Dangerously His

Chapter 003

“Hey! Earth to Cora.” Mia tapped my shoulder, snapping me back into the moment.

Mia had been my best friend since before my mom passed. I always admired her—how resilient she was, how free she was, and how she said whatever she thought without flinching. She reminded me of my mother, in a way.

Back in eighth grade, she'd caught me in the school bathroom trying to cover a bruise on my shoulder with makeup. That was how she found out. She begged me to tell a teacher. I told her it wouldn't help. She told the teacher anyway.

It didn't end well for me.

My father raised his voice at Patricia for the first time—over a phone call from the school—and Patricia's fury landed on me that night. She was more careful after that. She avoided my face, my neck, my arms, anywhere visible.

We never spoke about it again.

I learned something that day I never forgot: telling the truth didn't save me. It just made the punishment harder to see.

“Are you coming to football practice today? It'll be fun.” She already knew what I'd say.

“Sorry, I can't. I need to go to the library. Maybe next time.” I lied through my teeth, the way I lied about everything now. It was easier to disappear a little than to explain why I couldn't.

Patricia always said girls like me didn't deserve hobbies, or friends, or a life.

Girls like me.

I still didn't fully understand what she meant. I only knew the phrase was designed to make me feel dirty, small, and worthless—and it worked, every time.

The house was empty when I got home. I did my chores in silence, then went up to my room to read. It was the only hour of the day that felt like mine, and I held onto it like it might be taken from me too.

I heard Jake's footsteps before I heard the door, and my whole body knew what was coming before my mind let me admit it.

I remember thinking, stupidly, that if I just stayed very still, if I didn't breathe too loudly, maybe he'd turn around.

He never did.

I became something that waited, something that counted ceiling cracks and floorboard creaks to keep from screaming, something that showered until the water ran cold, trying to feel clean again.

I found out Patricia knew when I finally worked up the courage to tell her, thinking—foolishly, desperately—that some part of her might still be a mother, might still protect me from her own son.

She laughed.

“You asked for it,” she said, like I was slow for not already knowing. “Don't act so innocent, Cora. You seduced him. Boys like Jake don't chase after girls like you unless they're given a reason to.”

I stood there, waiting for the tears, and none came.

I think I was too shocked to cry—the last person in that house who might have protected me had concluded that the abuse was my fault.

Months passed.

I missed my period twice before I let myself understand what it meant, and when I finally did, I sat on the bathroom floor for an hour, my arms wrapped around my knees, shaking so hard my teeth chattered even though the room wasn't cold.

I was fifteen.

I didn't know what to do with the thing growing inside me, only that it terrified me, and that somewhere underneath the terror was a small, stupid flicker of hope—that this, finally, might be undeniable.

That my father would have to see me. Really see me.

But I never got the chance to tell him.

I remember drinking the tea Patricia brought me that night, the one she said would help with my nerves.

I should've known better than to trust her because I couldn't remember anything after that.

I woke up to blinding lights coming from the ceiling, like they were trying to get inside my skull. My whole body felt wrong, and there was so much pain in my abdomen that I subconsciously tried to reach out to feel where it was coming from.

That's when I felt the restraints around my wrists.

A little bit of panic settled in my chest, growing larger as I tugged against them until my wrists bled.

Later, I learned from the nurse what had happened to me. Even though I wasn't able to fully understand the medical terms she used, I knew it wasn't right.

I cried endlessly that night until I had to be sedated to calm me down.

Patricia had already taken care of the story.

A note in my handwriting had been left on my bed, saying something about needing space, needing to disappear, needing to find myself.

My father believed every word.

Patricia's plan was simple: keep me there, chained, drugged, and quiet until she figured out what to do with me permanently. Every day I stayed, the fear inside me curdled into something else.

It took me eleven days to earn the trust of the one nurse who looked at me like a person and not a problem, giving me an opportunity to be free. I mastered their rountines and shift changes mentally, waiting for the right time.

The moment the side door was left unlocked for deliveries, I walked out of that building in a stolen coat, my legs shaking with every step, my heart pounding so hard I thought it might give me away.

I didn't go to the police or a shelter.

I went home.

I stood outside the house I grew up in—the house that had taken my mother's memory, my body, my child, and every year of safety I should have had—and watched the lights go out one by one as my family went to bed, certain that I was gone for good.

The spare key was still under the loose brick by the garden shed, I picked it up and let myself in through the back door, moving through the kitchen, silent as a ghost.

I laid eyes on the knife block on the counter and picked the largest one. The weight of it settled strangely calmly in my hand, like it had been waiting for me.

Patricia was the first on my list.

She was asleep on her back, like she didn't have a single guilty thing weighing on her conscience. I stood over her for a moment, thinking of everything she had taken from me.

She woke as the knife came down.

Her eyes found mine in the dark, wide with a fear I recognized—it was mine, worn for years, finally handed back.

She didn't get to finish screaming before it was over.

Jake's door was next.

He barely stirred before it was over. I didn't give him the chance to say my name like it belonged to him.

I made sure of that.

My father was last.

He was standing in the hallway by the time I reached him, woken by the scream of his beloved wife.

He looked at me like he finally saw me.

“Cora—”

“You watched,” I said. “Every time. You just watched.”

There was nothing left he could say that would undo a decade of silence.

I stood in the hallway afterward, breathing hard, blood on my hands and clothes, and waited to feel something—horror, grief, guilt, anything.

It didn't come.

What I felt instead was quiet. The kind of quiet that house had never once given me.

I went to the garage and grabbed a can of gasoline, pouring it around the house and their lifeless bodies then I struck the match on the porch, tossed it through the open door, and walked away without looking back.

By the time the sky behind me turned orange, I was already gone.

Cora Prescott burned with that house and Emily Vance was born.