Chapter 4

They were the love letters I had written to Derek on every anniversary for the past five years.

He had once held them with tears in his eyes and promised to lock them in a safe and keep them forever.

Now they had been ripped open and tossed in with discarded reports, scattered at Vivian's feet.

Some even bore the imprint of a stiletto heel.

I looked at the barely concealed triumph on Vivian's face, and at Derek frantically dabbing ointment on her cheek.

Five years of love and devotion, ground into the mud in a single moment. Rotted through.

I did not scream or cry. I slowly pulled myself to my feet, picked up the broken cameo, and closed my fist around it.

I unclipped the ID badge from my chest and slammed it onto Derek's desk along with the resignation letter I had already prepared. "I quit."

The dead look in my eyes startled Derek. Then his face went dark.

Vivian covered her cheek and put on a worried expression. "Fiona, don't be rash. You turned down an offer from a major company to stay with Derek. At your age, with no big-firm experience, who's going to hire you?"

That instantly gave Derek back his smug sense of superiority. "Vivian's right. Where else could you go? You can't even put together a decent resume. Stop making a fuss, swallow your pride, and the director position is still yours."

I looked at this self-righteous pair and felt nothing but disgust.

"You know what, Derek? You're right. The credentials I built at this company aren't worth much."

I turned and walked out of the office without a backward glance.

That evening, I went back to the out-of-the-way hotel.

Grandma was the only one in my family who had ever loved me. She had once stayed at this place, and I was trying to hold on to whatever warmth remained.

But even the hallway lights in that out-of-the-way hotel were broken.

The owner, Frank Miller, kept dodging my eyes from behind the front desk.

He mumbled something about a water leak upstairs and said he was moving me to the last room at the end of the basement hallway.

I was too exhausted to question it.

Exhausted, I made my way to the heavy metal door and pushed it open.

Before I could even reach for the light switch, the door slammed shut behind me. The sharp click of a padlock followed.

"Who's there?! Open the door!" I lunged for it and pounded on the metal.

No response.

In that instant, a fear buried deep in my bones erupted.

When I was eight, I broke something at home. My parents locked me in a windowless cellar for three days.

I had suffered from severe claustrophobia ever since.

The only people who knew were Derek, Kyle, and Vivian.

The familiar terror flooded back. I was shaking too hard to stand. I clawed at the seam around the door, choking on desperate gasps.

Then someone slid an old phone with a glowing screen through the gap beneath the door.

In the dead silence, a recording began to play. My brother, the boy whose four years of college I had paid for, spoke in a bright, amused voice: "What's she so scared of? She's the brave one, remember? She slapped Vivian. She deserves this."

Then came Derek's voice, casual and careless: "It's not the first time anyway. She'll be fine."

The recording ended. My fist tightened around the broken cameo.

I suddenly remembered how, when Derek and I first got together, I had told him, trembling all over, why I was afraid of the dark.

This six-foot man had listened and cried until his eyes were red.

He had pulled me tight against him, his voice shaking: "Don't be scared, Fiona. You have me now. I will never let anyone hurt you again."

So promises had expiration dates too.

Lack of air blurred the edges of my consciousness. I did not even have the strength to cry anymore.

I did not know how much time had passed when hurried footsteps sounded outside the door.

"Fiona! Don't be scared, I'm here!"

Derek's voice was frantic, layered over Kyle's shout.

"Have you learned your lesson yet?"

Derek kicked the lock open, and the beam of light settled on the figure curled up on the floor in the corner.

He rushed over, reaching out with anguish written all over his face. "Fiona, it's okay now. I..."

His voice cut off the instant the flashlight fully illuminated the face.