CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
The car is already running when I step outside.
The Warden stands at the driver’s side door, dressed in all black, his mask gleaming under the moonlight. He opens the passenger door for me like a gentleman—but I know better than to mistake him for one.
I slip into the seat, wearing a knit sweater and leggings he must’ve placed out for me while I was drying my hair. It bothers me how easily he moves through my life, how often he anticipates what I’d need before I even realize I need it.
He doesn’t speak as he gets in.
He doesn’t look at me.
He just pulls away from the mansion and onto the long, winding stretch of private road. The forest outside is nothing but a wall of darkness.
It is several minutes before I break the silence.
“I didn’t think you drove.”
“I do when it matters,” he says.
I watch his hands on the wheel—gloved, steady, confident. This version of him isn’t the man who pulled me into his lap and whispered filth into my ear. He is something colder tonight. Focused.
We drive in silence for several more minutes.
“Where are we going?” I ask, my voice barely louder than the hum of the engine.
“Nowhere in particular,” he says. “Sometimes it’s easier to talk when the world is moving.”
I turn my face toward the window. The trees slip past like streaks of smoke, shadows stretching long across the road. And then, without warning, the car slows. Turns. And then stops.
My breath catches. I know this place. Not instantly, but in pieces—fragments knitting together, uneasy and sharp.
“What is this place?” I whisper, my hand tightening around the door handle.
His reply is maddeningly casual. “You’ve been here before.”
I look over at him sharply. “How would you know that?”
His eyes don’t leave the windshield. “I know where all the girls have been,” he says. “You forget—I run this operation.”
The air inside the car thickens, like something invisible has just stepped between us.
I turn back to the view, heart thudding.
“Why did you never take me?” I ask quietly. “Why did you leave me with Mr. Hirsh?”
The car is quiet for a moment.
Then his voice comes—low and composed, but with an edge beneath the calm. The kind of voice that once soothed nightmares…now cloaked in authority.
“I didn’t leave you,” he says. “You weren’t mine to take.”
Anger rises up, bitter and sharp. “That’s a convenient excuse.”
He doesn’t rise to it. Instead, he speaks slower now, measured like every word has weight. “If I had stepped in then, he would’ve buried you. You don’t understand the power he had...what it would’ve cost to pull you out.”
“But as the Warden, you could have pulled me out,” I say, voice tightening. “You sound just like him.”
A beat goes by.
“Who are you comparing me to, Starling?” His tone sharpens. Restrained, but edged now. “Just say it.”
“No one…” I swallow, the words coming out smaller than I mean it to.
He turns away, already starting to walk from the open door.
My hands curl into fists in my lap. “So you let me rot instead?”
Silence. Then, softer: “You weren’t rotting. You were surviving. And you did it without folding.”
I freeze.That voice. That phrasing. It sparks something inside me—faint and distant, like a match striking somewhere deep in the dark.
“You were the one he couldn’t break,” he continues, voice rougher now. “And men like Hirsh…they fear what they can’t destroy.”
I don’t breathe. I can’t.Because something about the way he said that—like it was personal, like he had watched it unfold—stirs a memory I can’t fully place.
He shifts in his seat, gloved hand tightening slightly on the gear.
“I watched longer than I should have,” he murmurs. “But if I had taken you then...you wouldn’t be sitting here now. You’d be another name on a file. Another ghost.”
My lips part, but the words die before they come out.
Because he sounds like someone who knows what it costs to carry a name that isn’t yours.
Someone who knows me.
But that can’t be.
Before he can say anything else, I yank open the door and step out into the cool air.
“Starling!” he barks from inside. “Stop.”
“I’m not running,” I snap, voice hard but shaking. “I just need to breathe, can you at least allow me that?”
I take a few steps toward the edge of the overlook, standing near the rust-colored railing that divides rock from sheer drop.
He follows slowly. “Talk to me.”
“I can’t. Not without being punished!”
