Chapter 1 – Barbara
My eyes snapped open like a trap springing shut, seeing nothing but the ghost images burned into my retinas.
Sweat clung to my brows, my temples, the hollow of my throat where my pulse hammered like it was trying to escape my body.
My mouth tasted like ash and a particular flavor of misery that only nightmares could conjure.
Another dream.
No. Not another. The same dream. Always the same fucking dream.
I lay there in my king-sized bed, staring at the ceiling as my heart rate slowly, reluctantly returned to something approaching normal.
Sunlight filtered through the sheer curtains of my bedroom, turning everything soft and golden and beautiful in that way that made my skin crawl because nothing in this house was beautiful. It was all just expensive camouflage.
The dream clung to me like cobwebs. I could still feel it, still see it.
I was two again. Small. Vulnerable. Sitting on a floor I didn’t recognize, looking up at a woman with honey brown eyes—the same shade as mine, the same shape, like looking into a mirror that showed me who I might become if I survived long enough.
She knelt in front of me, her hands gentle as she tucked a strand of my baby-soft hair behind my ear.
“You know what happened to me,” she whispered.
Every time. The same words. The same gesture. The same eyes that held knowledge I was too young to understand but old enough to fear.
And then she was gone, dissolving like smoke, and I was awake again in my gilded cage, twenty-one years old and still haunted by a woman I’d never actually met.
My mother.
The woman who’d left when I was two. The woman who’d walked out with her boyfriend and never looked back, leaving nothing but a note and a child who would spend the next nineteen years wondering what she’d done wrong.
That’s what my father had told me, anyway.
What everyone had told me. The official story, polished smooth by repetition: Barbara’s mother was selfish, Barbara’s mother chose her lover over her daughter, Barbara’s mother was never coming back.
I’d believed it for so long that the belief had become part of my DNA.
But the dreams….
The dreams told a different story.
“You know what happened to me.”
What did that mean? What was I supposed to know? And why did those words feel less like a memory and more like a warning?
I sat up, pushing my hair—chestnut brown, wavy from sleep—away from my face.
My bedroom was ridiculous in the way only old money could achieve: all cream and gold accents, an antique vanity that had belonged to some ancestor I’d never met, art on the walls that probably belonged in a museum.
A reminder that I had everything anyone could want and none of the things that actually mattered.
For exactly thirty seconds, I let myself believe today might be different. That maybe I could take a shower, put on one of my designer outfits, have brunch with Hailey and Cassandra and pretend to be a normal twenty-one-year-old whose biggest problem was choosing between mimosas and Bloody Marys.
Then my phone rang.
The sound sliced through the morning peace like a knife through silk. I didn’t need to look at the screen to know who it was. My body knew before my brain caught up—stomach dropping, hands starting to tremble, that familiar cocktail of dread and rage flooding my veins.
I looked anyway.
Bass.
Sebastian. My half-brother. My tormentor. My own personal demon, who wore expensive suits and a smile that could charm snakes.
I let it ring three times, a pathetic attempt at rebellion, before I answered. Because I always answered. That was the deal, wasn’t it? That was the price I paid for secrets.
“What?” My voice came out flat, dead. I’d learned not to show fear. It only made him worse.
“Good morning to you, too, baby sister.” His voice dripped false warmth, that particular tone that made my skin crawl. “Did I wake you? You sound…tired.”
“What do you want, Sebastian?”
“What I always want. What you always give me.” He paused, letting the words settle. “Cash. And before you start with the excuses—”
“I almost got caught last time,” I cut in, gripping the phone hard enough that my knuckles went white. “Dad’s checking everything now. The accounts, the household budgets, even the goddamn grocery receipts. I can’t just steal money anymore without him noticing.”
“Then get creative.” His tone sharpened, the false friendliness evaporating. “Sell something. Pawn some jewelry. I don’t care how you do it, Babs. Just do it.”
“I can’t….”
“Do you want me to leak the video?”
