Chapter 3

Ingrid

I wake up heaving. It’s pitch black—humid, cold—and heavy chains cling to my skin like a second spine. My mouth is gagged. My limbs are bound by thick metal restraints. The only thing that glimmers in this godforsaken room... are the chains.

It’s black. I don’t know where I am. I don’t even feel clothes on me anymore.

Fear claws through my mind. I’ve never liked the dark—not when darkness feels like staring into a void. It’s empty, silent, endless. Just like I am now.

I close my eyes, even though it makes no difference.

I force myself to think of rainbows, meadows, the ocean. I need color or I’ll go insane.

Ingrid, you are strong. This will pass. There has to be a mistake.

Hours pass.

I’m drooling. My neck aches. My body dangles limp, bruises blooming where the chains bite into me.

I sob. It’s the only sound I can still make.

I try to hold onto something—anything. My mind drifts to a memory. I was little, curled up in my mother’s lap as she rocked the chair back and forth.

“My little Jewel Grey,” she whispered, tickling my side. I yelped like a startled kitten.

She laughed, her face radiant like the stars. The most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

I tilted my head to watch her. She kissed my nose, and I mumbled, “Pretty mama”

She cupped my cheeks. “You are just as beautiful. You deserve a life where you don’t have to hide, baby.”

But then, her expression changed.

“You’ll become the strongest girl.”

A single tear slips from my eye. Then another. And another.

How am I supposed to be strong like this, Mother?

I muster every ounce of strength and kick forward. I start to swing, momentum building.

Thud.

I fall. Cold concrete meets my skin.

Turns out, I’d been strung up like a carcass. A fucking pig on a hook.

One thing’s certain: I’m no longer in the House of Grey. We didn’t have a basement, and the floors there were marbled.

I think of the last people I saw—Jaxon, Rick… and my brother.

It doesn’t make sense. They’re three very different people. They couldn’t possibly be working together.

Jaxon—my classmate since elementary. Same age. Always weird, but mostly harmless.

Rick—Mother’s loyal subordinate. Mid-twenties. Average. A male sex worker with too much pride and too little talent.

And Jace. My brother. A fire-starting maniac, supposedly locked up for arson. Twenty-three, and just like our father—Dominic Grey. I used to admire him and I just don’t anymore.

A door screeches open. Light slices into the darkness.

I think I’m saved.

But it’s Jace.

He’s dragging a wooden chair across the floor.

Someone. Please.

Rick

I stand behind Jace, nervous. He's about to pull another one of his twisted stunts on his own goddamn sister.

She’s been out cold for over a day. No food. No water.

And now she’s on the ground, limp. Her eyes are open but hollow.

I stumble forward, kneel beside her, and pull a water bottle from my pocket. Jace doesn’t stop me, so maybe he expected this.

Between me, Jaxon, and Jace—and the others outside, his underground Brotherhood—this entire setup is an act of war against the Bishops.

And yet, to Ingrid, I’m the safest person in the room.

I swore I'd only convict her in mind—not body. But Jace? He doesn’t give a damn.

His hatred for the Bishops blinds him.

But how broken do you have to be to feel nothing for your own sister?

Before she was a Bishop, she was a Grey. And we should all be kneeling for her now. This? This is fucked up.

I remove the ball gag and help her drink. She finishes the bottle in seconds, coughing. I rub her back.

Just a little more, little one. I’ll keep you safe—even if I have to defy your brother to do it.

Then I hear his voice.

“Move, Ricky. That’s enough pampering,” Jace says, coldly.

I step aside.

He crouches, studying Ingrid like she’s a puzzle. Then he scoffs, pulls out a pink, glittery phone, and shoves it in her face.

“Look, little bunny,” he says. He dials a number.

“Think Daddy fucking Christopher Bishop will pick up?”

He draws his gun. My stomach drops.

“Hello, darling?”

The call connects. Video. He turns the camera toward Ingrid—half-naked, bruised, silent.

“Oh, hi Dad—oops, wrong kid?” He laughs like a lunatic, waving the loaded gun.

Christopher’s voice comes through. “Ingrid...? Who is this?”

Of course, he doesn’t panic. Politicians never do. He’s already calculating the price, the exchange.

Jace leaps into view. I’m stuck holding the phone. Great—camera man for a kidnapping.

Christopher asks, “Since when are you out of prison?”

They go back and forth, like two dogs gnawing on opposite ends of a bone.

Christopher offers a truce. “Let my daughter go. I’ll send a mobile unit to pick you both up—with her safe, and us to have a talk. ”

“Don’t fucking smart talk me,” Jace spits, half-laughing.

He’s not entirely wrong. This Brotherhood Jace built—hackers, ex-military, medics, mercenaries—dark-blooded men who want to burn the system down. I’m one of them.

“You won’t hurt Ingrid,” Christopher states. “She’s your sister.”

The tone of him was so arrogant and assuring; as if toying with the menace, shallow-thinking boys he probably think would be fleeting. And he will get his daughter back. 

Something shifts in Jace.

He stares at me. Slowly, he grins.

He raises the gun—first toward the phone, then toward Ingrid.

I drop the phone and lunge for him. “JACE, THAT’S ENOUGH—

But he pulls the trigger.

Silence.

My ears ring from the blast. A thud echoes through the room.

Blood pools at my feet.

Ingrid has been shot.