Red: Claimed by the Keeper in the Tower
I was never supposed to end up here.
One moment I was a college student with a normal life. The next, I was standing in a courtroom while a stranger decided my fate with a voice too calm for what he was doing to me. They called it justice. I call it a lie.
Now I’m trapped on an island prison surrounded by endless ocean, where no one speaks my language and every mistake costs more than I can afford. In here, survival isn’t about strength. It’s about control. About knowing when to stay silent, when to be seen, and when to let them believe they own you.
I learned fast.
I learned how to read men who think I’m powerless.
I learned how to turn attention into protection.
I learned how to trade pieces of myself just to make it through another day.
But nothing prepared me for him.
The Keeper of the Tower.
He watches everything. He knows more than he should. And when his eyes find me, it feels like being chosen and hunted at the same time.
He says he wants me.
Not as a prisoner. Not as a servant.
Something worse.
Something I might not survive.
I have a plan to escape this place. I’ve mapped every guard, every weakness, every second between freedom and drowning.
I just didn’t plan for him.
And I definitely didn’t plan for the way my body betrays me when he’s close.
If I stay, I lose myself.
If I run, I lose the only man who’s ever looked at me like I’m more than something to break.
Either way… I don’t leave this island unchanged.