It was all too much.

It drove me to boiling point.

In the beginning¸ I suffered physical healing from the Second Debt payment. I coughed often, doctors checked me for pneumonia, and the bruises on my chest took forever to fade. I used the pain as a calendar, slowly ticking off the hours Jethro left me all alone and unresponsive. I waited for a message from Kite007. I became obsessed with daydreams of him swooping in and taking me away from the mess of the press and envy of misguided people.

At night, I lay in a room that’d been mine since I was born. The purple walls hadn’t changed. My unfinished designs draped on headless mannequins hadn’t vanished, yet nothing was home anymore.

I felt like a stranger. An imposter. And the sensation only grew worse.

The strength and power I’d found on my own dissolved. My joy at suffering fewer vertigo attacks disappeared as I went from managing the incurable disease to suffering the worst I’d ever had.

Yesterday, I’d suffered nine.

The day before, I’d had seven.

I had more bruises on my knees, elbows, and spine in just a week of being a true Weaver again than I ever endured at Jethro’s hands.

Every second the same questions hounded me.

How was I supposed to return to my old life?

How was I supposed to forget about Jethro?

How was I supposed to give up my strength in order for my brother to adore me?

And how was I supposed to forgive my father and be grateful to him for rescuing me?

How.

How.

How?

The answer…

I couldn’t.

For a week, I tried. I slipped seamlessly into my previous world. I toiled in our Weaver headquarters, answered emails, and agreed to fashion shows two years from now. I painted on a mask and lied through my teeth.

I became a master at ignoring what my body told me. Throwing up was a bi-weekly occurrence and my dreams were full of accusations. Memories of Jethro coming inside me played on repeat—hinting at one thing:

Am I pregnant?

Or had I just escalated to vertigo-cripple?

Everywhere I turned there were magazine articles, newspaper speculations, billboards, and BBC broadcasts. I had to face banners of my dead mother and grandmother in Piccadilly Circus. I had to close my eyes as buses drove past with the Hawk family crest painted on their sides. And I had to swallow back bile as advertising for the latest ‘must-have’ accessory plastered park benches and taxi stands.

What was the ‘must-have’ jewellery?

My diamond collar.

Everyone wanted one. Everyone wanted to see mine, touch mine—ask me endless questions about the unopenable clasp and the meaning of such a beautiful but despicable piece.

I was a living specimen. Plopped into a goldfish bowl and made to perform like some circus freak. I was the ‘unfortunate Debtee’ and Jethro Hawk was the ‘loathsome Debtor.’

Vaughn had destined us to a life of gossip about family feuds and incomprehensible contracts.

Every night when we gathered to eat in floundering silence, I wanted to stab my twin with a steak knife. I wanted to scream at him for announcing to the world how ludicrous our two families were.

People laughed at us.

People gawked—not only had V brought to light the evil insanity of the Hawks, but he’d also shown what a cruel, vindictive race our own bloodline had been.

It didn’t seem to matter to him. He’d freed me. He’d turned a private agreement into an international affair. As far as he was concerned, I should be grateful.

I would’ve preferred to deal with rumours Jethro had put into play the first night he stole me: the photos of him holding and kissing me—doctored and delivered in a perfect alibi of a relationship turned elopement.

That was reasonable.

This was unbelievable.

Now everyone had those photographs—printed over tacky magazines and exposed in newspapers with headlines: ‘The Man and His Toy.’ ‘How Far Can Legacy Go?’ ‘Multiple Murders Go Unpunished.’

Every sordid detail of my family was unearthed and published. However, the facts on the Hawks were extremely vague. The press hadn’t uncovered that a motorcycle club lived on the grounds. They didn’t mention diamond smuggling or their massive wealth.

All it would take was for me to agree to a private interview and announce to the world about Cut’s underworld dealing, his meticulous record keeping, the Weaver Journal, and the videos of debts extracted. That evidence would buy them a one-way ticket to jail.

