Sold to the Prescott brothers

CHAPTER TWO - Penthouse, Prison, Same Difference

I wake up gasping before I remember why.

For one full second I think it was a nightmare, my heart slamming, my hands already grabbing at the sheets like I am still falling. Then I see the ceiling. Smooth white plaster. Recessed lighting. Nothing like the water stain shaped like a duck that I love on my ceiling at home, the one I have been meaning to report to my landlord for eight months.

It was not a nightmare.

I sit up fast, my pulse spiking again, the memory crashing into me like a fist to the chest. The bed beneath me costs more than my monthly rent. I can tell just from the weight of the duvet, the way the mattress holds my body without a single creak, the kind of silence that only exists when something has been engineered rather than simply built. I scramble out of it and cross to the window, and the city stretches out below in every direction, glittering and indifferent, the people on the street reduced to punctuation marks I will never reach.

I am very high up. I am in a great deal of trouble.

I press my palm flat against the glass, half expecting it to be cold, but it is warm from some hidden heating system, and that small detail unsettles me more than anything else in the room. Even the windows here have been taken care of. I turn away from the view and grab my bag off the chair, dig through it, my hands moving fast, and find my sketchbook still tucked inside. Something in my chest loosens for half a second, a small mercy. My phone reads four percent. I yank open the nightstand drawer and a charger is already there, waiting, the exact model I use, coiled neatly like someone set it down with care rather than urgency.

Someone planned for me being here before I understood I would be.

I plug the phone in and watch the screen flicker to life, the battery icon crawling upward too slowly for how badly I need it charged. I wash my face in the bathroom and freeze at my own reflection. The lighting in here is the unforgiving kind, bright and clinical, and it shows me exactly what the night did to my face. I look like my mother when I am tired like this, hollow under the eyes, my jaw set too tight. I hate that. I shove the thought away and pull open the bedroom door before I can spiral further into it.

Luca is in the hallway with two cups of coffee.

He is leaning against the wall like he has been waiting there a while, comfortable in a way that makes the whole corridor feel less like a corridor and more like someone's actual home. "I didn't know how you take it," he says. "If I'm wrong I can make another one."

I want to refuse on principle. My hand reaches out and takes it anyway.

It is very good. I hate that it is very good. I take a second sip just to confirm it and resent myself a little more with each one.

"You slept," he says. Surprise, not a question.

"I crash when I'm overwhelmed. It's a flaw."

"Sounds more like a superpower." He leans against the wall, watching me with that warmth that does not belong here. "Rundown, or find things out slowly?"

"Rundown." I need information. I need it fast.

He talks, easy and smooth, walking me a few steps down the corridor as he does, and I drink my coffee and feel the walls of my new life closing in one detail at a time. The Prescott penthouse. My room. Full access to the kitchen and common areas. A monthly allowance set up under my name, like money could ever make this feel chosen. The contract runs one year.

One year. I do the math in my head without meaning to. Three hundred and sixty-five days. Rosie's logo, due Thursday, already lost. Zoey's face when she learns where I have been sleeping. My apartment sitting empty with the heating probably still running because I never got around to adjusting it before I left for what I thought was an hour-long meeting.

"What do you actually want from me," I ask, my voice cracking on the last word.

His smile falters, just slightly, like he was hoping I would not ask that yet. "That's a conversation for Marcus."

Marcus finds me in the kitchen twelve minutes later. I am still holding the same half-empty coffee cup, standing at the island because I have not yet decided whether this is a place I am allowed to sit. He drops into the chair across from me, folds his hands, and pins me with the same assessing look from last night, the one that makes me feel like a column of numbers rather than a person.

"I want to be straightforward with you," he says.

"That would be a change from everyone else involved in last night."

Something flickers behind his eyes, gone before I can name it. He explains the terms in flat, clipped sentences, the kind of delivery that suggests he has said all of this before, maybe to other people, maybe in other rooms exactly like this one. Not staff. Not a guest. Bound by a legal agreement, enforceable under a clause I will not find in standard contract law.

"I want to verify that," I snap, gripping my coffee too hard, my knuckles whitening slightly around the cup.

"Theo will be available this afternoon."

I lean forward. "Can I leave."

"You can try."

He says it like a fact, completely unbothered, and that lands harder than cruelty would have. There is nothing to push against in the truth. I sit with the words for a moment, turning them over, looking for the c***k in them, and find none.

Damian walks in. He rakes his eyes over me once, head to toe, the way you size up an inconvenience that has shown up uninvited and is now blocking your morning routine. His jaw is tight, his shoulders set, already dressed in a way that suggests he has somewhere more important to be than this kitchen. He grabs a water bottle from the fridge and walks out without a single word, the door swinging shut behind him with more force than necessary.

I decide right there that I dislike him specifically. Not the situation. Him.

Marcus stands, already turning toward the door before his chair finishes sliding back, the same economy of motion I noticed in him last night, nothing wasted, nothing extra. "Theo. This afternoon." He is gone before I can respond, his footsteps already fading down the hall.

I sit alone in a kitchen bigger than my entire apartment, my coffee going cold in my hand, the word year pressing down on my chest like something physical, like a weight I can feel settling into my shoulders and my spine.

I bolt for the bathroom and lock the door behind me.

I dial my father. It rings. Once, twice, six times, each unanswered ring landing somewhere in my chest like a small stone. Voicemail. I do not leave a message. I sink down onto the edge of the bathtub and give myself three minutes, counting them out in my head, letting the grief c***k through before I shove it back down where it belongs, my breath coming in short, uneven pulls.

I use all three.

Then I splash cold water on my face and stare myself down in the mirror, watching the water drip from my chin onto the marble counter. "Figure it out," I say out loud, to no one. It has always worked before. It has to work now.

I march back to the kitchen, my wet face still cool against the air.

The contract is sitting on the counter. A second copy, clean, unfolded, placed there deliberately, the edges perfectly aligned with the marble. I snatch it up. My full name, middle name and all. My date of birth. My current address. My previous address, the one before that. My emergency contact: Zoey, her number, her workplace listed beneath it in small precise print.

My stomach drops in a long slow fall, like missing the last stair in the dark.

He did not make a desperate decision with his back against a wall. He gathered this. He sat across from me at dinners, asked about my week, smiled at me, complimented my hair once and asked if I was eating enough, and went home afterward to build a file on his own daughter, piece by careful piece, detail by detail, until I was thorough enough to hand over.

I set the contract down hard, my hand flat against the counter, breathing through the fury climbing up my throat, my pulse loud in my own ears.

They planned for a frightened girl who would not read the small print.

I am not sure they planned for me.