Chapter 3

The White-Rose Code

Roman remained at Halcyon Ridge for three days.

During that time, I saw him twice.

The first time, I was being dragged into the basement while Celeste watched.

The second time, I stood six feet away from him, and he never looked at my face.

Darius announced the private dinner shortly before sunset.

“Mr. Blackwood is closing a major acquisition tonight,” he told Blake. “Salazar wants entertainment.”

Blake glanced toward the locked dormitories.

“Most of them aren’t presentable.”

“Find the ones who are.”

He chose eight women, including me.

A makeup artist covered the worst bruises on my face and placed a jeweled mask over the scar. Someone dressed me in a silver gown with a high collar and long sleeves.

Before we entered the dining room, a nurse injected something into each woman’s neck.

I recoiled.

“What was that?”

The nurse did not answer.

Within seconds, heat spread beneath my skin.

I tried to speak again, but only a broken breath emerged.

Blake watched realization cross my face.

“Temporary,” he said. “Our guests don’t pay to hear you complain.”

Two armed guards escorted us upstairs.

Music drifted through double doors. The dining room beyond them had been transformed with candles, tropical flowers, and linen tablecloths. Men who would never allow their names to appear on a Halcyon document drank expensive whiskey beneath crystal chandeliers.

Roman sat at the center of the longest table.

Celeste was beside him.

I had spent thirty-five days imagining what I would say when he found me.

Now I could not make a sound.

The music changed.

We were ordered to move around the room, pouring wine and performing a slow choreographed dance. Every exit was guarded. Each time my hand rose toward my mask, a weapon shifted in my direction.

Roman spoke with Mateo Salazar, a shipping magnate whose companies controlled half the private docks in San Aurelio.

A bowl of mangosteens rested on the table.

Roman peeled one, separated the white fruit, and offered it to Celeste. When she finished, he held out his palm for the seed without interrupting his conversation.

Mateo laughed.

“I’ve never seen Roman Blackwood wait on anyone.”

Roman wiped his fingers on a linen napkin.

“I lost her once. I don’t intend to make the same mistake twice.”

Celeste leaned against his shoulder.

Around the table, everyone offered congratulations.

I stood behind a column, unable to breathe.

Roman had once cut every thorn from the roses outside my bedroom because I had scratched my finger.

Now my hands were bleeding beneath lace gloves, and he did not know I was in the room.

One of the guests lifted his glass.

“Speaking of the women in your life, where is Evelyn Vale? She used to follow you everywhere.”

Roman’s expression changed.

For the first time that evening, he looked unsettled.

He turned to Darius.

“How is Evie progressing?”

Darius hesitated only briefly.

“She’s receiving intensive instruction.”

“What does that mean?”

“She arrived with a difficult temperament. Several employees were injured during her first escape attempt.”

A few men laughed.

Roman did not.

“Bring her here.”

Hope surged through me.

Darius’s mouth tightened.

“Mr. Blackwood, she isn’t ready.”

“I didn’t ask whether she was ready.”

Darius bent closer and lowered his voice.

“She tried to disrupt tonight’s event. She has repeatedly claimed you would destroy the facility if we disciplined her. Bringing her upstairs now would reward the behavior you sent her here to correct.”

Roman leaned back in his chair.

He spun his lighter once across the table.

I knew that gesture. It meant he was angry, but thinking.

Mateo studied him.

“You never told them to hurt her, did you?”

“Of course not.”

“Then perhaps you should see her.”

Roman looked toward the doors.

My heart pounded so hard that the jeweled mask seemed to pulse against my face.

Ask for me again, I begged silently.

Just once.

Roman closed his hand around the lighter.

“If she’s still refusing to follow instructions, keep her here another week.”

The room tilted.

Darius relaxed.

“As you wish.”

The last fragile part of me—the part that still believed Roman would sense something was wrong—began to fracture.

The music ended.

Blake signaled for us to leave.

I moved with the other women toward the doors, searching for one final chance. Roman was reading something on his phone. Celeste was speaking to Mateo’s wife.

I would pass directly beside Roman’s chair.

Five steps.

Four.

Three.

I reached up and tore away my mask.

At that exact moment, Roman’s phone rang.

He looked down.

“Mother?”

I stopped in front of him.

My mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

Roman turned slightly away so he could hear Eleanor over the music.

Celeste looked up.

