When the entire world seems to hate you, the framework of your life disappears, leaving you floating in an endless place where there is no edge, no boundary, no line.

First I was fired from my job.

Then I was evicted from my apartment.

My credit cards and bank account were frozen because of investigations into criminal activity. I had to give up my phone when they took me into custody, even though technically I wasn’t arrested.

Every electronic item in my apartment was taken by the feds.

Later, when I finally got access to a computer, I tried to log into my email account.

Wrong password.

Facebook?

Wrong password.

Amazon?

Wrong password.

You get the idea.

I owned my clothes, my personal belongings, and a little bit of furniture in my apartment. My original car was seized along with my computer and all the other items that could have plausibly–or not so plausibly–been used to commit a crime.

And then the attacks began.

One of the few mercies in those early days after John, Stellan, and Blaine kidnapped me and used me to get to Lindsay was that I didn’t have my electronics. While I’d been pissed when they were taken away and my accounts accessed, all my activity downloaded and combed over by investigators, it was a blessing.

Because I never saw all the death threats. The messages urging me to kill myself. The rape promises.

And worse.

Oh, yes. There are worse things people can say to you. Especially when they do it with attached pictures, GIFs, and videos.

It took about a week before Senator Bosworth, of all people, came to my rescue. He gave me money privately. Offered me a smartphone. I knew it was being tracked, but I didn’t care. It was literally a lifeline.

I still couldn’t access my own accounts, but I could start new ones. New accounts that I made sure were scrubbed clean of any hint of activity that could get me in trouble.

I had Senator Bosworth to thank for giving me some peace.

The Grove is like something out of a documentary about the wealthy, a sprawling, oceanside estate that makes it very clear Senator Bosworth had money long before he rose to become a presidential candidate. I’ve been here hundreds of times since I was little. While my mother worked here, it was open to me. Lindsay and I forged a friendship in elementary school–a weird one, but a good one. How do you become best friends when your mother works for her father? The balance of power was awkward.

We managed.

Silas shakes his head slightly, as if ridding himself of unwanted thoughts, then turns to me. “This won’t be a typical meeting. Bosworth’s entire PR team is there.”

“Again?” This isn’t the first time I’ve been forced to sit in the senator’s office and be talked about like I’m a potted plant. I don’t understand why they make me go to these meetings. I’m basically forced to sit through hours of being talked about like I’m a problem, and then I’m handed marching orders.

It’s not a choice. It’s a blueprint.

When we were still friends, Lindsay used to complain about being treated this way. I never understood.

Now I do.

More than I ever wanted to.

“Yes. The firebombing complicates matters.”

“You think?”

He cracks, just a little, his mouth turning up with an aggrieved sigh. “You are a complicated woman, Jane.”

“Me? I’m simple. It’s the rest of the world that makes me complicated.”

He does a double take and drops the topic, turning away.

What does that mean?

We pull up to the back door, a modest side entrance off the south wing of the house that I know has more security than the president himself receives. After Lindsay’s kidnapping–which happened right here, on the helicopter pad behind us–The Grove went through massive lockdown, security tripled, the place more a fortress than a home.

The SUV comes to a halt, the driver’s precision in pulling up between two thick sets of bushes not an accident. It’s all carefully calibrated to provide cover, for the agents stationed around the grounds to be able to handle an attacker, a bomb, every move calculated to maximize the safety of the people they’re assigned to protect.

The memory of Silas’s body against mine less than an hour ago as he shielded me from my car’s explosion floods my senses. It’s as if I can smell him again, feel his nose pressed into my neck, sense those big callused hands on my ribs, my shoulders, my head. I swoon, pausing as he waves to me to slide across the bench seat and exit the SUV on his side.

He turns from solid to waves, my vision swimming, but I push through.

I always push through.

When I stand, I wobble, my legs like rubber bands. His hand goes to my elbow, holding tight, the other at the small of my back, assured and instinctive.

“Are you okay?” he asks, mirroring my own words from a few moments ago back to me.

“No. How about we stop asking each other that question?” I ask, catching his eye, trying to let him know I’m half joking but also coming from a place where I get it. I really do.

