“None of your bloody business, sweetheart. None at all.” Godfrey’s cold, cracked lips trace my collarbone as his palm moves under my shirt, cupping one breast, rolling my nipple between his fingers. “If you ever tell Camden that I’ve touched you, I’m slicing you up and feeding you to the hounds. You’re good meat.”

I don’t answer. I just remind myself of all the good times to pull through this one bad moment.

Pistachio ice cream.

The scent of the ocean as it breaks against my sandy toes.

Playing Monopoly in my PJs with Preston and Dad, stuffed to the max after Christmas dinner.

Jumping on my waterbed when the nanny wasn’t looking.

The movie Amélie.

Feeling the tears tingling your nose when you read an angsty book.

“Lie down,” he says, and I do, because I know that he can kill me. Kill me and tell Camden that I tried to escape and one of the guards had to stop me. I don’t want to die. Not until I figure out if there’s a way out of this hell.

“Don’t worry, beautiful. It’ll be over before you know it. True, it’ll feel like forever when I break into you. Time. It moves differently according to our circumstances. It’s very slow when you’re being tortured. But what are your choices?” He turns over an hourglass on the dresser near the bed. “Resist—and your time is up.”

Godfrey is taking from me.

Taking my happiness and my soul and my sexuality. Taking things I have no intention of giving. He reaches for a Vaseline tube that’s next to the bed and slides his fingers into it. Over the past few weeks, Camden had been the only one to take. Sometimes he let Sebastian watch, as a punishment for what I did to him. But this is the first time Godfrey is having a taste.

Camden would’ve never agreed to such a thing. He’s possessive and jealous, a bratty prince who considers himself more worthy than the mad king.

I start crying, my body shaking against the sheets. He’s not even naked yet and I’m already trembling like a wrinkled newspaper trying to survive a hurricane.

“Christ,” Godfrey moans in annoyance. “I can’t shag you properly. Not like this.”

For a second, I mistake his annoyance with my tears for kindness, and sniff as I prop myself on my elbows, but then he says. “Turn around.”

My stomach pressed against the cold sheet, I hear him sliding the lube up and down his bare dick with a slurping sound before he guides himself into my tight hole. I’ve never been touched there before. Camden asked me to do it when we were still together, but I said no. He respected that. Even after we’d broken up.

But his father doesn’t know, and more than likely, doesn’t care.

It hurts, more than just physically. I have no doubt that I’m bleeding. But I take it and barely grunt, my lips pressing hard against the pillow, closing my eyes. I will not break.

“You know, Miss Burlington-Smyth. Fucking you over is almost as fun as doing it to your dad. It must be quite disappointing, being deserted by your parents because of money and greed.”

Blue skies after the rain.

Playing peek-a-boo with the neighbor’s sweet toddler, Charlie.

A cup of fresh brewed coffee at the airport after a long flight.

First dates.

First kisses.

First everythings.

Not breaking. Not breaking. Not breaking.

Godfrey comes inside me, groans in pleasure and rolls away from my body.

The next day, he rapes me again, this time driving into my *.

Three weeks later, I find out that I’m pregnant. Godfrey never used a condom.

Neither did Camden.

The baby is an Archer.

It doesn’t make me hate it. In my mind, it’s US against THEM. I need to save it from the Archers no less than I need to save myself.

Only I fail my baby.

And it’s the moment when I’m bleeding out a clot the size of a pea, watching it sailing on the sea of red in the toilet, that I truly break. It’s that moment that changes everything, that lets me know that it’s okay to want to kill them.

I failed my baby.

But I won’t fail me.

I stride to Godfrey’s timber gates, surrounded by Aryan brothers. Eyes zeroing in on the door, I feel more confident with every step I take.

They let me walk by freely, because they’re shocked.

Because they know who I am.

And because they can’t kill me—Godfrey wants to do it himself.

When I reach the edge of the cobbled path leading to his entrance, a fat man in dirty Levi’s and a white wife beater pushes me away.

“Now what the heck do you think you’re doing?”

“He wants me alive,” I say calmly, bouncing a stress ball up and down in my palm. “Ask him yourself. Tell him Prescott is here. Alone, and ready to talk.”

I hope Nate is keeping a good distance away from this scene, but know that he’s livid with the way I handled things. I didn’t even ask him before I charged to Godfrey’s house, and now I’m standing in front of six burly, Nazi-looking men. They all have shaved heads and blue, faded tattoos all over their bodies. Their faces are mapped with fury. Life failed them, and they failed life. It’s a catch 22, but I have zero sympathy for them. We all have demons. True fighters chain them to the pit of their dark souls.

“Stupid bitch,” one of them spits, his phlegm landing right next to my boot. “Thinks she can boss us around. Your rich ass will be raped if you don’t shut your pipe.”