Her glass froze halfway to her lips.

She saw the scar.

She saw my swollen face and the bruises the makeup had failed to cover.

More importantly, she recognized me.

I reached toward Roman.

Celeste set down her glass without making a sound.

Blake grabbed my hair from behind and jerked me backward.

Pain tore across my scalp.

Roman remained on the call as I was dragged through the doors.

I dug my heels into the carpet. I reached for the frame. I tried to scream until my throat burned.

Roman never looked up.

Blake threw me into a service corridor.

“You were warned.”

I hit the wall hard enough to lose my balance.

He raised his hand again.

“Stop.”

The voice came from behind him.

A woman in a white medical coat stood at the end of the corridor. I had seen her twice before, tending injuries without asking questions.

Dr. Lina Reyes.

“She’s reacting badly to the injection,” Lina said. “If you strike her again and she stops breathing, you can explain the body to Darius.”

Blake stared at her, then shoved me toward her.

“Make her useful by morning.”

Lina caught me before I fell.

She took me to a small examination room and locked the door. For several minutes, she worked silently, checking my pupils and cleaning the blood from my scalp.

The drug began to weaken.

A rasp escaped my throat.

Lina glanced at me.

“Don’t force it.”

“He was there.”

My voice sounded unfamiliar.

“He was right in front of me.”

“I know.”

“He didn’t see.”

Lina’s hands paused.

I studied her face.

“You watched the dinner?”

“There are cameras in every room.”

“Then you saw Celeste recognize me.”

Fear tightened Lina’s expression.

“Names are dangerous here.”

“She told them to move me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I saw her.”

Lina looked toward the locked door.

I caught her wrist.

“My name is Evelyn Vale.”

She tried to pull away.

“Please.”

“I can’t help you.”

“Roman Blackwood is my guardian.”

“I have heard that story.”

“It isn’t a story.”

“Even if it’s true, he was sitting in that room. If he wanted you safe, why are you here?”

The question hollowed me out.

I released her wrist.

Lina packed gauze into a medical tray.

“If you want to live, stop saying his name.”

I stared down at my bandaged hands.

Roman had taught me what to say if I was ever taken.

It had begun as a game after I wandered away from security during a street festival. He chose a phrase no stranger would understand and made me repeat it until I could say it in my sleep.

If I ever sent those words to him, he promised he would know I had not left willingly.

“Tell him I don’t want the candy house anymore.”

Lina went still.

“What?”

“Just those words. No more candy house.”

She studied me with new attention.

“It’s a code?”

“Yes.”

“If I approach Roman Blackwood, Darius will know.”

“I can get you out.”

“You can barely stand.”

“My parents left me Vale Maritime. Ports, freight routes, secure communications. Roman controls the trust, but it still belongs to me.”

Lina’s eyes moved toward the door again.

“I have a daughter in Miami,” she whispered. “They took my passport three years ago. Every time I try to contact her, they threaten to put her name on an intake list.”

“Help me, and I’ll protect her.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“I’m a Vale. My father built escape routes for people governments wanted buried.” I tightened my grip on her hand. “Give me one chance to become his daughter again.”

For a long moment, Lina said nothing.

Then she pulled her hand free.

“You’re feverish. Rest.”

Hope collapsed.

She opened the door and called for a guard.

I was returned to the basement before midnight.

Sometime before dawn, a commotion erupted upstairs.

Boots thundered through the halls. A woman screamed once, then abruptly stopped.

The basement door opened.

Two guards carried something wrapped in a bloodstained white coat.

They dropped it on the floor outside my cell.

Dr. Lina’s hand slipped from beneath the fabric.

I pressed both hands over my mouth.

Blake stood behind the guards.

“This is what happens when someone forgets who owns her.”

He kicked the bundle once, then ordered the guards to leave it there as a warning.

After the basement fell silent, I crawled toward the bars.

Lina’s body lay just beyond my reach.

Her white coat was torn at the shoulder. Dark blood had soaked the collar.

Then I noticed something beneath it.

A strip of silver no larger than my fingernail had been stitched into the lining.

I stretched my arm through the bars until my fingertips touched the fabric. The wound in my palm reopened, but I kept pulling.

At last, the collar came close enough for me to tear it open.

A microSD card dropped into my hand.

On it, written in Lina’s tiny block letters, were two words:

EVERYTHING INSIDE.