Page 107 of Vows of Silence

The door clicked softly behind him, and for a few seconds, nothing happened.

I had a brief thought that this was a test. That he knew what I was planning and wanted to see if I was brave—or stupid—enough to do it.

Unlucky for me, I was both.

The shower turned on, and I moved before I could talk myself out of it. The first few steps were careful, because even then, some terribly sensible part of me understood that running immediately would only make noise. I crossed the carpet on barefeet, grabbed my phone from the bedside table, and walked to the door with my heart beating so violently I could feel it in my fingertips.

My hand closed around the handle, and for one horrible second I was convinced it wouldn’t open. That he had locked it without me noticing, or installed some silent mechanism that would trap me here forever simply because he had anticipated every stupid thought I’d ever had.

But the handle turned.

The door opened.

And I slipped into the hallway.

I walked quickly, forcing myself not to look back, forcing myself not to imagine him stepping out of the bathroom with water running down his scarred skin and murder in his eyes.

The hallway was empty, but I knew there were people in this house. He had a full team of staff. I’d seen them many times over my days out of the basement. Yet now, when I needed chaos, when I needed someone to shout or block my path or at least prove I wasn’t alone in a building full of criminals, there was nothing but quiet.

My phone felt heavy in my hand, and for a second, just a brief one, I was tempted to call Luca.

The thought of him came so automatically that it almost made me laugh. Of course, my first instinct while fleeing one dangerous man was to reach for another one.

Still, my thumb unlocked the screen and hovered over our messaging app.

No. Not yet.

I wasn’t dragging Luca into this until I knew what this even was. And perhaps there was a bitter, ugly part of me that wondered what he would tell me anyway. Calm down, little ember? Hide somewhere? Trust me?

I had trusted too many men already, and every single one of them had decided my life was something they were entitled to manage.

The staircase appeared at the end of the corridor, and my pace quickened despite myself.

I made it halfway down before I heard movement below.

I stopped so abruptly that my hand tightened around the banister to steady myself.

Two men crossed the entrance hall beneath me, speaking too quietly for me to make out the words. They were both dressed in black, both armed, both completely unaware that I was standing above them with my pulse trying to escape my body. I held my breath until they disappeared through a door on the far side of the hall, and only when the latch clicked behind them did I continue down the stairs, already debating what to do next.

The front door was right there, but that seemed too obvious. Too easy.

Which meant it was either impossible, guarded, or both.

I looked towards the corridor the men had vanished down, then towards another passageway leading deeper into the house. I had been through parts of it before, always with Silas, always too angry or distracted to map anything properly. I hated myself for that, too.

I had walked these halls beside him like a sulking prisoner, making sarcastic comments and pretending I wasn’t memorising the way his presence altered every person we passed, when I should have been counting doors, exits, windows, guards.

But regret was not a plan.

I turned away from the front door and headed down the quieter corridor.

The house seemed different without Silas beside me. Larger. Colder. Less like a luxurious prison and more like what itactually was: a fortress built by men who expected enemies. Every door looked heavy enough to withstand force. Every window was beautiful and useless. Even the silence felt monitored.

I reached the end of the corridor and found myself in a room I recognised vaguely. It had tall windows overlooking the grounds, and beyond them, the dense woodlands surrounding the property.

But there, in the corner, hidden beneath thick curtains, was a door to the terrace.

I crossed the room and tried the handle, praying to a god I didn’t believe in to throw some luck my way.