POV: Isabella
The thump-thump-thump of the car's tires over the broken road felt like a heartbeat counting down to disaster. Isabella's own heart was a frantic, trapped bird trying to escape her chest. This was a mistake. A stupid, epic, unforgivable mistake. The thought looped in her head, a shrill, internal alarm bell that had been ringing since she'd climbed into the car.
"This is stupid, Brandon. Turn around," she said. She tried to sound like her dad, calm, in control, leaving no room for argument. It came out as a squeak, the voice of a scared little girl. It made her hate herself more.
Brandon just grinned, his hands unnaturally tight on the wheel, knuckles white. "Relax, princess. You wanted to see the old factory graffiti. We're almost there."
Liar. She hadn't really wanted to see graffiti. She'd wanted to be normal. For one night, she'd wanted to be just Isabella, a girl, not Isabella Visconti, the girl with the shadow (Marco), the girl whose dad got whispered about in hallways, the girl who lived in a gilded, silent cage with rules for everything, including friendship. She'd lied to Marco, her favorite bodyguard, the one who sometimes sneaked her extra gelato. The guilt from that alone was a cold, heavy stone in her stomach. But this… getting in the car with Brandon Thorne after he'd been so angry and weird lately, after the things her dad had said, the warnings about the Thorne family… this was beyond a mistake. This was a catastrophe playing out in real time, and she was the star.
"My phone's dying," she said, a last-ditch effort to turn this around, to inject a note of practical danger. The screen flickered the dreaded 1% symbol—a tiny digital skull and crossbones before going black. A tiny, electronic death. Her lifeline to her dad, to Marco, to safety, was gone.
"Who cares? We're having an adventure!" Brandon's voice was too loud, too excited. It was fake, plastic. She could hear the brittle, angry edge underneath, like a crack in thin ice. He turned down a road that was more pothole than pavement, lined with giant, dark shapes that loomed like sleeping monsters against the snow-filled sky. The factory district. No people. No lights. Just the wind's lonely scream and the ghosts of dead industry.
He jerked the car to a sudden stop in the middle of a vast, empty lot of frozen mud and weeds. The headlights cut two shaky, weak tunnels through the swirling snow, illuminating nothing but more snow and the skeletal remains of crumbling brick walls.
"See? Cool, right?" Brandon turned to her. His smile was a gash in his face, not reaching his eyes, which were flat and hard as marbles.
A chill that had nothing to do with the weather shot down her spine, crystallizing her fear. "It's creepy. Let's go back. Now." Her hand flew to the seatbelt release, her fingers fumbling.
His hand was faster, clamping around her wrist like a steel cuff. It hurt. His grip was mean. "Not yet. We need to talk."
Panic, bright and sharp as a shard of glass, flooded her mouth with a metallic taste. "About what? Let go!" She tried to yank her arm back, but he was stronger, his fingers digging in.
"About you acting like you're better than everyone!" he snapped, the mask shattering completely. His face twisted into something ugly and frighteningly familiar. It was his father's face, the one she'd seen scowling across crowded charity galas, the cold smile that never touched those pale eyes. "Your dad thinks he runs this city. My dad says it's our turn. And you… You won't even sit with me at lunch anymore. Too good for me now?"
This wasn't about her. It was never about her. She was just a piece in a game the fathers played, a pawn to be shoved around a chessboard she didn't understand. The realization made her both terrified and, underneath, furious. She was a person, not a pawn! "Brandon, please," she begged, the fury instantly drowned by the rising, icy tide of pure fear. "Just take me home. I won't say anything."
"Your home," he sneered, the words dripping with a poison she didn't know he possessed. "The fancy tower. The impenetrable fortress. You think you're safe there?" He let go of her wrist only to shove her hard against the car door, her shoulder smacking the window. "Get out."
"What? No!" She fumbled blindly for the door handle, but he was faster, leaning across her, his sweat smell, cheap cologne, and something sour, like beer, overwhelming in the closet space.
"GET OUT!" he roared. The sound was raw, animal, filling the small car, drowning out the wind. He lunged, stabbed at the seatbelt button with a violent jab, then yanked the door handle. The door flew open, and a blast of arctic wind, carrying a million needles of ice, screamed into the car, stealing the breath from her lungs.
