Chapter 1

The night before graduation, Caspian DeWitt said he wanted to take me somewhere.

He stood downstairs outside the dorm, and the streetlight stretched his shadow long. I leaned out of the window watching him, my heart racing. For three years, everyone in the architecture department said Caspian never looked at anyone. But he looked at me.

I put on the burgundy velvet dress. He had bought it. That day in the store, he had risen from the sofa and looked at me, and I had thought it was desire.

Looking back, it had been a hunter confirming the prey was already hooked.

The car drove for a long time. It left downtown, got on the freeway, got off the freeway, and climbed a mountain road. The streetlights disappeared, and only the headlights cut through the dark. The woods on both sides pressed in black and heavy. Caspian did not speak the whole way. I had thought he was nervous.

The car stopped in front of an abandoned chemical plant.

DeWitt Industrial. The letters on the iron gate were rusted nearly unreadable. He held my hand and led me through the yard, crunching broken glass and dead leaves underfoot.

We went up to the third floor. He pushed open a door.

“From here you can see the whole plant.”

I walked to the window and looked out. When I turned back, he had zip ties in his hand.

“Caspian?”

He did not answer.

He grabbed my throat and slammed me against a pipe rack. The metal pipe dug into my back, so cold it made my whole body jerk. He started tearing at my clothes. The velvet dress slipped off my shoulders. I struggled—my nails scratched his face open. He did not stop. My bra was ripped away too.

He flipped me over, face-down, and pinned me. My wrists were bound with zip ties, cinched tight, the teeth biting into my skin. The other wrist. My ankles. I was strapped to the pipe rack with nothing left on but my underwear. Moonlight washed over me, pale and brutal.

He took a step back.

“Your father ruined my life. Now it’s your turn.”

My mind went blank.

“Ten years ago, there was a fire at the DeWitt plant. Your father, Marcus Morrow, was the fire captain. My father was trapped in the blaze for forty minutes. Your father said he went in to get him. But when he came out, my father was still inside.”

“No—”

“It wasn’t an accident.” He pulled out fluorescent signboards from his pocket and slotted them into place along the hallway, piece by piece. The light was a sick green, and the words read: “Pressure Release Demonstration Area.”

“After the fire was out, your father gave an interview and said, ‘It was probably an operational issue.’ The whole city started cursing my father as a fraud. My mother got chased out of the supermarket. I got pinned to the ground at school and beaten, called the liar engineer’s son. My mother jumped into the river. When they dragged her out, she wasn’t breathing anymore. She spent ten years in a psychiatric hospital.”

Tears streamed down my face. “I didn’t know… I really didn’t know…”

“Didn’t know what?” He straightened up. “Didn’t know your father destroyed a family? Didn’t know the whole city treated him like a hero?”

He turned and walked away.

“Caspian! Come back! I’ll die—please!”

He did not look back.

The engine noise faded into the distance. Then there was nothing.

People kept coming that night.

Flashlight beams cut in from the hallway, stabbing at my eyes. Men’s voices—drunk, laughing.

“Holy shit, it’s real?”

“Who cares who she is—free.”

Someone laughed. Someone unbuckled a belt.

I shut my eyes. In my head, I called for Mom.

The first day. The second day.

On the afternoon of the third day, someone called the police. A female officer draped her coat over me and asked my name. I opened my mouth, but my throat was raw and I couldn’t make a sound.

Caspian never came back. He flew straight to Switzerland for a PhD.

That video got uploaded online. Within forty-eight hours, my name, my school, my face spread across every platform. The school revoked my degree.

Three months later, my father resigned from the fire department. Another month passed, and he disappeared. The police found him in a small-town motel; he had killed himself with poison. On the nightstand was a note: “I was saving him.”

No one knew what that meant.

At the funeral, my mother, Irene, collapsed. The doctor said it was acute stress-induced psychosis. She went into a residential facility.

Later, someone approached me. A man named Silas Boone said he could help. The “Darklight” club. Only hostessing—no sex.

I signed the contract.

Five years.

In those five years, I learned how to smile—how many degrees to lift the corners of my mouth, how much seduction to put in my eyes. When men’s hands roamed over me, I counted in my head. Ten, twenty, thirty. I counted until the client left.

Only hostessing, no sex. Silas Boone kept that rule for five years. Not because he grew a conscience, but because my face was worth money. That video turned me into a brand. Men booked me to look at me—like an exhibit in a museum.

I was a scar that stayed alive.

Until that night.

I was in a private room, drinking with a real-estate developer named Harrington. He got drunk and kneaded my waist with his hand. I smiled and poured him more liquor, and my smile never slipped.

The door opened.

Caspian DeWitt stood in the doorway. Five years had passed; he looked thinner, his cheekbones sharper. Black suit, a glass of whiskey in his hand. A woman stood beside him in a pale yellow dress.

His fiancée. I had seen her in magazines.

Caspian stared at me. His fingers tightened, and the whiskey trembled in the glass.

Then he walked over, grabbed my wrist, and yanked me off Harrington. The velvet strap of my dress slid down, exposing the bruise beneath my collarbone. A mark left by last night’s client.

Caspian looked at me.

“Slut. A hostess who sleeps around.”

Harrington bristled. “Who the hell are you?”

Caspian ignored him. He looked at me.

I pulled the strap back up and tilted my chin.

“Caspian, don’t get in the way of my work.”