The first blow caught me across the face. I heard the crack before I felt it—my mother's palm connecting with my cheekbone. The second came to my ribs. I doubled over, tasting blood where my teeth had cut the inside of my cheek. Through the haze of pain, I saw Chase standing in the doorway of our penthouse, divorce papers in one hand, his face blank. Not angry. Not guilty. Just... empty.
"Sign them," he said.
My mother grabbed my arm. Her fingers dug into my flesh. "You're embarrassing us all," she hissed. "Your sister's reputation. The family's name. Always you and your dramatics."
I tried to speak, but my throat was tight. "Chase, please—"
"Don't," he cut me off. "Just don't."
He turned to my mother. "Get her downstairs. I don't want her causing a scene when the lawyers arrive."
She dragged me toward the service stairwell. I stumbled, my legs not working properly. The concrete steps scraped against my knees as we descended. One flight. Two. The air grew colder, damper. I could smell rust and something else—something rotten.
The basement storage unit was at the end of a narrow corridor. My mother shoved me inside. The door was metal, heavy. It swung shut with a sound like a coffin lid closing.
"You'll stay here until you come to your senses," she said through the door. "And until you sign those papers."
The lock clicked. Footsteps retreated.
I stood in the darkness, waiting for my eyes to adjust. They didn't. This was a different kind of dark—thicker, more absolute than the controlled dimness of my rooms upstairs. I reached out and found the wall. My fingers traced the rough concrete as I slid down to the floor.
My abdomen cramped. Sharp, insistent pain. I pressed my hand against my stomach and felt the wetness. I knew what was happening. I had read about it. The medical terminology floated through my mind, clinical and distant. Threatened miscarriage. Inevitable abortion. I was losing the baby I hadn't even told Chase about.
I didn't scream. I never screamed. Instead, I pulled out my notebook and began to count. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three. The numbers anchored me, kept me from floating away into the pain.
The cramping intensified. I bit my lip until I tasted copper. My pencil snapped between my fingers.
After what might have been hours, the pain subsided to a dull ache. I forced myself to stand. My legs shook. I began moving along the walls, using my hands to map the space. Left wall. Right wall. Back wall. I catalogued every surface, every texture, every possible exit.
In the far corner, behind stacked boxes, I found it—an emergency exit. The metal was corroded, the lever stiff with rust. I pulled once. Nothing. Twice. The third attempt, I felt something give. The fourth, the door groaned open.
Light spilled in. Not sunlight—the alley outside was shadowed, narrow—but light nonetheless. I fell through the opening and collapsed onto the asphalt.
I lay there, waiting. Waiting for the burning to start. For my skin to blister. For the anaphylaxis that would choke me. For the agony that would end me.
Nothing happened.
I turned my face toward the sky. The sun was visible as a bright disk through the gap between buildings. I stared at it, unblinking. Warmth touched my face. My arms. My closed eyelids.
Four minutes. I counted them. Four minutes of light, and I was still breathing.
I stood on shaking legs and found a maintenance worker's phone in a wall-mounted box. The lock was simple—I'd designed similar security protocols for hospital networks. My fingers moved automatically, muscle memory guiding me through the system architecture I knew so well.
I pulled up my own medical records. My childhood files. The genetic testing from when I was three.
There it was. The UV deficiency. The mutation that was supposed to kill me if I ever stepped into sunlight.
Except it wasn't mine. Every record, every note, every diagnosis—they all belonged to Lennon.
My mother had switched the files.
