Chapter 2

Iris returned alone. Without Adrian watching, her trembling innocence vanished.

"He says you're not worth one strand of my hair," she said. "Do you know how easy it was to access your car?"

She showed me a small computer and tampered with the equipment monitoring my condition. The alarms shrieked, bringing doctors and nurses running. Iris immediately began crying and accused me of threatening her.

Adrian arrived and believed every word. "My sister came to apologize, and you tried to make her look guilty?"

"Look at the security footage," I said.

He refused. Iris claimed a technical malfunction, and Adrian insisted that the incident wasn't worth investigating.

For years I had collected evidence of her cruelty and his decisions to protect her. He had dismissed every warning as jealousy. So I stopped explaining.

"You can stay here and make everyone miserable," he told me. "I'm leaving."

After the door closed, I tasted blood and asked the system for the time.

*Sixty hours remain.*

"Good," I whispered. "Almost there."