Killing Ivy (Haunted Wings Duet #1)

Chapter 1

Ivy

Camera flashes blind me, and I smile anyway, because that’s what the doll does — smile, tilt your head, don’t blink too much.

The lilies and champagne and two hundred competing perfumes are searing my lungs, and the diamond necklace sitting against my collarbones weighs more than it should.

Everything in this room weighs more than it should.

“Ivy…” My father’s fingers find my arm, the warning in them buried beneath his camera-ready smile. I straighten, readjust, and become whatever version of myself he needs me to be tonight.

Men drift toward us, shaking his hand while their eyes stay on me — slow, deliberate, like I’m something they’re deciding whether to order. Malachi’s palm moves to my lower back and steers me forward. “My daughter, gentlemen.” The way he says it dares any of them to look away.

I tilt my head and smile with all my teeth. It doesn’t reach my eyes — it never does — but nobody here is looking at my eyes, so it doesn’t matter.

I let their conversation blur into background noise and focus on something real instead.

The three men nearest to me, their carotid triangles, the pulse points where the common carotid splits into external and internal.

I start counting. 72 beats per minute — regular, strong, unbothered.

88 — tachycardic, probably a cortisol spike, the body betraying what the face won’t.

64 — not athletic, so beta-blockers, the kind that slow you down whether you want them to or not.

The thrumming of their lives beneath their pristine white collars is the only honest thing in this room.

My father’s hand finds my arm again. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Harlow is waiting.”

He steers me through the gala, and I take it all in the way I always do — marble floors throwing back the chandelier light, silk catching it, laughter layered over the soft percussion of champagne glasses.

Deals being made, empires folding into each other, men trading futures across handshakes like poker chips they’ve already decided to spend.

How much is enough? It’s never enough. That’s the thing about greed — it doesn’t come with a ceiling.

A bodyguard nods at my father and steps aside. The private lounge beyond is smaller, dimly lit, and the air sits heavy with tobacco, whiskey, and something else I can’t name.

A man in his late fifties is sprawled across a black leather couch, arms draped wide like the room belongs to him, wearing the kind of smile that makes my skin want to crawl off my body.

He looks me over slowly, with bloodshot eyes that take their time, and then pats the cushion beside him like he’s doing me a favor.

My father’s hand tightens on my arm. Sit. He doesn’t need to say it out loud.

I sit. My heart rate climbs to 120, and I feel it, count it, file it away — because that’s what I do when the world stops making sense, I measure it instead of feeling it.

The man closes his hand around my wrist and squeezes, softly, like he’s testing the give of something, and all I can think about is his capillary refill time.

Three seconds after the pressure releases.

Slow. Poor peripheral perfusion. His liver is probably shot.

“Ivy, darling…” My father’s grin is the kind that could cut glass.

“Mr. Harlow and I have reached an understanding.” My eyes move to his face while Harlow’s gaze keeps sliding over me like I’m something being appraised rather than someone standing in the room.

“We both agree the merger of Vane Enterprises and Harlow Industries is the natural next step — and what better way to celebrate than with a wedding?” He lets the pause stretch, watching for the smallest crack in me. “A ninety-day engagement.”

The air leaves the room. All of it, all at once, and for a moment there is nothing.

I smile — reflex, pure muscle memory — even as something cinches tight between my ribs. Harlow’s hand finds my thigh, and he leans in close, his breath carrying the ghost of every cigarette he’s ever lit. “I look forward to getting to know you intimately.”

I lay my hand over his, gently, the way a good girl would.

“I need to freshen up, gentlemen. Want to look my best for such a joyful occasion.” He nods, satisfied in the way that men like him always are, and I rise and walk to the door at exactly the pace of someone who has nowhere urgent to be, while his eyes burn into my bare back the entire way.

Don’t run. Don’t you dare run.

The bathroom door locks behind me, and I slide down against it, slowly, until the cold marble finds my skin through the silk. The emerald fabric pools around me in the low light — soft, expensive light, the kind designed to make women look beautiful while they come apart.

I push the dress up. The silk garter sits high on my thigh, and my fingers find the scalpel the way they always find it, without having to look. Grade 4 stainless steel. Three-inch blade. Cold in a way that feels like relief.

I hold it in both hands and turn it slowly in the light.

The weight of it settles something in me that nothing else ever quite reaches — this scalpel is the only thing that has ever been wholly mine, not given, not borrowed, not part of the performance I put on every time I walk into a room like that one.

I press the flat of the blade to my inner wrist and hold it there, not cutting, just feeling the steel against my pulse until my heartbeat starts to slow itself down.

Not yet. I’m still real. Still dangerous. Still me.

The urge is there, the way it’s always there — a low hum beneath everything, patient and familiar. But not tonight. Timing matters. I keep my eyes closed and repeat it until my pulse finds something manageable.

I put the scalpel back, reach into my clutch for my phone, and open Instagram — the only window in my cage that doesn’t have bars.

