Prologue
four years ago
Silence and I have never had a problem, not until everything I knew about my life was flipped upside down. Darkness is another story. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve always been afraid of the dark, and that hasn’t changed, even at twenty-four years old.
But darkness and I haven’t had a choice. We’ve had to become friends over the last three months.
If I make it through this—if I make it out of this house—I don’t think I’ll ever be able to exist in the darkness or silence again.
The sliver of light coming through the bottom of my bedroom door finally goes out and the sound of my father moving through the house slowly disappears.
Now I wait.
Somehow, in the midst of all the chaos, patience hasn’t been an issue for me, not until this moment. The one that has me in arms reach of being free.
If I can make it out.
Another hour of staring blindly into the darkness and my phone silently illuminates its little corner of the world. I don’t touch it. I know it’s the message telling me it’s safe to leave.
Safe.
What a stupid word. I’m not safe and I don’t know if I’ll ever be safe again, but that doesn’t stop me from following the plan.
I slide from the bed, still in the black leggings and T-shirt I put on before going to say goodnight to my father five hours ago. His new rule when he forced me to move back in with him—always show my love by wishing him good night.
How has my life come to this?
Careful not to make a sound, I move to my closet and slip on the sweatshirt and sneakers I placed there this afternoon.
The backpack I packed three days ago when Maggie told me it was go-time tucked behind the designer dresses taunts me.
If anyone found that bag…I don’t want to think about what could’ve happened.
To most it’d be unassuming, but to me it’s just become my entire life. Toothbrush. Underwear. A change of clothes. Three thousand dollars in cash stuffed inside a tampon box because no man in my father’s world would think twice about looking there.
And most importantly, a burner phone. One I’ve never turned on.
It feels like a hundred pounds strapped to my back, but that doesn’t stop me from moving to the window, the one I opened and closed multiple times a day for the last three days just to make sure it wouldn’t be a problem tonight.
I’m still terrified it will stick, like the house will try to keep me here even if my father has no idea what’s happening, but it doesn’t.
The April air hits my face, thick and electric with the promise of rain.
It’s still silent in the house, the alarm never beeps to alert anyone that a window’s been opened and I still freeze to listen for the sounds of someone moving around.
Nothing.
I swing one leg over the sill, then the other.
Climbing down the trellis feels different this time, more dangerous, more life-altering.
My father’s house is in Staten Island, set back from the street behind a wrought-iron fence and enough landscaping to hide a dozen sins. Hopefully it can hide one more.
I drop to the grass and freeze, still waiting for the security system to alert someone to my presence, but nothing.
Maggie swore she had the security system handled, but how was I supposed to trust that? Trust a woman I’ve never met in person and have only spoken to twice on the phone?
Trust the process, she told me. We do this all the time.
It doesn’t feel like I’m someone being rescued. I feel like a thief in my own life, stealing myself back from a person I no longer know—and maybe never did.
The side gate opens with a whisper and I slip through, walking with a purpose. Like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. Like there’s nothing wrong with a woman walking down the street at three o’clock in the morning.
Three blocks. That’s as far as I need to make it. I count my steps to keep my mind from unraveling, from thinking of everything that’s happened since I learned who my father truly is.
Seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five. Each step is like a knife to the heart, a small violence against everything I was raised to believe.
At step eighty-two I see the car. Dark sedan, running, exhaust curing in the chilled morning air. The driver’s side window rolls down and a woman with close cropped gray hair and a face that’s seen things studies me.
“Wilhelmina?”
“Willa,” I say, the name sounding foreign on my tongue. “Just Willa.”
She nods once, like this is a choice she’s seen women make a thousand times, and maybe she has. “Get in. We’re on a tight schedule.”
I hurry around the car and climb in the passenger seat. The car smells like coffee and peppermint gum. Glancing down at the cup holders I find two cups of steaming coffee.
“That one’s for you,” Maggie offers as she pulls away from the curb, smooth and unhurried. “Do you have everything you need?”
“I have what you told me to bring.”
“Good.” She glances at me, quick and assessing.
“First thing you need to understand: you can’t contact anyone.
Not your family, not your friends, not that random guy you went on one date with last year.
No one who knows you as Wilhelmina Belmont.
They’ll be watching everyone you ever loved or showed a passing interest in, waiting for you to slip. ”
The idea that I can’t contact anyone lands like a physical blow, but I nod anyway.
We’ve already gone over this. I’ve known for three months.
Since I sat in a fluorescent-lit office in Manhattan and watched an experienced agent twist his wedding ring around his finger while he explained there was nothing he could do to help.
That the ledger entries and screenshots I brought him weren’t useful to build a case.
I found Maggie’s organization through a forum post buried three pages deep in a desperate search for help.
For someone to help me disappear. I emailed her and waited for a response, certain every moment that I’d been too slow, that my father already finalized the deal and Tristain was measuring me for a cage I’d never leave again.
“Where are we going?” I ask in the silence.
Maggie checks the rearview mirror. The move seems so easy and natural I wonder for what purpose she does it, simply to check on traffic or to make sure we aren’t being followed?
“First a safe house in Vermont. You’ll stay there while we work on your new identity.
Then you move again. Somewhere rural, where no one would think to look.
You won’t tell me or anyone where that is.
You’ll get a job, a place to live, a name that isn’t yours.
You build a life that looks normal from the outside. ”
“And if they find me?”
She doesn’t answer right away. The highway opens up before us, the Manhattan skyline fading in the rearview, and I realize I’m leaving New York for the first time in my life without a return ticket.
“Then you run again,” she says finally. “As many times as it takes. But he won’t find you. Not if you do exactly what we tell you.”
I lean my head against the window and watch the scenery pass by, thinking about my mother. What would she do if she were still here? Would she have stopped him? Would she have known? Would my father be who he is at all if she were still here?
I think about the wedding dress already ordered in my size and the wedding venue booked for November. An entire event and life planned for me without my say. A life that was supposed to be mine by force.
I think about Tristain who sent me flowers last week with a card that said can’t wait to make you mine. Who smiled at me over dinner at my father’s table like I was already his property. Who traced a finger down my arm and whispered good wives learn to obey.
The car hums beneath me, steady and purposeful, carrying me toward a future I can’t see. For the first time in three months I let myself breathe.
Willa Gray. A name chosen in the dark hours of night. A name common enough no one should question it and close enough I’ll still answer to it.
The sky begins to lighten as we cross the state line and I keep my eyes on the road ahead, refusing to look back.
Never again.