I was free at Hawksridge in a way that I could never be free in London.

I couldn’t live without him.

I didn’t want to live without him.

I need to save him.

And soon.

THE CURE BEGAN slowly—whispering across my thoughts.

The unravelling Nila had achieved slowly stitched itself back together. The love, the panic, the pressure…it all faded.

My intense world became shrouded. The glare of intensity diminished and, tablet by tablet, I grew delightfully numb.

I liked this new blanket.

I was grateful to my father.

Without him, I would’ve resorted to opening the scars on my soles and living in pain to survive. What he hadn’t factored in was my conviction to save Nila. The drugs gave me strength to do that.

So I took another and another…believing they would be my salvation and her key to surviving.

How fucking stupid was I?

Seventy-two hours.

Three days since Nila left.

My injuries from Daniel’s beating were stiff and mottled. I refused to look at myself in a mirror, as I couldn’t stomach the yellow and purple bruised asshole staring back at me.

Whereas my body hurt, my soul was miraculously floating. Every day the overwhelming hazards of my disease bleached further and further into a watermark rather than a vibrant stain.

Cut let me leave the dungeon under the condition of medicating myself. The choice between dank darkness and pills was no hardship.

I kept to myself. I didn’t visit Jasmine to protect her from my appearance. I didn’t go on shipment runs or seek out my father. I spent the days in the stable, finding solitude in Wings’ silent presence and slipping deeper into the drug’s embrace.

However, lying in bed at night couldn’t stop my mind filling with her.

Nila.

I missed her smell, her taste…her heat.

I craved to be inside her, to hold her in silence and find the gift that she’d given me by falling in love. She’d used me to help her. She’d manipulated me in a way I couldn’t refuse, but in the end, we were both losers…or winners—depending on my frame of mind. Her heart belonged to me. And my heart belonged to her.

I’d fallen for her.

I’d tried to become a better person for her.

But the drugs were so much more powerful than me.

I wanted to rejoice at finally finding something that worked. I should bow to the doctors for creating this miraculous cure. I needed everyone to know how incredible it felt to be cocooned by the gentle fog of intoxication.

Nila had obeyed me when she left—taking my heart and sanity with her. But now, I had a rare opportunity to fortify myself. I would become the man she needed, so when the time came to claim her, we would both be ready.

One hundred and twenty hours.

Five days since Nila left.

My injuries were healing—my ribs remained strapped and sore, but my face didn’t look as swollen or grotesque.

Five days equated to thirty-seven tablets. I’d become attached to my rattling bottle, devouring the promised fog as if each drug was exclusive caviar.

Nothing affected me anymore. Not loud noises, overpowering scents. Not even raised tempers or malice. The fog was thicker…the insulation between them and me growing deeper by the day.

The tablets were working.

They were stealing, healing.

But they hadn’t solved me completely. I still ached as if my heart had been ripped out. Every night I throbbed to slide inside Nila and have her come apart in my arms. My tattooed fingertips mocked me—reminding me she’d branded me and I’d branded her but for now…we were apart, even if we belonged to each other.

But soon I can collect her.

Soon I could save Nila, Jasmine, Kestrel, and myself.

So many futures rested on me. I couldn’t let them down. So, I popped another tablet, I said goodbye to another ounce of feeling, and I prepared myself for the ultimate finale.

I should’ve seen it coming.

Why didn’t I see it coming?

I’d begun taking my new tablet friends to save me from myself, to save Nila from a worse fate designed by Daniel, and to guard the goodness Nila had conjured inside me.

That was my goal…but I’d underestimated Cut.

I didn’t pay close enough attention to my evolution as the drugs took me hostage.

It started slowly, methodically.

The man I knew slowly sank deeper and deeper inside, leaving a husk—a husk living with men like my father and brother—twisting the hologram of the man I once was.

It began like before: Cut put me back in charge of the mines and shipments. He returned my responsibilities and praised me for doing a good job. Security and finances filled my day, leading me further away from the soft tenderness Nila had nursed.

