Chapter Thirteen

Ava’s POV

The west wing was quieter than the rest of the house.

After Corren’s warning, I had stayed where he told me to stay. The rooms were beautiful and spacious, but the restriction made the walls feel closer than they had the day before. I heard distant movement—doors, low voices, the occasional sound of a car on the gravel—but nothing close. Whatever business had brought the visitor that morning remained carefully separated from me.

By early afternoon the silence had begun to press on me. I sat on the window seat in my room with my phone in my hand, scrolling without purpose, until the familiar name on the screen made me pause.

Maya.

My best friend since secondary school. The only person who still sent me voice notes at odd hours and remembered how I took my coffee. I had been avoiding her calls for two days. I didn’t know what I was allowed to say.

I answered before I could change my mind.

“Finally,” Maya said, her voice bright and immediately familiar. “I was starting to think you’d been kidnapped by a rich uncle or something.”

The joke landed too close. I forced a small laugh. “Something like that.”

“Where even are you? Your location’s been off and Sybil only said you were ‘staying with family for a while.’ That sounds suspicious as hell.”

I looked out the window at the formal gardens and the high walls beyond them. “I’m at Corren’s estate. Outside the city. It’s… quiet here.”

Maya was silent for a second. “Corren as in the money guy? Your aunt’s husband? The one you’ve never even met properly?”

“I’ve met him now.”

The understatement almost made me laugh, but the sound wouldn’t come. I pressed my forehead lightly against the cool glass.

“And?” Maya pressed. “Is he weird? Strict? One of those rich older men who talks about investments at dinner?”

I closed my eyes. The memory of his voice in the study the night before rose without permission—*This is what you come here for. The fact that I decide when you get it.* Heat followed the memory, unwelcome and automatic.

“He’s strict,” I said carefully. “There are rules. I can’t just leave whenever I want. Security is tight right now.”

Maya’s tone changed. “Ava. Are you okay?”

The simple question hit harder than I expected. I opened my mouth and then closed it again. How was I supposed to explain any of this? That I had slept with him before I knew who he was. That I was now living under his roof and calling him Daddy. That every night at nine I walked to his study and let him take me apart with the same controlled intensity. That part of me had stopped wanting him to stop.

“I’m fine,” I said. The words sounded thin even to me. “It’s just different. A lot has happened since Vance.”

“Have you talked to Vance?”

“No. I’m not supposed to.”

Another silence. I could almost hear Maya choosing her next words carefully.

“You’re scaring me a little,” she said finally. “You sound… quieter. Like someone turned your volume down.”

I didn’t know how to answer that. She wasn’t wrong. The estate had a way of absorbing sound and resistance alike. Even this conversation felt like it was happening at a distance from the rest of my life.

“I should go,” I said. “I’ll call you properly soon.”

“Ava—”

“I’ll call you,” I repeated, and ended the conversation before the concern in her voice could pull anything dangerous out of me.

I sat with the phone in my lap for a long time after the screen went dark. The call had been short, but it left a sharp ache behind. Maya belonged to the world outside these walls—the ordinary world where people dated boys their own age and talked about ordinary problems. I was no longer sure I belonged to that world.

A soft knock pulled me out of the thought. One of the maids stood in the doorway with a tray of water and fresh fruit.

“Mr. Corren asked me to remind you that dinner will be at seven in the small dining room,” she said. “He’ll join you.”

I nodded. The maid left.

Dinner. Then, later, nine o’clock. The shape of my days was becoming simple and total. Corren decided when I ate, where I walked, when I came to him, and when I was allowed release. The phone call with Maya had briefly opened a window onto everything I was leaving behind. Now the window was closed again.

I set the phone face down on the cushion and drew my knees up to my chest.

Outside, beyond the high walls, life continued without me. Inside, the rules held. And somewhere in the main part of the house, Corren was moving through his day with the same controlled certainty he brought to everything else—including me.

I was no longer sure which frightened me more:

How completely he was arranging my life…

…or how little of me still wanted to fight it.