Chapter 3
Amy
Three Years Ago
The first time Roman hits my father, I feel nothing but satisfaction. Like the touch of cold water after miles of heat.
After the third blow, I don’t move to stop him. I stand in the kitchen doorway and watch, and the stillness in me is the part that will stay longest.
Not the sound, not the blood at the corner of my father’s mouth, not the way he crumples against the counter like something in him finally gives out. I’ve been wishing for this for years. I didn’t know how much until this moment.
“Don’t touch her again,” Roman says.
My father laughs. Even bleeding, even with his breathing ragged. “You think you own her now?”
I flinch.
Not at the words but at how familiar the design of them is.
Possession. Control. Ownership.
Always the same order. Just different voices and different motives.
Roman steps closer, that quiet, deliberate movement that powerful men use when they have nothing to prove. “I don’t think,” he murmurs. “I know.”
Something tightens in my chest.
I mistake it for safety.
I mistake him for something he isn’t. But what choice do I have? My father’s house is the only other option, and I would rather walk into an unknown fire than stay in the one I already know the shape of.
Roman slams my father back against the counter one final time. “You don’t touch her. You don’t speak to her. You don’t breathe near her.”
My father’s eyes cut to me, something ugly turning his face. “You think he’s saving you? He’ll just put you in a different cage. He’s no savior, Amelia.”
“No,” I say. Because I need it to be true.
Roman turns to me, and the moment his eyes meet mine, everything in him softens, too quickly, too completely, in the way a man who’s learned that softening at the right moment is its own kind of leverage. “You’re coming with me.”
I nod because leaving with him is better than staying.
Because surviving has become the only option I have.
At first, Roman was everything I thought I needed.
Six months in the Mancini house, and it hasn’t been terrible. I won’t pretend it’s been wonderful, but I don’t have to calculate what I’ll eat or brace myself when I hear footsteps after dark.
Roman has given me a room.
Well, his room, his bed, his orbit, and his clothes—bought for his taste, not mine.
A level of protection I had no idea he could offer.
But the cracks are showing.
The grip that holds a second too long. The voice that drops when I don’t answer fast enough. The darkness that comes into his eyes when another person looks at me.
“Hey, Amy,” Mark from my math class says, passing by me in the hall.
I smile back. “Hey.”
“Who was that?” Roman asks from behind me, his voice dropping the way it does when he is bothered.
“No one,” I stammer. “We have the same class.”
He stops and turns, and I look up into eyes that have gone hard. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not—” His hand closes around my wrist, suffocating my explanation.
Not hard enough to bruise, but hard enough to remind me of the difference between our sizes. He’s taller with lean muscle.
But that is not the only thing that makes him different from the students that go here.
Roman Mancini is from one of the most powerful families in New York. He could make me disappear by lunchtime, and no one would make the call.
My father was the only family I had left after my mother died in a car accident.
After I turned eighteen, he vanished. I’ve never confirmed what I already know.
He’s gone.
“I don’t share, Amy.”
“I’m not something to share,” I say quietly. “How can you say that? After everything I’ve been through—”
His expression shifts in that practiced, rapid way.
The softening.
It’s not the first time I’ve noticed how quickly he catches himself.
“I know,” he murmurs, brushing his thumb over the wrist he just gripped too hard. “But I protect what’s mine.”
Mine.
The word is a warning bell. And I know exactly what that makes me.
I’m buying my time.
I’m waiting on a scholarship decision.
Three applications, three universities, all requiring a GPA I’ve maintained in secret. My only exit strategy that doesn’t depend on someone else’s mercy.
I haven’t told Roman.
There are nights I lie awake rehearsing how I would leave—what I’d take, how I’d get the money, and where the nearest bus station is.
The following week, Roman leaves school early for the first time. He sends a driver with no explanation.
Not that I would dare ask.
Since I met him in tenth grade, Roman has changed, or maybe I was too wrapped up in the idea of what I wanted him to be, and it wasn’t the same person.
He is always with me.
Always watching.
Always there.
But today, he wasn’t, and I’m not sure if I should be worried or relieved.
When the driver drops me off at the house, I take the stairs slowly. I reach the landing and turn left down the hallway.
His bedroom door is half open. The air is different.
Every breath thicker, warmer, carrying an absence that I already know the shape of but don’t want to name.
I push the door.
He’s with Lisette Giles. Her hair in his fist. His full attention engaged the way it used to be with me. I know it’s her because she is the only one at school with hair that shade of blond that takes every two weeks at the salon to maintain.
Betrayal hits me like a physical thing, not because I’m in love, but because of the cruelty of all the times he made me feel chosen.
Protected.
Wanted for the first time.
I push the door wider. They both freeze.
For a second, my body doesn’t understand what my eyes are seeing.
It keeps me standing there, hand on the door, breath caught somewhere high in my throat.
Waiting for the scene to rearrange itself into something less humiliating.
Something I can survive without letting it touch the parts of me I’ve spent years trying to keep intact.
But nothing changes.
His hand is still in her hair.
Her lipstick is still smeared at the corner of her mouth.
And the bed is still ours.
Not ours.
His.
He pulls back and looks at me. But not with guilt.
Annoyance.
“Are you serious right now?” he asks, like the way you speak to a child interrupting something important.
Lisette rushes off the bed, gathers her things, and slips out without looking at me. She got what she came for.
The door closes. And it’s just us.
My eyes go to the door first. Then the window, even though we’re on the second floor and I already know the drop would hurt more than help.
The driver is probably still outside. Roman’s driver.
Roman’s house. Roman’s staff. Roman’s locks.
My scholarship letter is hidden in the lining of my suitcase.
My emergency cash is taped behind the bottom drawer of the dresser, and it’s still not enough.
My eyes land on his.
“You don’t get to look at me like that,” he says.
“Like what?” I snap.
“Like I did something wrong.”
I laugh, and the sound is fractured. “I just walked in on you fucking someone else in the same bed I sleep in.” He can’t be serious.
His jaw tightens. “I needed something different. You’re boring.”
The words hit before I can defend myself from them.
My stomach drops first. Then comes the shame, fast and unwanted, crawling up my throat like I invited it.
For one stupid second, some broken part of me tries to make sense of his cruelty by turning it inward.
Maybe I wasn’t enough. Maybe I was too quiet.
Too damaged. Too difficult to want without resenting.
Then my father’s voice slides through the room like smoke. He’ll just put you in a different cage, and I hate him for being right. I hate Roman more for proving it.
Roman looks at me flatly. “Get on the bed. All fours.”
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head in disgust.
He smiles and walks toward me. Terror snakes my insides.
I shake my head repeatedly, my eyes begging him not to.
I step back, and he shoves me on the mattress before I get to the door.
He pushes me down hard, and the weight of him pins me. I try to fight him off me, but he’s stronger. Heavier.
I hear myself say don’t and please and stop, but none of it matters, and none of it has ever mattered.
“Please,” I plead one last time.
He puts his mouth against my ear. “You’re not going anywhere, Amy. You’re trapped,” he says softly. “Just not where you started.”