Ariana barely slept.
Every time she drifted off, flashes of last night jolted her awake—Adrian’s hand around her wrist, the cold threat in his eyes, the man on the floor, and that final whisper before everything went sideways:
“Run.”
But she hadn’t run.
She’d stayed.
Stayed with him.
And now, as she walked into school the next morning, the world felt wrong. Off. Like someone had taken her life and shifted everything one inch to the left.
Whispers followed her through the hallways, little bites of sound that dug under her skin.
“Did you hear what happened yesterday?”
“She was with him again.”
“No one survives that long around Adrian King.”
Ariana kept her head high, but her chest felt like it was caving in.
She found her locker, fumbled with the combination, and willed herself t
