I’d spent four years of my life getting that diploma. I’d made plans to become a doctor and finally make my parents proud.

Med school, residency, possible fellowship. That was where I was supposed to be, what I was supposed to be doing for the next ten years. Thirty-two had always seemed like the year when I’d have to get serious about having kids. But my internship wasn’t going to happen. Or med school at Manhattan University….

All those plans. All my parents’ dreams….

Panic squeezed its cold fingers around my heart, threatening to collapse my mind.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked Victor again, turning back to face him in the car. “Why don’t you just kill me?”

I expected him to ignore this question, just like he had so many of my other ones. But his hands immediately started moving.

“I want you to hurt. I want you to suffer. I want to humiliate you the way your father did me. I want you to lose everything.”

Well, I asked the question, and that was an answer. Not an answer I liked, though.

I wanted to tell him that I didn’t have anything to do with what happened that day. But he’d already told me the consequences for even attempting that again. And why would he believe me anyway? My father had done such a good job of selling the story he’d completely made up.

Besides, who would I be telling?

The only person I wanted forgiveness from was the boy I fell in love with four years ago. But Victor had made it more than obvious. That boy was gone. And the only person left was the monster sitting across from me.

Once again, he got out of the car, expecting me to follow.

Okay, forget him and forget all these games he’s trying to play with my head. He owned me now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he hadn’t given me any orders. He hadn’t said explicitly that I had to walk myself into his beautiful prison.

I ignored the open door and made myself real comfortable in the back seat. This car was so lux. I could see myself staying there for a long, irritating time, especially now that I had a new iPhone.

The partition between the front and back seat came down when I reached for it, though.

“You can make me come back there and pull you out of that back seat if you wanna,” Phantom said without even bothering to look over his shoulder. “But I can’t guarantee you won’t get hurt if I do. That was my uncle you sent to jail.”

“Your uncle who deserved to go to jail,” I pointed out. “But I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Fuck you,” he answered. “Get the hell out of this car or else.”