But their lives belonged to me. I wanted to be the one to take them down. I wanted to watch them perish—not waste away in a cell where I couldn’t reach them to make them pay.

That’s not the only reason you’re staying quiet.

I sighed. The main reason was because I was in love with a Hawk and would stay silent to protect him.

I’d gained my freedom. Jethro would, too. I would make sure of it.

Throughout the torture of the first week, Vaughn was in his element. He smiled with model good looks, wrapped his arms around me as he performed for the cameras, and showed the world the bruises on my wrists from the ducking stool.

I’d done my utmost to hide my hands from my family—keeping my tattooed fingertips from worldwide knowledge. But I couldn’t hide the Weaver Wailer.

Everyone knew what it meant.

The first day I was back, my father made me sit for hours while he tried to remove it. He’d used every micro-tool available to work the hinge free. V even tried to pry the collar off with tiny pliers. But the mechanism was too well made. The diamonds too well set.

It didn’t work.

Jewellers and diamond merchants put their hands up to try. They all failed.

As I lost the new Nila and stumbled with awful vertigo, my father slid deeper and deeper inside himself. After living with the constant questions and insinuations of how his wife died, he became a hermit. I no longer recognised him. We no longer had anything in common.

All of that was my life now.

I supposed I was lucky.

I supposed I should be grateful.

After all…

At least I was free.

“KITE?”

I looked up from my desk. Jasmine wheeled herself into my room, her tiny hands wrapped around the stainless steel rims of her chair for propulsion.

It’d been ten days since Nila Weaver had left.

Two hundred and forty hours. Sixty-one tablets.

I was immune to everything.

Blank to everyone.

I couldn’t think about my life before without shuddering in pain. How had I withstood it for so long when this was so much better?

The past ten days I’d finally, finally earned what I’d hoped all my life: Cut said he was proud of me. He’d been wary at first—never stopped watching—searching for a weakness…a chink in my surrender to my new addiction.

But this wasn’t a lie.

It was better this way. Easier this way. Survivable this way.

I had no fears of making it to my thirtieth birthday anymore.

When he saw the truth, he gave me more and more control. He praised me for my clear-headedness and ruthless behaviour.

My siblings, on the other hand, weren’t pleased. They didn’t understand what it was like to live with my condition, and I was done being judged. I pulled away. I put up walls and fastened locks. I stopped visiting Wings as I became too busy to ride. I ceased my visits to Jasmine and put an end to late night chats with Kes.

All I needed was silence and my little rattling bottle of pills.

Nila had done me a favour.

She’d shown me how diseased I truly was. And with her disappearance came my cure.

If I had any feelings left to be dispensed, I would still have a fondness toward her. But I was happy being empty. I was free being immune to the insanity of life.

“Go away, Jaz.” I turned back to my task. Running my fingers over the paper Nila had signed the night of Cut’s birthday, I shook my head at my scrambled forward thinking.

I thought I could circumnavigate the Debt Inheritance by forcing Nila to sign another binding contract. I’d planned to brandish it as a weapon the day I turned thirty and stop the Final Debt in its twilight hour.

I smirked.

Stupid idea and so much fucking work.

There was no point fighting the inevitable.

“What are you doing?” Jaz asked, wheeling closer, the swish of her chair softened by thick carpet.

Grabbing my sigil-engraved lighter, I flicked it open and held the Sacramental Pledge over the naked flame. The thick parchment crackled as I teased it with flickering heat.

“None of your business.” I brought the fire closer.

Jaz slapped my desk, jerking my eyes to hers. “We need to talk. I’m worried about you.”

I laughed softly as the fire suddenly caught hold, licking up the parchment. I became hypnotised as flames rapidly devoured the last of my madness.

Jaz eyed up the pledge. “What is that?”

The orange glow danced in my retinas. “Nothing.”

I tensed, expecting to feel some sort of regret at destroying the one piece of assurance I had over Nila’s soul. The night she’d signed this, she’d agreed to give me all rights over her—to belong to me. But there was never any chance of a happy ending.