“What do you suggest instead?” His hands move off my body, leaving me more unsure than before. The withdrawal of his touch is a disturbing sensation. Silas only held me steady for a few moments, yet it felt so good. So right.

I need to stop doing this.

I need to turn whatever I’m feeling off, because as I look up at him to answer, I see his mask is back on.

Whatever I thought I just felt from him, I’m clearly wrong.

He’s only doing his job.

And right now his job is to deliver me straight into the middle of a hornet’s nest, without a suit.

“Joe,” he says, nodding at one of the security people. He’s wearing mirrored sunglasses, my own image reflected back at me for a split second, just long enough to realize I look like a sooty, grass-stained mess.

“Wait!” I cry out, unable to stop the impulse. My hands fly up to my hair, my right eyebrow, my cheek. I turn back to confirm what I saw in the mirrored glasses, seeking the SUV’s window.

“What?” Silas asks, impassive.

“Why didn’t you tell me I look like this?” Frantic, I touch my face. Part of my layered bangs rest against my eyebrow like a tangled piece of burnt yarn. A long green streak might as well be blush on my cheekbone, and when I look down at my right arm, I see more grass stains along the forearm.

“Look like what?”

“Like I’ve been playing flag football in a bonfire, Silas.”

Joe’s eyebrow goes up. Silas’s eyes fill with mirth for a second, then fade out.

“It’s not my job to comment on your appearance, Jane. It’s my job to keep you safe.”

I look him over, pausing in the space between the car and the door, feeling the push from all the security guys to move, to take myself out of the transition space where so much of the danger resides.

Too bad.

I’ll take control where I can get it, even if it’s table scraps.

My visual inspection of Silas makes him uncomfortable, but he doesn’t back down. His pants have grass stains at the knees, a long smear running down one shinbone in a ragged pattern. He doesn’t have any other obvious signs of the dramatic rescue on the landscaped grounds of the small shopping center.

I took the hit.

“Why don’t you look like me?” I blurt out.

He takes one step closer to me, his hand on my back again, this time making it clear I will move to the building, I will go through the door, I will do as he says.

As I take one halting step, he leans in and whispers, “Because I am a man.”

Oh, my.

He sure is.

“That’s not what I mean–”

“Shhhh.”

“Are you shushing me?”

“I’m helping you.”

“Helping me what?”

“To get ready for what’s next.”

“You mean for who is next. Monica Bosworth is in this meeting, isn’t she?”

“I’m not privy to that information.” I know I’m right. I can tell.

“Why do you care whether I’m warned?”

He stops touching me again, his pace speeding up. I’m slightly behind him, trying to match his stride.

“I don’t know,” he says, sending my blood rushing fast through me, making me wish he’d just shut me down instead.

Walking into the office of any high-ranking government official is an intimidating experience. I’m used to it. It’s all I knew from childhood. Still fraught with protocol, every person on staff is in constant vigilance mode. Every part of the staff, from the janitor to the head of security, is paid to make the machine work properly and perpetually. They’re paid to remove every obstacle in the boss’s way.

I’m a big obstacle.

So why am I here?

“Why does Senator Bosworth care about my car being bombed?” I ask Silas. He looks around the hall with his eyes only, neck not moving.

He ignores me until we turn a corner to a section where no one is visible.

“I don’t know. I assumed you could tell me,” he replies, leaning closer than he needs to.

“But you never asked me.” I try to keep my breath steady. It takes all of my energy.

“I was debating whether it was worth bothering.”

“Bothering?”

A door opens. Marshall Josephs appears. He’s super tall, a middle-aged man who has the body of a former athlete, all the muscle that used to be in his chest now residing as a paunch around his waist. His eyes are keen, eager, watchful.

I know those eyes.

Everyone in my life has them.

“Silas. Jane,” he says, the words clipped, his body language pushing us to come into the room, the message clear: get in here.

We’re holding him up.

As he turns, I see he’s wearing a patterned tie with his blue shirt, something cartoony. In a world of grey suits and red ties, he’s a rebel.

Don’t mistake rebellion for mercy, though.

