CHAPTER ELEVEN #2
He doesn’t speak.
The door just clicks shut behind me while the woman doesn’t follow.
We are alone. The man in the mask and me.
For a moment, I only hear my own breath and the soft hum of the limo engine.
Then he turns his head slightly toward me, and I swear I can see the happiness of finally getting to own me in his eyes.
“Hello, Starling,” he says.
I stiffen.
“No. You’ve got the wrong girl. That’s not my name.”
His head tilts slightly, as if my denial amuses him.
“I’ve been watching you,” he says, ignoring the correction. “And I must say…you did not disappoint.”
I stare straight ahead.
“I’m Daya…..Daya Montgomery.”
That name felt steadier. Borrowed, but mine now.
Daya—my aunt’s middle name.
Montgomery—the name of the man who tried to save me. The man they murdered in front of me like it meant nothing.
He had been the only light in all that darkness. Kind. Steady. The first person I started to trust.
Maybe even love.
“You can quit the facade, Starling.” His voice cuts through my memory like a dull knife.
At the name Montgomery, something in him shifted—barely there. A pause too small to name, too controlled to question. The cracked porcelain mask didn’t move, but the stillness beneath it did.
“What do you want?” I ask, keeping my voice level, my rage buried behind my teeth.
“I was promised something years ago,” he says, voice smooth, practiced—too calm. “A deal struck long before you ever understood what this place was. Hirsh agreed to it. He always does when it benefits him.”
My stomach twists.
“A temporary arrangement,” he continues, like he’s discussing inventory instead of a person. “You were to be shaped. Refined. Taught how to survive what breaks the others.”
His head tilts slightly, the porcelain mask catching the light.
“And when that was done…” A pause. “You were to be returned to me.”
The words settle like a chain locking into place.
“I claimed you early,” he adds, quieter now, almost thoughtful. “Before someone less…discerning decided to ruin you completely. Before history had the chance to repeat itself under men like Hirsh.”
Something in my chest twists.
That word—claim. The calm in it. The lack of hesitation. Like he already knew the answer.
“You were never meant to stay there.”
Not with them.
“You were meant for me.”
“You don’t even know me,” I spit out.
“I know enough.”
“You don’t know anything,” I snap. “And I’m not Starling.” My arms fold tight over my chest as I turn slightly toward the window, like the glass can give me somewhere else to be—somewhere this doesn’t reach me.
His masked face doesn’t move. Not an inch. But I feel it—his gaze—sliding over me like a knife being sharpened. Not touching. Just waiting.
“I know what was promised,” he says softly. “Long before you ever walked that stage. Long before you even understood the rules.”
The words didn’t feel personal.
They felt practiced. Like something passed between men who thought I couldn’t hear it.
I freeze.
Promised?
He goes on, “Some debts are written in blood. Others in silence. Your father understood both.”
The air flees my lungs like a punch to the ribs.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
He doesn’t answer. Not directly. Just tilts his head the other way, like I am something interesting under glass.
“You walked that stage,” he says. “You knew what it was. You went willingly.”
“I walked it for me,” I bite out, colder now, fighting the storm brewing in my chest. “I walked it for the girls who never got the chance. And I didn’t agree to be bought.”
“You walked it as Starling.”
“No,” I hiss, my voice starting to shake. “I walked it as Daya.”
A hint of silence.
Then he chuckles under the mask, “Keep telling yourself that.”
The quiet falls between us, thick and crackling with challenge.
Before he can say anything more, his phone rings—cutting through the enclosed car so sharply it feels like the sound has nowhere to go except straight into my ribs.
He doesn’t react immediately. Just pulls it out of his coat pocket, looks at it, still and unreadable, like the noise is something that has to be acknowledged but not rushed. Then, after a brief pause, he answers.
I can’t hear much of what’s said on the other end. His responses are quiet, clipped, controlled—nothing that gives anything away. But something subtle changes anyway, not in him exactly, but in the space around him. Like the conversation is rearranging the rules of where we are.
When it ends, he lowers the phone without a word.
“Pull over,” he tells the driver.
The car slows at once, easing onto the side of an empty stretch of road. There’s nothing out here—no lights, no buildings, just dark asphalt and trees pressing in close enough to make the world feel smaller.
He opens the door and steps out.
“You,” he points at me. “Stay.”
The tinted windows are so dark I can’t see a trace of him once he’s outside. No silhouette, no movement, nothing. It’s like he’s been swallowed whole by the night, taken somewhere I don’t have access to.
Time stretches.
Minutes that feel longer than they should tick on. I find myself staring at my reflection in the glass, trying not to imagine what’s happening just beyond it, on the other side of that sealed darkness.
Then the door opens again.
He slides back into the car as if nothing has changed.
Quiet. Composed. Exactly as before.
But then his hands rise briefly to his face.
He adjusts the mask.
Not tightening it.
Resettling it.
Carefully, almost like he’s restoring something that was momentarily undone.
Like, for a short span of time, it hadn’t been there at all.
My chest tightens before I can stop it.
And for the first time, the question isn’t just intrusive—it’s unavoidable.
What does he look like under it?
And worse—why does part of me want to know?
After a moment, he leans forward, voice lower, but no less firm.
“You can deny who you are, but that won’t change what’s inside you. What you’ve endured. What you crave.”
“I crave freedom.”
“You crave control,” he says with an edge. “Which is why you walked that stage trying to bait monsters with your body while pretending to be untouchable.”
He isn’t wrong.
But I hate that he could see it.
“And what about you?” I ask, forcing steel into my voice. “You think you’re different?”
“I know I am.”
I scoff and look away.
Then he adds, “I didn’t just choose you to own you. I chose you to keep you alive. Your revenge mission was reckless. And it would’ve ended with you in a ditch.”
“You’re probably right,” I mutter.
“But now…” His voice softens, barely. “Now you’ll survive. Because you’re mine. Whether you like it or not… Starling.”
I turn to him with fire in my eyes. “Stop calling me that.”
He doesn’t respond. Not directly.
But his next words are like ice against my skin.
“Names are just masks. You wore yours long before I ever touched it.”
The limo begins to move again, smooth and quiet beneath us.
And I realize, as the city disappears behind tinted glass—
He knew what I’d done to survive.
And he is already unraveling me, thread by thread.