“Come,” he says finally, and I step forward.

Surprise flickers in his pale eyes only briefly. Then it’s gone. He doesn’t even wait for me to speak, like he usually does. He doesn’t ask why I’m here, hours earlier than I usually arrive. “Have you been a good girl?” he asks.

Maybe I should take comfort in that. He wants what we have, however dark and deviant, enough to try to keep it. He must sense something is changing, and he wants it to stay the same.

I can’t go back, though. The thing that’s changing is me. I came here as a scared, lost little girl. I rose out of those ashes and became someone beautiful, someone powerful. Someone who never really existed. I’ll leave this room the same way I came—scared and lost. A little girl, even if I’m no longer his.

“Yes,” I say softly. I’m good and I’m alone. Those are the same things. Aren’t they?

He stands, sudden and almost aggressive. He doesn’t move around the desk. He just narrows his eyes. “Why did you come, Candace? What do you need?”

I need so much more than he’ll give me. Touch, acceptance. Love. “I quit.”

Molten silver. That’s what fury looks like, streaking across his eyes. “Excuse me?”

“I quit.”

His laugh cuts me inside. “What do you want? More money? More pain? Should I start using a cane on you?”

Is this all I needed to do, threaten to leave? It’s too late for that. Maybe those things would have been enough. They might have kept me here for a few more months, at least. I’m dangling off a cliff, and I’ll keep scrabbling at loose rocks on the way down. That’s all he can offer me: loose rocks. I know it’s going to hurt at the bottom—God, it will hurt. But I can’t keep grasping for him. I have to fall.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him.

That was a mistake. He stalks around the desk, and I tense. I’m not afraid that he’ll hurt me. Not exactly. He’ll find something much worse than that. A way to punish me for leaving. I think what would hurt the worst is if he said nothing at all. If he could watch me go, just as casually as I’m acting, as if it’s not tearing him down inside.

“No,” he says, so softly it’s barely a sound.

I should have expected this. Not punishment. Denial. “I know you’re upset with me, but I’ve made up my mind.”

“Have you?” he asks, his voice strangely pleasant. “And what makes you think it’s up to you?”

My heart beats faster. “What do you mean?”

His smile is a baring of teeth. A threat. A promise. “You understand me, little one. You always have. What the fuck makes you think I’m going to let you walk up those stairs?”

Fight-or-flight. That’s my first reaction to his words. I want to run up those stairs, fast enough that he can’t catch me. I want to lash out at him for making me feel afraid. “What are you going to do, keep me chained up in a basement?” I laugh unsteadily. “Even if you don’t care that it’s illegal, it seems a little cliché for you.”

Bad move.

Three seconds later I’m slammed up against the wall, Ivan’s forearm at my throat, his face an inch away from mine. “You think I give a fuck about clichés? Or the fucking law? Do you?”

I can’t breathe, and the fear I’ve been pushing back claws its way up my throat. “Please.”

“You think you can just walk away, like these years mean nothing?”

They do mean nothing, because he’s never going to make it real.

I didn’t want to feel anything. I didn’t want to let myself feel anything. I was content to drink and smoke and rub my clit into oblivion. The ice has been cracking now, for months. Even when I walked down those steps, there was part of it still intact.

It cracks now, an actual shattering sensation in my chest.

“Ivan,” I whisper, and a tear tracks down my cheek.

He watches it fall. “Am I hurting you that much?”

Not with his arm against my throat. Not with his body holding mine. But he is hurting me. He’s breaking me into pieces. “I wanted us to be real. I want for you to—” For you to love me. “I tried so many times, and I just….I can’t. Not anymore.”

“Real,” he scoffs. “What the fuck is real?”

“I don’t know.” And that’s the honest-to-God truth. I don’t know what a real relationship is like. I don’t think he does either. “But I know it’s not this.”

He presses even harder, and black spots dance in front of my eyes. He’s really going to do it. My brain is going soft and foggy, the edges drawing in, but that’s the thought that stands out—a kind of gentle amazement that he’s really going to do it. Make me black out. Maybe even kill me.

I stare into his eyes. I’m not even fighting him. However this ends, it will be over.

My lungs burn from the lack of oxygen, my whole body folding in on itself. The world seems light, insubstantial. I’m floating…

A loud crack jerks me from my reverie. Ivan pulls back in surprise, and my body sucks in a breath all on its own, bringing me back to life and making me choke. Footsteps ring out on the metal steps, fast and heavy.

Luca appears at the entrance, his expression grim. There’s an unholy light in his eyes, violence and blood reflected back. He doesn’t seem surprised to find me in a choke hold. “You’d better come upstairs,” he says. “Both of you.”

*     *     *

Luca’s timing is so lucky I might have thought he’d done it on purpose to save me. But I know the truth. The basement is truly soundproof. Ivan could keep me down here for the rest of my life—and no one would hear my screams. And besides, Luca would never go against Ivan. Not even for me.

Ivan studies his bodyguard for a moment. Then his gaze slides to me. I can see him deliberating whether he wants to let me go to the surface. Whether he thinks I’ll make a run for it.

“Sir,” Luca says, and I hear something in that voice. Something I’ve never heard from the street-hardened man—a sliver of fear.

Ivan must hear it too. “Show me.”

He doesn’t exactly let me go upstairs. Nothing as gentlemanly as allowing me to walk ahead of him. No, he heads upstairs. And I’m free to follow, even though I’m still shuddering. The air feels like glass, and I’m sucking it in by the lungful. My body doesn’t believe that I’ll be able to take another breath, so it’s hoarding them, making me pant even when I’ve had enough.

We reach the top, and the hallway is empty. That’s not that strange considering how early it is, but my skin pricks. The hair on the back of my neck rises, and I don’t think it’s only because of Luca’s strange behavior. There’s something in the air, a metal tang. Blood.

That’s the first thing I see when we push into the alleyway. Buckets of blood. A goddamn river of it, coating the ground and mingling in the ever-present puddles. Some of it’s clotted. I clap my hand over my mouth, smothering my cry and keeping myself from throwing up. I want to cry. I want to scream. But all I can do is stand there, frozen.

“Where’s the body?” Ivan asks, his voice cold. He sounds almost unaffected. God, maybe he is unaffected. What’s a little blood to clean up? Or a lot of blood…

I don’t know how he even noticed there wasn’t a body, but now that I look—there isn’t one. Only blood. It’s actually creepier this way, without a source.

“We’re pulling the tapes,” Luca says. “We’ll find out what happened.”

West is there, looking serious.

So is Oscar, the head of security. “I already called Blue,” he says. “And the cops.”

Ivan’s face is a stone mask. “We’ll handle this in-house. Heads will roll.”

Heads will roll. Violence and more violence. Blood and more blood. A hysterical laugh bubbles out of me. Only then do they look over at me.

West seems concerned, Oscar angry.

Luca seems disgusted.

And Ivan…he seems like he always does. Calm. Calculating.

“Get back inside,” he says, somehow cool in the face of this gore.

I’m rooted to the spot, unnaturally drawn to the gruesome scene, straight out of my nightmares. The Grand has always been my safe place. And now that I’ve decided to leave, the dreams have found me here.