"
"Because I just watched private security sweep a parking lot hunting you," he says. "Because they're not stopping. And because if I'm going to help you, you don't lie to me."
Help me. My stomach twists.
"You don't have to help me," I say. "I didn't mean to drag you into anything—"
"Your name." A command. "Tell me."
"Sloane," I say after a beat of silence.
Knox exhales. The tension in his jaw loosens. "Good," he says. "Now we're starting in the right place." He shifts lanes, checking mirrors. "Leave things out if you want. Just don't feed me things you know are false."
"And… you'll still help me?"
"If I wasn't planning on it," he says, "I would have let those guys walk you out of that lot."
My nails bite crescents into my jeans as I remember their measured, patient stride. How my legs moved without thinking, veering hard toward him.
I lift my head long enough to glance at the side mirror, then press my forehead to my knees. The car smells of him. Hotel soap and leather, so close it sits on my tongue. I remember him too easily, and the reminder hurts.
"You're angry," I murmur.
"Yeah. But not with you."
My chest tightens. Men are always angry with me. For the wrong tone. The wrong question. The wrong face.
"You're not… mad I didn't tell you the truth?" I ask.
"I'm mad someone put that look in your eyes," he says. The words go low enough to vibrate in my chest. "Who were they exactly?”
My spine goes rigid, every instinct I've trained for years screaming at me to deflect, minimize, redirect.
"They work for…" My throat closes. Saying it will make it real. Will make him real. Will make the invisible leash around my throat visible. "They work for people I should've left behind," I say.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting right now."
"Who makes the kind of mess you have to run from?"
Silence stretches between us like a rope pulled tight. He should snap. Shove me out of the car. Instead, he watches the road, letting the silence build. The heater hums. My heart beats frantically.
He's not pushing. He's waiting. I break first.
"My father."
Knox's jaw flexes. "What kind of messes?"
My stomach lurches. "The forgettable kind," I say. "The ones no one important wants to think about."
"That's a poetic way to say bodies."
A shiver slices down my back. "I never said bodies."
"You didn't have to." Steady. Measured. "Men in coats. Earpieces. Private sweep of a lot. They're not there for a missing curfew."
"I'm a nurse. He likes having one in the family."
Knox adjusts in his seat. The movement brings him closer. Or maybe I'm just more aware of him now, of the heat radiating off him in the small space between us.
The words come out flat, my voice drifting somewhere above myself.
"When someone overdoses at a party, or when a man hits a woman and panics, and calling an ambulance attracts headlines. So he calls me. I patch them up. Clean blood. Write notes. Keep secrets so no one important ever has to know."
His knuckles go white on the wheel. "How long?"
"Years." It cracks coming out. "Since nursing school."
"And you just… went along with it." The words land like a slap he didn't mean to throw.
Heat floods my face. "He's my father."
"He's a monster." I flinch. Knox sees it. He doesn't take it back. "What changed?" he asks quietly. "What made you run?"
The answer won't come. Until it was supposed to be me on the receiving end.
My father's voice echoes in my head. Virginal, obedient, pliable enough for a senator. She understands discretion.
I choke it back. "A girl I knew," I whisper. "Anna. Someone from his circles." Knox's eyes flick to me, then back to the road. "She started appearing with a man twice her age. Powerful. Connected." I swallow. "She smiled for the cameras. Then stopped smiling when they weren't there."
"And you realized you were next."
I don't respond. I don't need to. His hand moves, just an inch, reaching for me. My skin goes hot wanting it on me. But he stops, fingers curling back into a fist against his thigh.
"Sloane." My name is a command. "What happened to her?"
The lie rises out of habit, but the words won't form.
Knox's eyes pin me for half a second before returning to the road. "No bullshit," he reminds me quietly.
I force myself to breathe. "My father's… transactions," I say, the word tasting of ash. "The part of his business where people became inventory. Where girls were moved. Placed."
His breathing changes. "Placed where?"
"With men who paid for them."
The city thins behind us, neon fading into industrial sprawl. A semi roars past. Knox doesn't flinch, but his grip shifts, knuckles bloodless.
"And Anna?"
"She was brought in." My voice breaks. "I was there. In the room. I saw what happened and I couldn't stop it."
Images slam behind my eyes: Anna's face going blank, the way her hands shook, how she looked at me like I could save her.
"I tried to help her," I choke out. "I tried. But I couldn't—"
The auction. Anna went through it. I was supposed to be next. I let in the first man who looked at me like I was human instead of inventory.
"Where is she now?" Knox asks.
"With him. The politician. As far as I know, she's still—" I can't finish.
Knox inhales through his nose, controlled, as if he's keeping himself in check. "And your father was going to do the same to you."
"Yes."
His palm drags over his jaw. "When?"
"Three days." The words scrape out. "I had three days."
"Jesus Christ."
Silence fills the car, heavy and choking. The heater hums. Tires hiss across wet pavement.
Knox stays coiled. Watchful. A muscle ticks near his temple, as if he's grinding his teeth against something he won't say.
He glances at me. Just once. "So you ran," he says finally.
"Yes."
"To a hotel bar in Chicago."
"I didn't have anywhere else to go."
"And me?" The question scrapes out of him. "What was I?"
"I have no clue what you mean."
"Last night." His gaze cuts to me, fierce and hungry. "Was I just… available? Convenient?"
The question slices through me.
"No," I say.
"Then what?"
I can't say it. Can't admit that I looked at him and saw something clean.
"You looked at me," I say, voice small. "Like I had a name you wanted to learn."
He reaches across the console and lays his palm on my thigh. Warm. Steady. Claiming. I jump, but I don't pull away.
"You're not going back," he says.
Not a question.
"I can't."
"You won't." His hand tightens. "Because I'm getting you out of this city. And they don't get to touch you while I'm still breathing."
Heat races up my neck. "You don't have to—"
"I know I don't have to." Pitched below the engine, rough enough to scrape bone. "I'm choosing to. You ran to me, Sloane. Not away. To me."
"Knox—"
"You're mine now." He says it as fact. "If you want to stay alive, you're going to let me do what I do."
I stare at his profile, heart pounding. Streetlights paint him in gold and shadow. The light catches the scar across his knuckles; his hands on the wheel are unwavering.
"What if I don't want to be yours?" I whisper.
His thumb strokes across my thigh. "Then tell me to let go."
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. My fingers find his wrist where it rests and close around it.
Knox lets out a breath.
"That's what I thought," he murmurs.
His hand stays the whole way out of the city, thumb moving in slow circles.
The skyline shrinks behind us. The highway opens into darkness, and I stop checking the mirror.