Chapter 7 – Barbara
I couldn’t stop pacing.
Back and forth across my bedroom floor, bare feet silent on the marble that felt too cold, too hard, too much like the prison my life had become.
Moonlight cut through the windows in sharp angles, painting everything in shades of silver and shadow, but I couldn’t find the beauty in it, not tonight or in a long time.
My phone glowed in my hands, screen brightness turned down low like I was afraid someone might see. Afraid the light itself might betray me.
Hailey: Girl, where have you BEEN? You’ve been ghosting us for days.
Cassandra: Seriously, B. No calls, no texts. We’re worried. What’s going on?
Hailey: Also you missed girls’ night at the club last Friday. You NEVER miss girls’ night.
Cassandra: Are you okay? Please just tell us you’re alive.
Tears blurred the words on the screen, making them swim and distort. I blinked hard, trying to clear my vision, but more tears just took their place, sliding down my cheeks in tracks I didn’t bother to wipe away.
I wasn’t okay. Hadn’t been okay in five years. But how could I tell them that? How could I explain that every day felt like drowning, like being buried alive under the weight of a mistake I’d made when I was too young and stupid to know better?
My thumbs hovered over the keyboard. I should respond. Should tell them something, anything, to stop them from worrying. But what could I say that wouldn’t be a lie?
Sorry, I’ve been busy being blackmailed by my psychotic half-brother and sleeping with a Bratva tech guy who thinks I’m a cheating slut.
Yeah. That would go over well.
Hailey and Cassandra knew about Sebastian. They’d known for years that he took money from me, that he showed up demanding cash with threats that made my hands shake. But I’d never told them why. Never explained what he had on me. Never showed them the video that had become the noose around my neck.
I’d just said it was “family stuff.” That Sebastian was unstable and vindictive, and I had to keep him happy or he’d make trouble for my father’s business. They’d accepted it because they were good friends. Because they trusted me.
Because they didn’t know I was a liar who’d kissed her own half-brother and let him film it.
A sob caught in my throat. I pressed my hand over my mouth, muffling the sound. The mansion was quiet, and I didn’t want anyone to hear. Marcus or one of the housekeepers could come in to check on me, and I wasn’t interested in pasting a fake smile or pretending everything was fine.
The curtains fluttered near my balcony door. I’d left it open despite knowing better, desperate for air that didn’t feel recycled and stale. A breeze drifted through, carrying the scent of the garden below—roses and jasmine and freshly cut grass.
I moved to close the door, then stopped. My eyes scanned the balcony, the shadows beyond, the dark shapes of trees swaying in the wind.
Was someone out there?
My heart kicked into overdrive, pulse thundering in my ears.
Sebastian had snuck in through my balcony before, back when the cameras still had their convenient blind spots.
Back when I could still manipulate the system to give him access.
Would he try again? Would he scale the wall like some kind of demented Romeo, gun in his jacket and threats on his lips?
Or worse, would it be Kirill?
The thought made my stomach flip in a way that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with something I refused to name.
I hated that. Hated that even thinking his name made my skin flush and my breath catch.
Hated that I could still feel his hands on me, his mouth on mine, the way he’d looked at me like I was something worth saving before reality crashed back in.
I hated Kirill.
Hated him because he thought I was a cheater. Worse—he thought I was a slut who slept with him while having a boyfriend waiting for me. I’d seen it in his eyes when Sebastian’s call interrupted us in my bedroom.
And God, I hated the way he looked into my eyes. Hated how those sharp blue depths seemed to see through every wall I’d built, every lie I’d told.
But I wasn’t afraid of him. Not the way I was afraid of Sebastian.
Kirill might hate me. Might think the worst of me. But he wouldn’t hurt me. Some instinct deeper than logic told me that. Told me that despite everything—despite the lies and the confusion and the disaster we’d created—he wouldn’t raise a hand against me.
Sebastian, though. Sebastian would.
Had.
Would again.
I closed the balcony door with shaking hands, turning the lock with a click that sounded too loud in the silence. Then I leaned against it, forehead pressed to the cool glass, trying to breathe through the panic.
I wanted to tell my father. God, how badly I wanted to tell him.
But what would I say? Dad, your son—the one you abandoned in a boarding school for over a decade and cut all ties with—kissed me when I was sixteen, and I kissed him back because I didn’t know we were related, and now he has it on video, and he’s using it to blackmail me.
My father would look at me with those cold green eyes and ask why I’d let it happen. Why I’d been so careless. Why I couldn’t have just been smarter, more careful, less naive.
And then Sebastian would leak the video anyway, and everyone would see.
Everyone would know. They’d call me a freak, a pervert, the girl who made out with her half-brother.
Never mind that I didn’t know. Never mind that the moment I found out, I’d thrown up until there was nothing left in my stomach.
Never mind that I’d been sixteen and stupid, and Sebastian had been charming and said all the right things.
None of that would matter.
All that would matter was the video. The proof. The evidence that I was exactly the kind of person people whispered about and pitied and judged.