There’s a new post from @ghost_rides. It’s him, on a chrome Ducati, mid-wheelie, the city lights smearing into streaks behind him. Speed is the only truth.

He’s always so cryptic. My fingers hover over the comment box, trembling slightly, and before I can talk myself out of it, I type.

Does it go fast enough to outrun a midlife crisis? Asking for a friend.

I stare at it for half a second, then press send before I can overthink it.

I press the phone against my chest and let my head fall back against the door.

What am I supposed to do now — pray to a God I’ve never believed in?

I keep waiting for the tears to come, the way people always seem to expect them to, but they don’t.

They never do. I’m twenty-two years old, and I genuinely cannot remember the last time I cried.

There’s a knock at the door, and that’s that.

I check myself in the mirror, put the doll back together, and open the door with the practiced smile already in place — only to have it die the moment I see my father standing there, jaw tight, already scanning the hallway before his hand closes around mine and pulls me toward the exit.

The night air is cool and soft with mist, a mercy after the heat inside, and I breathe it in for exactly as long as I can before the limo door shuts behind me and my father settles into the seat across from me.

He watches my face the way he always does, searching for anything he can use.

I give him what I always give him — the same smooth surface, the same empty eyes, nothing he can catch hold of.

“Ninety days. Three months. You’ll move into Harlow’s estate after the wedding.” He studies me. “You’ll be an excellent addition to his portfolio.”

I nod and turn toward the window. In my periphery, I study him the same way I study everyone — the flushed complexion that comes from too much red meat, the slight edema in his fingers that tells me his blood pressure is barely managed.

One well-placed vagal maneuver could look entirely natural.

I could lean across, fix his collar, press his carotid sinus, and pray for cardiac arrest.

Not yet.

His mouth curves into something satisfied and cruel. “Your mother would be proud. You’ve become exactly what I needed. An asset.”

Under the silk, my hands curl into fists.

I’m sorry. I couldn’t survive this anymore. But you have to be stronger than me. Fly, Ivy, before he clips your wings.

Mom’s words. Her handwriting. I’ve read that letter so many times the paper has gone tissue-thin along the folds. I don’t blame her — I hope she found whatever peace she was looking for, wherever she is. I just hope she can’t see me from there. I hope she doesn’t know what I’ve become.

My clutch vibrates against my palm. My heart stutters, then steadies, and I keep my face still while Malachi’s cologne thickens in the surrounding air, slow and suffocating, the way everything about him is.

When the limo finally stops, I almost open the door myself. The Vane Estate rises out of the dark ahead — black steel and floor-to-ceiling glass, no curtains anywhere, because Malachi wants the world to see what belongs to him. My home. My fishbowl.

I stop at the entrance and let the ocean hit me. The waves are breaking against the rocks below, constant and indifferent, louder in the dark than they ever seem during the day — a reminder, the way they always are, of exactly how far down it is.

“I’m going to my room.” This is the second time I’ve heard my own voice today.

He nods. I don’t wait to see if he changes his mind.

The hallway is dark, and I move through it without turning the lights on, past the sculptures and the empty vases that look even more severe without them.

When my father’s office door clicks shut somewhere behind me, the relief hits me in the chest immediately.

My shoulders come down. My jaw unclenches.

I stand still for a moment in the dark just to feel what it’s like before heading for my bedroom.

Grey silk sheets, two nightstands, nothing on the walls — no photographs, no color, no proof that anyone actually lives here. I step out of my heels and let the cold marble pull the last of the evening out of me.

I push the balcony door open. The ocean is restless tonight, and I sit in the steel chair and just breathe, letting the dark and the salt air do what they do. My phone screen glows in my hand.

It goes fast enough to outrun anything but the truth.

Something in my chest loosens a fraction. He understood — he always does, somehow, without me ever having to explain. I lock the phone and watch the water until my pulse settles into something that doesn’t feel like a countdown.

Back inside, I strip off the dress and catch myself in the closet mirror for a moment — gray eyes, flat and still. I reach between the hanging dresses and press the latch, and the pivot wall opens without a sound.

The surgical lights come on one at a time, and the sterile air washes over me, clean and metallic and nothing like the rest of this house.

My anatomical drawings cover every surface.

The instruments are lined up on their trays the way I left them, gleaming.

My textbooks, my cadaver notes, my scalpel sets — all of it exactly where it should be.

This is the only room in this house that has ever been mine, the only one where I don’t have to be anything.

I stand in the doorway and let it settle into me, that quiet, and then I close everything up and carry it back with me to bed.

My fingers find my carotid pulse in the dark, pressing gently, counting the way I always do. The rhythm steadies me the way it has since I was fifteen — like a lullaby no one else knows the words to.

Ninety days until I’m sold to a man whose liver is failing and whose hands already move like they own me.

I close my eyes. The phone sits heavy in my other hand, Ghost’s reply still glowing somewhere behind the screen.

Freedom is a myth. I’ve known that since I was fifteen and my mother’s body was still warm, and her letter was still wet.

But monsters are real. I’ve lived with mine long enough to know that much.