He pushed her, a hard, mean shove between her shoulder blades, putting his weight into it. Isabella tumbled out, landing face-first in a deep, shocking drift. The cold was an instant, painful shock, like a million frozen knives stabbing every inch of exposed skin. The snow went up her nose, down her coat.
She pushed herself up on burning hands, spitting snow, her ears ringing. She looked up just as Brandon slid back into the driver's seat. His face in the dome light was a grotesque parody of a smile, triumphant and cruel. "Have fun getting home, you stuck-up brat!"
The door slammed with a final thud. The engine revved, a vicious snarl. Tires spun uselessly for a second, then caught, pelting her with a second wave of ice, frozen grit, and mud. Then the red taillights were swallowed by the swirling white, leaving only the fading echo of his laugh in the howling wind and the smell of exhaust.
Silence. A deep, ringing, awful silence pressed in after the engine noise faded. The kind of silence that makes your ears hurt. The snow fell, thick and indifferent, already beginning to fill the ugly scars of the tire tracks.
She was alone. Truly, utterly alone. Ten miles from the tower. In a blizzard. Her fancy, thin wool coat—a designer piece her dad bought her was already soaked through, heavy as a lead blanket, utterly useless. Her designer jeans were plastered to her legs, conducting the cold straight to her bones like wires. She pulled out her dead phone, pushing the power button over and over again, as if her sheer will, her panic, could bring it back to life. Please, please, please. Nothing. The black screen was a dark mirror, reflecting her own wide, terrified eyes back at her—the eyes of a stupid, doomed girl.
Move. You have to move. But which way? The city was a white maze; every direction looked the same. The panic was a live wire in her chest, sizzling, making it hard to think, to breathe. She took a few stumbling steps in what she hoped was the direction of the main road, then her foot caught on hidden debris under the snow, and she went down again, hard. The impact knocked the air from her lungs in a painful whoosh.
The cold was changing. It wasn't just biting anymore; it was sleeping in, a slow, sleepy poison spreading through her limbs. Her thoughts started to get fuzzy at the edges, soft and cottony. People die like this, a calm, detached part of her mind observed, as if from very far away. They get tired. They think a nap will help. They sit down. They go to sleep and never wake up. The thought should have terrified her more, should have jolted her to action, but it just felt… heavy. Inevitable. Maybe it would be easier to just close her eyes…
Tears welled up, hot against her frozen skin, then immediately turned to icy tracks. She thought of her dad. He was going to be so angry. But under the anger would be a fear so deep it would hollow him out, turn him into a ghost. She'd seen that fear once before, when she'd gotten lost at the zoo when she was five. The look on his face when he found her was a mixture of rage and a relief so profound it looked like pain had scared her more than being lost. She never wanted to see it again. And now, because of her stupid, selfish wish to be normal, she'd caused it.
She curled into a tight ball against the rough, cold brick of a wall, trying to become a smaller target for the wind, to preserve whatever pathetic warmth her own body could still generate. Her eyelids felt so incredibly heavy. The wind's howl was becoming a lullaby. Maybe if she just closed them for a minute… just to rest…
A shadow. Moving in the swirling white curtain. A tall, thin shape, hunched over, fighting its way through the storm one labored step at a time.
Hope, wild and desperate, surged, was it Marco? Had he found her? Had her dad tracked the phone? But no, the shape was wrong, too thin, struggling too much. Was it Brandon coming back to finish the job? Or someone worse? In this place, at this time, anyone could be worse. A new, different fear, cold and sharp, pierced the sleepy fog.
She tried to call out, to scream for help, but her jaw was locked shut, her teeth chattering so violently they stole her voice, clacking together like castanets of panic. All she could do was watch, a prisoner in her own frozen, failing body, as the shadow resolved into a person. A woman. She looked as broken and defeated by the storm as Isabella felt. The woman knelt in the snow before her, her own face pale and etched with deep exhaustion, but her eyes… her eyes held a surprise, a shock, and then a dawning, fierce concern.
"Hey," the woman said, her voice raw and raspy, like she hadn't used it in years, cracked from the cold and disuse. "Are you okay?" Two eyes, the color of a stormy sky just after the rain, looked into Isabella's, and they were filled with a concern so genuine, so immediate and selfless, it shattered the last of Isabella's crumbling control. She tried to form the word "no," to explain, to beg for help, but all that escaped her frozen, trembling lips was a shattered, helpless sob that was instantly torn from her and carried away by the hungry, uncaring wind.