The morning air tasted like dread. I hadn’t slept not really. George stayed on the couch, a shotgun cradled in his lap, eyes red and distant. I curled up near the window, staring at the city skyline, wondering where Noah had taken Liana. And what he planned to do to her.
The Polaroid still haunted me. Liana, blindfolded, bruised. And Phil’s words echoed over and over again in my head: “She dies if you don’t obey.”
But I hadn’t worn the red dress.
Instead, I’d worn armor—not literal, but the kind built from courage and fury. My speech at the press conference was raw and unscripted. I had stood under the lights and revealed everything. The manipulation, the threats, the contract I signed when I was too young to understand what I was giving away. The silence I’d been forced into. The price
