SOLD BY MY HUSBAND CLAIMED BY HIS ENEMY

CHAPTER 3:FORTY MINUTES

# Chapter 3: Forty Minutes

The water was still running when I made my decision.

I turned off the tap, and the sudden silence felt louder than the pipes had been a moment ago, pressing against my ears while I stood there dripping nothing, fully dressed, staring at my own reflection in the fogged mirror.

Forty minutes, maybe less.

That was all the time I had before that voice came back through the front door to collect whatever Damien had signed away.

I didn't let myself think past that number.

Thinking too far ahead had a way of freezing me in place, and freezing wasn't a luxury I could afford tonight. So I moved instead. Quietly. Quickly. I peeled off the damp towel I'd wrapped around my shoulders for effect and changed into the jeans and boots I hadn't worn since the last time Damien and I had gone anywhere that didn't require heels and a version of myself I no longer recognized.

I grabbed nothing else.

No bag. No phone charger. Not even my jewelry box, though it sat on the dresser not two feet from where I stood, because every second spent deciding what mattered was a second I didn't have.

The window in my bathroom looked out over the side garden, close enough to the old oak tree that I'd once joked, years ago, about how easy it would be to climb down if the house ever caught fire.

I hadn't meant it seriously.

I meant it seriously now.

I eased the window open slowly, wincing at every soft creak of the old frame, my heart slamming so hard against my ribs I was certain the sound alone would give me away. Cold air rushed in immediately, sharp against my skin, carrying the smell of wet grass and the distant, ordinary hum of a city that had no idea what was happening inside this house tonight.

I climbed onto the ledge.

My hands found the nearest branch, rough bark biting into my palms, and for one terrifying second I hung there between the window and the tree with nothing beneath me but a two-story drop and my own stubborn refusal to simply accept what Damien had decided for me.

Then I moved.

Branch to branch, slower than I wanted, my boots slipping twice against wet bark, my breath coming in short, careful bursts because even breathing too loudly felt like a risk I couldn't take. I dropped the last few feet into the flowerbed below, landing hard enough to feel it in my knees, and didn't stop to check for bruises.

I ran.

Not toward the front gate. Toward the back fence, low enough to climb, hidden by the same overgrown hedge Damien had complained about for months and never once trimmed. I was grateful for his laziness for the first time in three years.

I didn't look back at the house.

I told myself if I looked back, I'd lose whatever fragile nerve was carrying me forward, and I needed every last piece of it just to keep moving.

The street beyond the fence was quiet. Too quiet, the kind of quiet that made every one of my own footsteps sound enormous against the pavement. I kept to the shadows between streetlights, my arms wrapped around myself, walking fast without letting myself run, because running drew eyes and eyes were the last thing I could afford right now.

I didn't know where I was going.

I only knew I had to be somewhere else — anywhere else — before that car pulled up to a house I no longer intended to be standing inside of.

Six minutes.

That was how long I let myself believe it might actually work.

I heard the engine before I saw it. Low, controlled, moving slowly along the cross street half a block behind me, and every instinct in my body screamed at me to keep walking normally, to not turn around, to not give myself away with a single wrong movement.

I didn't manage it.

I turned.

The car had already stopped. A man I didn't recognize stepped out of the passenger side, unhurried, the same unbothered calm I'd already learned to associate with everyone connected to Kael Draven, like urgency was something that happened to other people.

"Mrs. Knight."

I ran anyway.

I don't remember deciding to. My body simply moved, cutting sideways down an alley between two dark buildings, my boots slamming against wet concrete, my breath tearing out of me in ragged bursts that no longer had anything careful left in them.

It didn't matter.

I heard him behind me, footsteps unhurried even now, like he already knew exactly how this would end and saw no reason to rush toward the inevitable.

The alley opened onto another street. I didn't recognize it. My legs were shaking, my lungs burning, and somewhere in the back of my mind a small, exhausted voice was already telling me this had never really been a plan at all, just a reflex, just the last desperate motion of someone who couldn't bear to stand still and be taken.

A second car turned onto the street ahead of me, headlights sweeping across the wet pavement, and I understood, with a sinking, airless clarity, exactly whose car it was before it even slowed to a stop.

I stopped running.

There was nowhere left to run to.

The passenger door opened, and Kael stepped out into the glow of the headlights, hands in his coat pockets, unbothered by the cold, unbothered by anything at all as far as I could tell.

He looked at me for a long moment.

He didn't look angry.

That, somehow, was worse.

"Thirty-eight minutes," he said quietly. "That's how long it took you to decide running was worth the risk."

I said nothing. There was nothing left in me to say, not with my chest still heaving, not with the cold air burning in my lungs, not with the humiliating certainty settling over me that I had never once, not for a single second, actually had anywhere to go.

"Get in the car, Seraphina."

I didn't move.

"You can walk to it," he said, "or I can have someone carry you. I'd prefer the first option. So, I suspect, would you."

I looked past him at the second man, still standing quietly a few feet away, waiting without expression for whatever came next.

I looked back at Kael.

Something in his eyes, in the stillness of his face, told me there was no version of tonight where I walked away from this street on my own terms.

I got in the car.

Neither of us spoke as it pulled away from the curb, the wet street sliding past the window, my own reflection ghosting over the glass, pale and shaking and furious with myself for believing, even for thirty-eight minutes, that I had ever truly been free to leave.