Page 104 of Twisted Control

I shake my head, the room tilting around me. “No. He wouldn’t…you’re lying. Why would you hire a hitman to follow me around?”

“Because I needed you to be safe,” Dad says, his voice cracking for the first time. Something almost like pain flashes across his face. “And you gave yourself to him. You only had that to give to one man⁠—”

“For heaven’s sake. I lost my virginity fifteen years ago.”

His mouth opens, then closes. For once, he has nothing to say.

“What the hell has happened to you?”

“Maybe you’re the naïve one,” I say.

“Says the woman fucking a hitman,” he snaps. His face grows red and angry. Dad recalibrates. I watch him do it—the cold calculation settling behind his eyes, the way his shoulders straighten as he regains control.

“You’re going to end this. Today,” he says. “You’re going to marry Charles. We’ll sweep this little indiscretion under the rug like all the others.”

“No.”

His expression hardens into something I’ve never seen before. “You’re not understanding me, Grace. You will marry Charles.”

“Because of your business deal?” My voice trembles with anger. “Because you’re basically paying him to take me off your hands?”

“You’re making it sound worse than it is.” He waves a dismissive hand. “Now end this madness. Or you can leave this house right now.”

“I knew you’d do this,” I whisper.

“Then you should have chosen better.” He towers over me, cold and immovable. “You marry Charles, or you walk out that door with nothing. Just the clothes on your back.”

My chest tightens painfully. “Where am I supposed to go?”

“You don’t go anywhere,” he says. “You stay here. You do as I say. You smile for the cameras and bring some goddamn dignity back to this family name.”

I shake my head, tears burning behind my eyes. “I can’t be who you want me to be.”

For a long moment, he just looks at me. The disappointment carved into his face hurts deeper than anger could ever could.

“Then go live in your shame, Grace,” he says quietly. “I can’t help you anymore.”

I sit there, frozen, waiting for him to change his mind, to yell, to do anything other than look at me like I’m already dead to him. But he just turns away, dismissing me.

So I walk out with nothing. Just the dress I wore to lunch and the thin heels on my feet. I start down the long, winding driveway.

I don’t know what to do.

I should be feeling something—rage, heartbreak, betrayal, fear—but there’s only this terrible, heavy numbness. Like my mind has overloaded and shut itself down to survive. Every thought comes through slow and distorted.

Drew’s a hitman.

The words repeat in my head without fully landing. They don’t fit beside the man I know, so my brain keeps rejecting them before circling back again.

I think about the way he tucks my hair behind my ear. The way he carries my bags without complaint. The way he holds me like I’m something fragile and precious.

I try to picture those same hands killing someone.

I can’t.

But underneath the numbness, little pieces start clicking into place anyway.

The way he always avoided talking about work. The vague answers. The way people instinctively moved aside when he walked into a room. The fact that he was paid far too much for a normal security job.