Ava POV
The darkness had teeth, and they were gnawing at my shoulder.
Fever took me sometime in the middle of the night. The infection from the gunshot wound radiated outward like a brushfire, turning my blood to magma. I drifted in and out of consciousness, untethered from reality.
In my dreams, Harrison was holding me. He was whispering vows, promising to kill anyone who touched me. I vow to protect you, Ava. Till death.
Then his face would melt, the skin dripping away like wet wax to reveal a grinning skull. The voice would warp, twisting into hers. Brooke's laughter. Sharp. Mocking. A serrated blade against my ear.
I woke to the sensation of cool fingers on my forehead.
"Shh, you're burning up."
Harrison was there. The morning sun sliced through the curtains, illuminating dust motes dancing in the stale air. He looked concerned. Perfectly, impeccably concerned. It was terrifying how easily he wore that mask.
He reached down and loosened the bindings at my wrists. My hands were numb, mottled violet from the lack of blood flow. I couldn't move them.
"I'm sorry," he murmured, his thumbs digging into my flesh as he rubbed circulation back into my arms. "I didn't want to do that. You were out of control. You could have hurt yourself."
The pins and needles of returning feeling stung like fire ants, but I didn't have the energy to pull away. I was a ragdoll in his grip.
"We need to get you back to the hospital," he said, lifting me as if I weighed nothing more than a ghost.
He carried me out to the car. He sat by my bedside while the doctors flushed my wound and pumped me full of antibiotics. He held my hand. He played the role of the devoted husband so perfectly that the nurses cooed at him, blind to the bruises on my soul.
He's a monster, I screamed inside my head. Run.
But I couldn't run. I was weak. And I had nowhere to go. Not yet.
Two days later, he brought me home.
"I have a surprise," he said as we pulled into the driveway.
He didn't turn into our gate. Instead, he pointed across the street. The sprawling Victorian mansion opposite ours-the one that had been empty for years-had a moving truck idling in the driveway.
"I bought it," Harrison said, smiling. "For security. We need a perimeter."
My stomach dropped through the floor. "Who's living there?"
As if on cue, the front door of the Victorian house opened. Brooke stepped out. She was wearing a white sundress, holding a clipboard, directing the movers. She looked radiant. Alive. Everything I currently was not.
"She needs protection too, Ava," Harrison said, his voice hard, daring me to object. "After the bank... she's a target. It makes sense to keep her close."
Close. She was thirty yards away. I could practically see the reflection of my own misery in her windows.
I didn't say a word. I went into the house and walked straight to the kitchen. I needed to do something with my hands. I started chopping vegetables for soup, the knife thudding rhythmically against the board.
Chop. Chop. Chop.
Harrison came in an hour later. He sniffed the air.
"Smells good," he said. He took a bowl from the cabinet.
I watched, frozen, as he ladled the soup I made-my grandmother's sacred recipe-into a plastic Tupperware container.
"Brooke's kitchen isn't set up yet," he said casually, snapping the lid shut. "She hasn't eaten all day."
He walked to the pantry. I followed, silent as a shadow.
He pulled out a burner phone from behind a stack of pasta boxes. He dialed.
"Hey, baby," he said. His voice was different. Softer. Real. "I'm coming over. Yeah, I got the soup. No, she doesn't suspect anything. She's too medicated to notice the sky is blue."
He laughed.
I backed away before he turned around. I stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the knife on the counter. My fingers twitched, imagining the weight of the handle.
He walked past me a minute later, the Tupperware in hand.
"I'm just going to drop this off," he said, kissing my forehead. "Be right back."
I watched from the window as he crossed the street. Brooke met him at the door. She didn't just take the soup. She pulled him in by his tie and kissed him.
He didn't pull away. He shouldered the door shut behind him.
My phone pinged. A text from Harrison.
Harrison: Get ready. Tomorrow night. Just us. The yacht. I want to make it up to you.
I looked at the closed door across the street.
"Okay," I whispered to the empty room. "Let's go to the yacht."