I walk into the office I’ve seen plenty of times over the years. This time it’s different. Since my mother died, it’s as if I have to relive everything through a new lens. Mom’s place, where I grew up, became a graveyard of lost hope.

My apartment became a house of horrors, my eviction brutal and unfair.

And now, Mom’s workplace: a place I have to visit without choice or input.

Being invited to do something from a place of inclusion is a very different experience from being told to report to a meeting where not attending isn’t an option. We forget so quickly when we’re not embroiled in high-level scandals that our freedom to opt out is precious.

And taken for granted.

The floors are all highly polished blond wood, the walls painted in earth tones. A bubbling fountain, zen-like with an Asian decorating influence, percolates quietly, the sound intended to be soothing. The wing is carefully decorated, updated in the last year or so.

My mother chose some of the paint for the senator’s office. His wife doesn’t know. Mom often fielded whatever questions he didn’t want to deal with from Monica. The two of them had an agreement.

Remember–it’s the job of staff to remove obstacles.

Even if the obstacle is the wife.

I brace myself as we walk into the senator’s office, all of us herded to the enormous conference table on one side of the room. I am scanning carefully without making eye contact.

My sigh of relief almost escapes me, but I hold back.

No Monica.

Whew.

Monica Bosworth is not just the senator’s wife. She’s Lindsay’s mother. She’s trying to become the First Lady of the United States.

She’s also a stone-cold narcissist.

Am I biased? Yes. Openly. I know so much about her from my mother and my friendship with Lindsay. And for years, I told myself not to judge, because everyone has different facets of themselves that they show to different people, right? We can’t be all bad.

Like I told Silas in the car on the way here–no one is one hundred percent good or one hundred percent bad.

That doesn’t mean Monica Bosworth isn’t one hundred percent bitch.

Silas beat me to it, reading the room faster than me, already picking a seat across the room between two women I don’t know. There are two empty chairs right next to me.

Message received: he doesn’t want to sit next to me.

When you are in combat mode–and make no mistake about it, I sure am–you notice everything. I’m not being picky or overly sensitive. No such thing exists when the world is an all-out assault on you.

I can’t turn off the noticing.

And I especially can’t turn it off when it comes to Silas.

“Jane,” says one of the women, who stands, extending her hand for a shake. I’m caught off guard, because people generally avoid me.

Shun me.

“I’m Marcy Boorstein, a member of the PR team. This is Victoria Ahlmann.” Both women shake my hand and smile kindly. They’re almost carbon copies of each other, like someone hit Copy and Paste in a cloning program and made Marcy and Victoria. They’re not sisters. Just similar.

And they blend in. They look like any boring old soccer mom you’d find in a well-off suburb.

Which means the idea that they are really PR people is ludicrous.

These are agents. NSA, FBI, CIA–pick your alphabet. Their friendliness is a cover. I’ll take it.

This is a far cry from the last time I was here, when everyone looked like an angry ice sculpture.

“Would you like a moment to freshen up?” Victoria asks me, her lipstick more red than plum. That’s how I can mentally mark her. How she’s different from Marcy.

I play along. I’ve forgotten my looks already. I wince. “Yes, please.”

Silas walks to the doorway and extends his arm for me to leave again. I follow as he escorts me to the bathroom.

“I know where it is,” I tell him. “No need to–”

“I’m not showing you where it is.”

I’m confused. “Then why are you–”

“It’s my job.”

“It’s your job to escort me to the bathroom? Like a kindergarten teacher?”

“Like someone who is in the home of a presidential candidate, Jane,” he says, halting outside the door to the bathroom.

“Because you think I’m a danger to Harry?” I slip and call him by his first name.

Silas quirks one eyebrow. “Harry?”

I turn away and go into the bathroom, locking the door behind me.

I take a deep breath, inhaling the fresh scent of lilacs, a bunch of them in two or three vases sprinkled around the room, on the counter and also on a small wooden stand that holds towels.

Privacy.

For the first time in hours, I am alone.

Bathrooms are the one holdout when it comes to having bodyguards assigned. Most of the people who are on my detail are men. I do get the occasional woman, but even then the bathroom is sacrosanct. In the near future, even that will be breached, likely by technology before they start sending humans in to monitor people in the most private space, but for now–

I’m truly alone.