The question landed like a physical blow.
My hands began to tremble. Not just my hands, my whole body, a tremor that started in my chest and radiated outward until I had to clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering.
Images flashed behind my eyes: sixteen years old, at a party I shouldn’t have attended, drinking alcohol I shouldn’t have touched, being teased by girls whose names I couldn’t remember about being “untouched” and “innocent” like it was something shameful.
And then Sebastian.
Charming, older Sebastian who’d paid attention to me when no one else did. Who’d made me feel special, wanted. Who’d leaned in close in a darkened hallway and kissed me while I was too drunk on cheap wine and too desperate to question why it felt wrong.
God, I hadn’t known he was my half-brother.
My father was first married to Sebastian’s mother, and by the time he married my mother after her death from cancer, Sebastian had been away at boarding school, then college, then God knew where doing God knew what.
We’d barely seen each other while growing up.
He was just a name, a ghost, a brother only in paperwork.
Until that party.
Until that kiss.
Until the moment—seconds or minutes later, I still wasn’t sure—when he’d pulled back with a vicious smile and showed me his phone, the video already uploaded to a cloud server I couldn’t access.
“Surprise, baby sister. Did I forget to mention we’re related?”
Five years. Five years of that moment playing on repeat in my mind. Five years of knowing he’d planned it, that I’d been seduced and trapped like some stupid animal walking into an obvious snare. Five years of him owning me with that single piece of evidence.
Barbara Davis kisses her brother.
That’s what the caption would say if he ever released it. That’s what everyone would see: me, initiating. Me, pressing close. Me, committing what looked like the worst kind of taboo, even though I hadn’t known, couldn’t have known, would never have….
“Barbara.” Sebastian’s voice cut through my spiral. “Are you listening? I asked you a question.”
“Fine,” I ground out through clenched teeth. “Fine. I’ll get you the money.”
“That’s my girl. You have three days.”
“Three days? Sebastian, I need more time—”
“Three. Days. Unless you’d rather I share our little home movie with the world? Maybe send it to Dad first? I bet he’d love to see what his precious daughter gets up to when he’s not watching.”
The call ended.
I sat there holding my phone, staring at the screen as it faded to black, and felt something crack inside me. Not break—it had broken years ago. This was something worse. This was the sound of pieces grinding against each other, wearing each other down to dust.
That day five years ago had ruined everything.
Sometimes I could almost pretend it hadn’t happened.
Go days or even weeks living my life, shopping with my friends, posting carefully curated photos on Instagram, playing the role of Andrew Davis’s perfect daughter.
And then Sebastian would call, and I’d remember: I was owned.
Trapped in a cage built from one moment of teenage stupidity and five years of systematic exploitation.
The regret churned in my gut like acid.
I remembered throwing up the first time he’d shown me the video.
Right there in his apartment, barely making it to his bathroom before my stomach emptied itself.
He’d laughed. Actually laughed as I knelt on his tile floor, retching and crying, while he explained exactly how this was going to work from now on.
“You’ll give me what I ask for. Money, access, information—whatever I need. And in return, your little secret stays secret. Deal?”
I’d nodded because what else could I do?
I stood up, my legs unsteady, and walked to the window.
Below, the grounds of the Davis estate stretched out like a perfectly maintained lie: manicured lawns, imported rose gardens, My father’s empire, built on real estate and ruthless business practices and a complete inability to see what was happening in his own home.
Or maybe he did see and just didn’t care.
Andrew Davis wasn’t a warm man. Wasn’t a caring man.
He was a machine in human form—calculating and as emotionally distant as the moon.
Sebastian’s mother died of cancer before I was born.
He’d remarried mine a few years later, adding my mother to the household like she was another asset to be acquired.
And when she ‘allegedly’ ran away with her boyfriend, abandoning me, he’d barely blinked.
Just kept working, kept building, kept accumulating wealth like it could fill whatever void existed where his heart should be.