And Kirill—
I shoved the thought away before it could finish forming. It didn’t matter what Kirill would think. Didn’t matter that the idea of him seeing that video, of him knowing the truth, made me want to crawl out of my skin. He already thought the worst of me. This would just confirm it.
My phone buzzed in my hand, startling me. I looked down at the screen through tear-blurred vision.
Hailey: Barbara Elizabeth Davis, you better respond in the next 5 minutes or I’m coming over there myself.
Cassandra: She’s serious. She’s already got her keys.
Despite everything, a watery laugh escaped me.
That was so Hailey, bulldozing through problems like a freight train.
Part of me wanted to let her come. Wanted to open the door and fall apart in front of people who actually cared, but I couldn’t.
Not yet. Not when I hadn’t even begun to figure out how to fix this mess.
I typed back with trembling fingers:
Me: I’m fine. Just been dealing with family stuff. Sebastian’s being Sebastian. I’ll call you tomorrow, promise.
Hailey: You better. Love you, bitch.
Cassandra: We’re here if you need us. Always.
I locked the phone and set it on my nightstand, then sank onto my bed. The silk sheets were cool against my skin, expensive and soft and absolutely meaningless. What good was money when you couldn’t buy your way out of your own nightmare?
My eyes caught on the mirror across the room. Even in the dim moonlight, I could see myself—pale skin, tangled hair, shadows under my eyes that makeup couldn’t fully hide. And though they’d faded by now, I could almost see the bruises littering my shoulders if I closed my eyes.
Dark purple marks in the shape of fingers—Sebastian’s fingers from a few weeks ago, when he shoved me against the hallway wall, grabbed my arm hard enough to make me gasp, and pulled out the gun, his favorite prop for making sure I understood exactly how serious he was.
They never really went out of mind. The bruises had faded, but the memory of how I got them stayed sharp and clear.
I needed to warn him. Needed to tell him about Kirill, about the new security system, about how the cameras were no longer under my control. If Sebastian showed up thinking he could waltz in like he used to….
My fingers found my phone again, opening a new message.
Me: The entire security system has been replaced. Bratva tech guy installed it. Military-grade. I can’t tamper with it anymore. You need to stay away.
I hit send before I could overthink it, then added:
Me: He changed everything—software, hardware, protocols. There are no more blind spots. No more loops. It’s too dangerous now.
Maybe that would scare him. Maybe knowing that Bratva was involved, that their systems couldn’t be hacked by some YouTube tutorial I’d learned, would be enough to make him back off. Find another target. Leave me alone.
The phone rang before I could even set it down.
Sebastian.
Of course.
My hand shook as I answered. “Hello?”
“You did what?” His voice was pure venom, low and dangerous in a way that made my skin crawl. “You let some Bratva asshole into the mansion?”
“Dad hired him. I didn’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice, Barbara.” I could hear him moving, could picture him pacing in whatever shithole apartment he was living in this week. “You could’ve talked Daddy out of it. Made up some excuse. But instead, you just rolled over and let it happen.”
“The system was compromised,” I said, hating how defensive I sounded. “They found the loops. I couldn’t stop them from—”
“I don’t give a fuck about your excuses.” His voice rose. “Figure it out. Stall the Bratva guy. Distract him.”
My stomach turned. “Sebastian….”
“I need cash, Barbara. Real cash. And I can’t risk meeting you outside anymore, not with Los Zetas breathing down my neck. Which means you need to make sure I can still get into that mansion.”
“I can’t—”
“You can.” The threat in his voice was unmistakable. “And you will. Unless you want that video to go viral. Unless you want everyone to see exactly what kind of girl you really are.”
Tears burned behind my eyes again. “Please. Just give me some time….”
“You’ve got three days.” He said it like a judge handing down a sentence. “Three days to figure out how to get me in, or I start sending that video around. I think I’d start with Daddy dearest. Let him see what his precious princess was doing.”
I flinched, my free hand gripping the edge of the bed. My eyes fell on the mirror again—on those bruises barely visible beneath my robe. I closed my eyes, trying to block it all out. The fear. The shame. The suffocating weight of it all.
“Three days, Barbara. Don’t disappoint me.”
The line went dead.
I sat there in the darkness, phone clutched in my hand, body shaking with something between rage and despair. Three days. He’d given me three days to somehow circumvent military-grade security installed by a man who could probably hack into government databases in his sleep.
I was suffocating. The walls of my beautiful bedroom felt like they were closing in. The air was too thick, too heavy, too hard to breathe.
I needed help. Knew I needed help. Could feel it in the way my hands wouldn’t stop shaking, in the panic that hit at random times, in the way I’d started flinching at sudden movements.
But I wasn’t ready. Wasn’t ready to ask for help, to admit what had happened, to face the judgment that would follow. Wasn’t ready for the video to go public, for everyone to see, for my entire life to implode.
Not yet.
Because some prisons didn’t have doors. Some chains were invisible. And some mistakes followed you forever, no matter how desperately you wanted to escape them.