“What if I promise you there will be no punishment?” He reaches out to put his gloved hand over mine.
I turn to face him, pulling my hands from his. “I don’t know why I can’t think straight around you. Why I obey your every word even when I hate it. Why I let you touch me when everything inside me says I shouldn’t trust you.”
Silence. He lets me spiral.
“You feel like…someone I knew once,” I whisper, “Someone who looked after me. Protected me.”
He doesn’t move.
“I need to see your face,” I say, voice trembling. “Please.”
“No.”
“Why?” I demand. “Are you disfigured under there? Is that it? Are you ashamed? Some twisted monster behind a porcelain mask? A troll with a crown?”
He flinches, just barely.
But I see it.
And it makes me hate myself.
I turn, sick with the guilt—but he moves fast, catching up behind me, his steps measured and silent on the gravel.
I freeze when he places something in my hand.
A blindfold.
“Put it on,” he says.
“No,” I whisper, heart aching. “I don’t want another barrier. I don’t want—”
I stop and throw the blindfold into the valley down below.
I watch the fabric flutter through the air until it vanishes into the mist below.
“I want to see you,” I say, turning to him. “Don’t you understand?”
He stares at me for a long moment—then walks past me, back to the car.
My heart is racing. My face burns with humiliation. But I follow anyway, dragging my feet like a child.
He is already in the driver’s seat when I reach the car. I don’t get in.
“Get in, Starling,” he says through clenched teeth. “We’re going back to the mansion.”
“I’m not ready to go back to that prison.”
“That’s enough, now. Get in!”
“I didn’t mean it,” I mutter.
“You said it,” he snaps. “And if you need time to think about how you speak to me, you will have the rest of the evening.”
My stomach drops.
I step back. “No, please. You said you wouldn’t punish me, sir.”
He doesn’t even look at me. “Then get in the car.”
“I hate you.”
“Again with the lying, Starling.”
I stand there for one long, defiant second.
My breath comes in shallow bursts, the cold wind biting at my exposed skin, but I don’t move. I want to scream. To demand that he see me—not the girl he paraded, not the obedient toy he polished into silence. Me.
“You say I lie,” I say, voice shaking, “but maybe that’s the only thing keeping me sane.”
His hands grip the steering wheel so hard the leather groans. Still, he doesn’t look at me.
“And what would you know about sanity?” He asks, voice low and cold. “You climbed on that stage yourself. You begged to be chosen. And now you’re choking on the weight of your own decision.”
I swallow hard. My heart hammers behind my ribs, aching. I hate him. I hate that part of me believes him.
“I just want to see your face,” I whisper. “I want to know if you’re still human.”
That does it.
He moves.
In one sharp motion, he throws open the car door and strides toward me. I take a single step back—but he grabs my jaw, not rough, but firm. And with his free hand, he reaches up—lifting the mask just enough to reveal the line of his mouth.
And then he kisses me.
Hard.
No warning. No tenderness. Just raw, reckless want.
His mouth crashes against mine with savage possession, like he’s trying to brand his name onto my soul. It’s not just a kiss — it’s a declaration, the only language he has left when his control starts to fracture. Hungry. Furious. Devouring.
I gasp into it, but he doesn’t stop. Doesn’t soften. His fingers twist tightly in my hair, yanking my head back as his powerful body slams me against the wall, pinning me there with his full weight. All I can do is feel him — heat, fury, raw hunger, and a love so fierce it borders on obsession.
When he finally tears his mouth away, we’re both breathing hard. The mask of control slips back over his face, but his body still vibrates with tension.
He doesn’t step back.
He doesn’t release me.
Instead, he presses closer, one hand still fisted possessively in my hair while the other grips my jaw, forcing me to feel every word against my swollen lips. His breath is hot and ragged.
“Did that feel human enough for you?”
I stand frozen, lips tingling, thoughts scrambled. Something wild blooms in my chest.
And for the first time, I’m not sure which of us had just lost control.