At night, I would be summoned to my father’s quarters to talk about what would happen now I was back in control. He made me drink from his convoluted perception and made me eat his disgusting morals.

Slowly but surely, I became angry. And that cultivated anger was given direction.

The Weaver twin.

Vaughn was to blame for everything.

He stole her from me. His fucking meddling hadn’t ceased. He brought shame and suspicion onto my house. His tampering couldn’t be allowed.

Nila had been free for days—there was no reason to continue to spread gossip—in his mind, he’d won. I hadn’t made any attempt to contact Nila under another of my father’s conditions.

“Stay away until the drugs have worked.”

I should’ve guessed then that the drugs had two targets: help me, but collar me. I could no longer remember why I wanted to help Nila. Yes, I had feelings for her…but they felt so long ago. She was a Weaver. My family’s mortal enemy. Why would I deviate from my destiny when so many others relied on me?

Every breakfast, my father would turn on the news, YouTube, and every social media platform available today. Slowly, he filled my heart with hate.

He showed me disgusting lies and slander all originating from Vaughn. Twitter ran rampant with hashtags of #BastardHawks and #InnocentWeavers. Facebook hosted debates and surveys on their opinions of the Debt Inheritance.

Everyone had a hypothesis.

Everyone was wrong.

But they all had something in common.

They wanted our blood.

It was Vaughn who put me back into the icy blizzard I’d escaped from. His twin had thawed me, but he froze me all over again.

He’d gone to every journalist and reporter imaginable. He’d divulged ancient tales of filthy deeds and contracts and debts. He spilled our private affairs to the fucking world.

Every day the phone rang for interviews. Our sources with buyers on the black market grew wary—not enjoying the slander our family suffered—in case it smeared them, too. Our staff began whispering. Our fucking lives started to unravel.

We had money. We controlled police, Customs, and made a livelihood of manipulating those in power for our own means, but we had no clout when it came to strangers on the internet.

Vaughn Weaver harnessed this new age influence and brought a mob to our door, and in doing so, he made my family rally together. Hawk against Weaver. Just like before.

He proved we weren’t untouchable, after all. Cut didn’t deal with the knowledge well. He fucking raged at how little he could do to stop this storm of antagonisers. He never had to worry about social media when he had Emma Weaver—but in today’s society, it was a bigger beast than we ever anticipated.

Our empire was built on greased palms and ancient ‘blind-eye’ agreements. We all knew whatever contract we had giving us ownership of the Weavers was bullshit.

Nobody could own another.

Only imbeciles believed such a thing.

But I did believe in our power. Our wealth. Our status.

The tales of our rise from rags to riches had been told so many times, they’d reached phenomenon status within our family—spoon-fed the same crap since birth and believing in the power of a binding parchment that gave us carte blanche to do what we pleased. Not because it granted us immunity, but because it showed just how many people obeyed us now that we had control.

But what good was control when it unthreaded with a fucking rumour?

All of this was a game. Only Vaughn had changed the rules by bringing in spectators demanding answers.

I’d kill Vaughn for that.

He was already dead—just a nail in my rapidly freezing coffin as I popped pill after pill.

Hour after hour, I slowly gave in.

Day after day, I slowly felt nothing.

I was done being the man everyone thought was weak. I lived with a disease, but I wasn’t a cripple.

I didn’t need snow anymore. Or ice. Or pain.

I had drugs.

I was stone.

I’D LIKE TO say life returned to normal.

But I’d be lying.

I’d like to say I slipped back into my previous existence as entrepreneur, seamstress, and daughter.

But I’d be bullshitting to the highest degree.

Every day was worse than the one before it.

I was lost.

Alone.

Unwanted.

Life was a death sentence.

The press hounded me for interviews on my disappearance. My assistants pestered me with hundreds of new designs and orders. My father tried to talk to me about what happened. And my brother suffocated me with love.