Lily sat on the sofa with her back a little stiff, the posture of someone who had decided to stick it out even though her body didn't fully agree with the decision.She told herself, "Ten minutes, fifteen tops. Then I'll say goodbye and leave. And of course, after this, I'm going to ask Paul to stop throwing parties like this from now on. He needs to get serious about work and forget about this kind of fun."Around her, everyone had already gone back to their own rhythm. Paul and his friends were laughing, singing along with half-remembered lyrics, pouring drinks into glasses that were already half empty. Music from the speaker in the corner filled every gap the human voices didn't.Lily watched them.She couldn't understand what made this fun.Cigarette smoke hung under the room's low ceiling. The smell of alcohol mixed with sweat and cheap perfume made the air heavy. The laughter was too loud for anything that was actually funny.This wasn't fun.This had never been fun.Five minute

One hour earlier.The bedroom lights in the forty-second-floor penthouse were already off.Norman lay on his bed, back against the mattress, eyes almost closed. It had been a long day, the kind of long that didn't always show from the outside. Not long because it was dramatic, but long because it was full, because every hour had been filled with something that needed filling.His phone sat on the nightstand, its screen already dark.Then, at six minutes to nine, the screen lit up.Norman opened his eyes.A message from Jack."Target one left the dorm at 8:54 p.m. with one female. Vehicle heading west. Confirming destination."Norman sat up.He replied: "Stay on them. Report every move."Three minutes passed.The next message came in."Destination confirmed: west side of Eastgate."Norman stared at the screen.Eastgate?One word. But it was enough to paint a picture that didn't need any extra explanation. The part of Corholt that never showed up in any tourist brochure, the kind of pla

And was that enough?No.Norman yanked Paul's head back one more time, same grip, same hair, same angle, and that knee came up for the third time.BRAKK.Harder than the second.Blood sprayed before the impact had even fully finished, from a nose that could no longer tell what was broken and what was crushed, from a mouth already full of something that wasn't just blood. One more tooth followed the three before it, bouncing across the motel room floor with a tiny sound that was way out of proportion to how horrifying it really was.Four teeth.Paul felt all of it.Not because he chose to feel it, but because there was no way not to.The pain coming from a face that had been slammed into the same knee three times wasn't the kind of pain you could ignore or shove into some corner of your mind.It was the kind of pain that took up every last bit of space there was and left no room for anything else.At this point, Paul tried to speak.His mouth moved. Tongue, lips, everything struggling

The gates of the Calloway estate swung open before the BMW had even fully stopped.The guards had recognized the plates from a distance, and the light above the gate lit up the passenger side as the car rolled through, enough to see that whoever was sitting there wasn't sitting the way a person normally would.Norman parked in front of the mansion's main entrance, opened the passenger door, and repeated the same motion as before, one arm under her knees, one behind her back, lifting Lily in a way that didn't leave a single part of her body hanging without support.He climbed the front steps.The door opened before he reached the top one.Charles stood in the doorway with Eleanor beside him. Both were dressed in a way that said they hadn't gone to bed yet, or had woken up, or had been waiting since who knew when, because something had made tonight feel like a night they couldn't just get through in peace.Their eyes went straight to Lily.Her body limp in Norman's arms. Her head restin

Room 214 wasn't big.Ten beds lined up in two rows, each separated by a thin curtain, half of them not fully drawn. The ceiling lights glowed a white that felt unfriendly at this hour. Too bright to let anyone sleep well, too flat to hide how exhausted everyone inside was.Norman stood in the doorway.His eyes swept the room.And found Mara in the third bed from the left.The girl was small in a way she shouldn't have been. Not small because she was three, but small because her body had spent a long time using up the energy it should have been using to grow on something else, something more urgent and more unfair.Her face was pale in a way that was different from someone who was just asleep. Her lips were bluish at the edges, like someone stuck in a room that was too cold and couldn't be warmed up by anything available.Her chest rose and fell, visible through the thin blanket that followed its movement, but with a rhythm way too heavy for the breathing of a child who should have bee