You cannot underestimate the body’s physiological response when it’s under constant tension and gets a brief respite. You would think that the momentary relief would be helpful. That systems could adapt and use the break in a beneficial manner. Basic systems theory would say so.

Bodies are systems, after all.

But emotions most definitely aren’t.

I taste the tears before I feel them.

Breaking down isn’t new. Doing it in the bathroom at a presidential candidate’s house is a bit much. I don’t care. If I ever cared, that ship sailed so long ago. I brace myself against the sink and grab a washcloth, shoving it into my mouth and turning on the water full blast.

And then I scream.

I scream until I start to cough, the back of my throat raw, the pain a relief. It’s a relief because I can finally fixate on something I caused. Something I did. Something I had control over. Screaming like this is the lamest form of stress relief, but it’s mine.

My chest starts to heave, the emotions all rising up layer by layer through my body like the rings of a tree that mark the years. My layers mark months of shame, a varnish poured over me in endless buckets, the shame seeping into every nook and cranny until I am the shame.

No amount of stripping will ever get me back to my core. “Jane” is no more. I don’t get to be a person any more.

I am just “Jane Borokov.”

The enemy.

Victoria and Marcy’s friendliness in there is part of a scheme. Maybe Silas is, too. They all have an agenda, and as my body starts to shake, my stomach burning like someone’s stabbing a poker into my duodenum, I realize I’m going mad.

Crazy.

Insane.

I can’t stop it.

Maybe that’s the problem. I’ve been fighting it all. My mind won’t give over, give in. I keep thinking that the truth matters. That if I can find the right person to tell, then this will go away.

All of it.

Especially the shame.

I’ve told eighty percent of the truth. The other twenty percent can’t be revealed until the time is right, but when it is, I’ll be exonerated in the court of public opinion, right?

Because that’s all I have left.

Tap tap tap.

“Jane? The senator is ready.”

I look up into my own face in the mirror. My hair is singed, the green streak covers the right side of my face, and mascara runs in long tendrils down my face, bleeding into the white washcloth.

I look like a horror book cover model.

Feel like one, too.

“Just a minute,” I lie, stretching out time. I sit on the toilet and try to pee, but I can’t. Stress does funny things to the body, and mine has decided that relaxing all my muscles is too high a price to pay for being vigilant. You can’t spend almost every waking hour in combat mode and expect your body to downshift suddenly.

Even for something as basic as bathroom functions.

No one talked about this in my psychology classes. No one mentioned that a moth flying close to my head would feel like a scud missile coming for me. I’m getting a doctoral education in the undocumented effects of being a constant target.

Only I don’t just have one attacker.

I have society.

And on a lower level, I have every single person in the senator’s office right now all wanting to find another way to tell me I’m a horrible person who needs to be managed.

Downplayed.

Made small.

I clean my face, washing away the grime. I wish I could wash off the shame, but that’s impossible. It’s etched into me like a tattoo I never asked for.

As I center myself, I look in the mirror, radiating compassion to my reflection. I don’t have a way to fill my own battery. My source keeps getting depleted. Soon I’ll have nothing left.

I can’t think about that right now.

I slowly open the door to find Silas there, leaning against the wall, glaring at his personal smartphone screen. Without a word, he deftly slips the phone in his pants pocket and turns, pivoting on his right foot, soundlessly leading me back.

Back to face whatever’s coming next.

“You okay?” he asks softly.

“I thought we weren’t going to ask each other that.”

“I slipped up.”

“Isn’t your entire job predicated on never slipping up?”

“Yes.”

“You’re undermining my confidence in you.” But I smile, pressing my lips together, biting them.

“I’m hurt.”

“You have a feeling!”

He lets out a light laugh. “Don’t tell anyone. Wouldn’t want it getting around. People might think I’m weak.”

“I can’t imagine anyone thinking you’re weak, Silas.”

He pauses. I don’t look away from his body.

And then Senator Harwell Bosworth appears, turning a corner, his stature erect, eyes on us.

“Hello, Jane,” he says, not smiling.

And away we go.