Frank Hicks grabbed Chloe's chin, his calloused fingers digging into her skin. He forced her head up, turning her face this way and that under the dim light of the living room.
"Yeah, the face is still good," he grunted to Debra, his eyes cold and assessing. "Cletus will like it."
The name—Cletus—sent a wave of nausea through Chloe. Cletus Cobb was a pig, a drunk, and a brute who had already buried two wives. The whole town whispered about it.
The bile rose in her throat. She summoned every ounce of strength she had and shoved his hand away.
"You can't do this!" she gasped, her voice raw with panic. "It's illegal!"
Debra let out a harsh, cackling laugh. "Illegal? Honey, who do you think is gonna come looking for you? The Carlisles? They threw you out like trash. The cops in this town?" She gestured around the squalid room. "They know better than to get involved in family business."
Frank pulled out a grimy flip phone and started punching in numbers. He was calling him. He was actually calling Cletus.
Fear, sharp and absolute, seized Chloe's heart. It wasn't a slow tide anymore; it was a blade at her throat. She had minutes, maybe seconds.
Her mind raced, desperately searching for an escape. The front door was bolted. The windows were nailed shut in their frames.
Her eyes darted to her canvas bag, still lying on the floor where Debra had emptied it. The black card. The thought was a flash of light in the darkness. But if she showed it to them now, they would just take it. It wouldn't save her. It would only make them richer.
Frank's call connected. His voice instantly became slick and fawning as he pressed the phone to his ear. "Hey, Cletus, my man. Frank Hicks here. Listen, I've got some prime goods for you—"
That was her chance.
While Frank was distracted, Chloe scrambled to her feet and lunged for her old bedroom.
"Get back here!" Debra shrieked, trying to grab her.
Chloe drove her shoulder into Debra's chest, knocking her off balance. She burst into the small, musty room and slammed the door shut, fumbling with the rusty lock until it clicked into place.
Immediately, the door shuddered under a heavy blow.
"You little bitch! Open this door!" Frank roared.
Through the thin walls, a gruff, confused voice crackled from the phone's speaker: "—ello? Frank, that you? What's going on?" But Frank was too busy hammering the door to answer.
The pounding was relentless, punctuated by Debra's screeching curses. Chloe leaned against the wood, her whole body trembling, her breath coming in ragged, painful gasps. The lock wouldn't hold for long. She knew that.
She looked around the tiny, suffocating room. This had been her cage for eighteen years before the Carlisles had come for her. Now, it was a cage again.
She had to say something. Something that would stop them. Something that would make them think twice.
The wood splintered near the lock. Another heavy kick, and the door groaned, the frame beginning to give way.
Chloe took a deep, shuddering breath. She pressed her hand against her flat stomach and screamed, her voice cracking with desperation.
"You can't sell me! I'm pregnant!"
The pounding stopped.
The sudden silence was deafening, broken only by her own harsh breathing.
There was a fumbling sound, then Frank's muffled curse as he finally snapped the phone shut, cutting off Cletus mid-question. Then more silence. After a few seconds of dead air, Debra's voice, laced with suspicion, came through the door. "What did you say? You're a liar!"
Chloe drew strength from the secret she was protecting. She pushed herself upright, her voice louder now, steadier. "I'm not lying! And the baby... the father is someone in New York. Someone you can't afford to cross!"
Another silence. She could almost hear the greedy gears turning in their heads.
"Who is it?" Frank's voice was different now. The raw anger was gone, replaced by a calculating avarice. "One of them local boys who went to the city?"
Chloe closed her eyes. An image flooded her mind: a man she'd only seen for one night, his face obscured by shadows, but his eyes... his eyes were a piercing, ice-gray she could never forget. And a name. She had a name—or at least a fragment of one. Something she had glimpsed in that brief moment of cold clarity, a detail her mind had clung to even as everything else dissolved into fog. She had never spoken it aloud. Never dared to. But she remembered.
Saying his name was a gamble. A wild, desperate throw of the dice. It could save her, or it could plunge her into an even deeper hell.
The lock gave a final, metallic screech. The door was about to burst open.
It was her only card left to play.
"The father," she yelled, her voice hoarse, "his last name is Donovan. The Donovans from New York."
Outside the door, the movement ceased entirely. Frank and Debra Hicks had never heard of Adrian Donovan, but even in the backwoods of Appalachia, the name Donovan carried weight. It was a name synonymous with old money, with impenetrable power.
Frank slowly lowered his fist. He looked at Debra, his eyes no longer filled with simple rage, but with a complex, dangerous cocktail of greed, doubt, and a sliver of genuine fear.