I’d tried talking to him once about Sebastian. Worked up the courage when I was sixteen, freshly traumatized and desperate for help. But the words had died in my throat when I’d seen his face—that blank, impatient expression that said he had more important things to do than listen to teenage drama.
What would I have said anyway? “Dad, your son blackmailed me after kissing me at a party where I was drunk?” He’d ask why I was at the party. Why I was drinking. What I’d done to encourage Sebastian. And then he’d see the video and….
No.
I couldn’t tell him. Couldn’t tell anyone.
Because the truth was worse than the lie. The truth was that for five years, I’d been stealing from my own father to pay off my blackmailer. The truth was that I was complicit now, criminally liable, just as trapped by my own actions as I was by Sebastian’s original crime.
The truth was that I was drowning, and I’d forgotten how to ask for help.
My phone buzzed with a text.
Bass: Three days. Don’t disappoint me.
I threw the phone onto my bed and walked to my closet.
I pulled out a cream colored sundress, something pretty and completely at odds with the darkness churning inside me.
Because that was the game, wasn’t it? Look beautiful.
Smile bright. Let everyone see the wealth and the perfect nails and the polished exterior.
Never let them see the storm underneath.
Never let them know that Barbara Davis—daughter of wealth, princess of privilege—was nothing but a puppet dancing on strings held by a man who’d made his power out of her shame.
I caught my reflection in the mirror. Honey-brown eyes stared back at me, haunted and hollow. My mother’s eyes. The woman in my dreams who kept trying to tell me something I couldn’t understand.
“You know what happened to me.”
What happened to you, Mom? Did someone trap you too? Did someone own you the way Sebastian owns me? Is that why you left—because you couldn’t bear to stay caged?
Or did you really just abandon me because I wasn’t worth staying for?
I didn’t know which answer scared me more.
I got dressed slowly, my mind already calculating.
Three days to get cash. I had some jewelry I could pawn, nothing Dad would notice missing right away.
Maybe the pearl earrings from last Christmas.
The sapphire bracelet I’d gotten for my twentieth birthday and never wore.
If I was careful, if I was smart, I could get enough to satisfy Sebastian for another few weeks.
And then he’d call again.
And again.
And again.
Forever, because that’s what this was. This was my life now, had been my life for five years, would be my life until one of us died or the secret finally exploded and took everything down with it.
I looked at myself in the mirror one more time—pretty dress, perfect hair, the mask firmly in place—and felt nothing but exhausted contempt for the girl staring back at me.
Beautiful face. Ugly soul.
That’s what someone would say if they knew the truth. That’s what I already said to myself in the quiet moments when the lies got too heavy to carry.
My phone buzzed again. This time, it was Hailey in our group chat with Cassandra.
Hailey: Brunch? I need mimosas and I need them NOW
Cassandra: I’m in. Babs?
I stared at the messages, at the casual normalcy of friends making plans, and felt the distance between their world and mine like a physical gap.
They knew about Sebastian. Knew he took money from me. But they didn’t know why. Didn’t know about the video, about the kiss, about the fact that I’d crossed a line I hadn’t known existed and now lived in the shadow of that moment forever.
I couldn’t tell them. Couldn’t tell anyone.
Because the shame of what Sebastian had done to me was somehow less than the shame of what it would look like if anyone found out.
Me: Can’t today. Maybe tomorrow?
I sent the text and turned my phone face down, shutting out their concerned responses before they could arrive.
Three days to find money I didn’t have to give to a man who’d never stop taking.
Three days until Sebastian called again with new demands, new ways to remind me that I wasn’t really Andrew Davis’s daughter or Hailey’s friend or anyone with autonomy and choice.
I was just Barbara. Trapped in a cage built from one kiss and five years of silence.
And somewhere in my dreams, my mother kept trying to warn me about something I still couldn’t understand.
“You know what happened to me.”
Maybe I did.
Maybe I was living it.
Maybe that was what she’d been trying to tell me all along.