Damian
I shouldn’t have made the call.
But I did.
One minute. One moment of hearing her voice, to remind myself that she was real, that Lila was real, that the silence I’d been forced into hadn’t erased everything we were.
The untraceable phone I’d stolen from one of the estate’s delivery runners sat on the far corner of my nightstand, powered off, battery removed, like it never existed. The only proof of that call was seared into memory, her voice cracking when I told her I loved her. The way she whispered my name like it still meant something.
I hadn’t slept since.
By morning, I already knew the mistake had caught up to me.
The guards didn’t say anything when they came for me, but their faces said enough. Grim. Empty-eyed. One of them wouldn’t even meet my gaze. I was escorted thr
