Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 123575 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 618(@200wpm)___ 494(@250wpm)___ 412(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123575 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 618(@200wpm)___ 494(@250wpm)___ 412(@300wpm)
Hazel. The hard gaze stares back with cold calculation.
Recognition blooms in my mind, my brain trying to tell me something I’m not comprehending. Thoughts scatter like marbles when I feel a sudden prick on the side of my neck, a needle sliding into flesh with practiced precision.
“Nighty night,” the voice whispers as fire spreads through my body from the injection site. Those eyes. So familiar yet belonging to a stranger’s face. Cold. Calculated.
And filled with hatred I can’t comprehend through the chemical haze. Something about them triggers a distant memory—a childhood photograph hidden in Father’s study, whispered conversations that stopped when I entered rooms, a name never spoken but occasionally written in institutional payment records I wasn’t supposed to see.
No. It can’t be. He’s locked up. Has been for years. Secure in an institution after the boathouse incident. After Father deemed him too dangerous, too unstable to remain in the family.
“Who—” The question dies on my lips.
“Shh,” the stranger soothes, supporting my weight as my knees buckle. “It’s just the beginning, Aries. Just the beginning of everything.”
The voice carries no recognition, no familiarity beyond the general cadence of someone educated in the same privileged circles as I.
Yet in his tone is a personal hatred, an intimate rage.
“Graduation day,” the stranger continues, half dragging, half carrying me between parked cars. “Symbolic, isn’t it? You, graduating from freedom. Me, graduating from the past.”
Nothing makes sense. Why me? What freedom? What past? The words float just beyond comprehension, meaningful yet impossible to fully grasp through the chemical fog.
I try to struggle, to resist whatever is happening, but my body no longer obeys even the simplest of commands. My head lolls against the stranger’s shoulder as he maneuvers me toward a nondescript van parked in the service area behind the main lot. The rear doors stand open, revealing an empty cargo space prepared with what looks like restraints.
“In you go,” the stranger grunts, hefting my deadweight with surprising strength. “Your new accommodations await.”
My body hits the metal floor with a dull thud, pain registering distantly through the chemical buffer. The last of my consciousness rallies in desperate self-preservation.
“Why?” I manage, the word barely audible.
The stranger pauses before closing the doors, considering me with a head tilt sparking another flash of déjà vu. Then he pulls down the surgical mask, revealing a face I don’t recognize yet can’t help feeling that I should.
“Because,” he says simply, “someone needs to pay for what happened. Might as well be the golden child.”
The doors slam shut, plunging me into darkness broken only by thin lines of light around the edges. The engine starts. The van starts to move. My graduation gown tangles around my legs as I make one final, futile attempt to orient myself in the darkness.
Questions swirl as my consciousness fades.
Who is this stranger? What demands payment? Why target me specifically?
The darkness deepens, chemical and physical, as the sedative claims the last of my awareness. Will anyone notice I’m gone? The question follows me into darkness, unanswered and terrifying. But one thought swims above the dragging flood…at least it’s not Lilian.
Lilian
Lilian’s 18th Birthday
Eighteen. I made it to my eighteenth birthday. The girl with the defective heart who never should’ve lived past the age of one. I’m supposed to be happy and excited for this new chapter in my life, but that’s hard to do when it feels like something is missing. The party is perfect on the outside—just like everything else in my life. A shiny veneer so no one sees the truth underneath.
String lights drip from the trees like stars caught in spiderwebs. A jazz trio plays from the far end of the garden, their notes smooth and elegant, echoing off marble statues and manicured hedges. My mother and stepfather made the event as extravagant as possible—it might as well be one of my mother’s charity events. The tables are dressed in ivory linen and topped with expensive centerpieces. The mood is light, the sun finally having set.
All around me is conversation and laughter that never quite reaches anyone’s eyes.
Happy Birthday, Lilian.
I’m wearing a white lace dress that skims the tops of my thighs and clings to my curves like a second skin. My mother picked it out—a gift, she claimed.
Something to make me look innocent and untouched. That would be fine, if it didn’t make the older men at the party glance twice. My golden locks are twisted into soft curls and pinned with tiny pearl clips.
I look like a porcelain doll—delicate, breakable, something to look at but never touch.
People smile at me, staring like I’m a painting on display.
The innocent, albeit broken miracle. I can feel my mother’s watchful eye following me as I mingle with partygoers.
Everyone from our social circles are here—friends, family members, classmates I barely speak to, and sons of powerful men who were clearly coached to flirt with me.