Page 65 of Bound By Crimson

Chapter Sixty-Five

Same Name, Same Man

She didn’t head for her room.

Not this time.

As she passed the double doors of the study, something in her snapped.

She stopped.

Her hand trembled on the doorknob.

No more lies.

No more bending herself into something they’d accept.

She was done being quiet. Done keeping the peace.

They never wanted her—they wanted control.

And she was done being controlled.

With a sharp breath, she twisted the knob and shoved the door open hard—not with grace, but with force, the kind that comes from the breaking point.

The door banged against the wall.

She didn’t know what she was looking for.

Maybe her cell phone.

Maybe a lifeline.

Maybe a way out.

The study smelled like old paper and varnish.

She barely registered it .

Her hands shook as she rifled through the drawers, yanking them open and slamming them shut.

Bills.

Contracts.

Deeds.

Endless documents that meant nothing.

Then—

A letterhead caught her eye.

Eddison Ashford.

She froze.

The name burned itself into her brain.

The study blurred around her as a memory broke loose:

Her mother barefoot in the kitchen, laughing.

Waving a letter like a prize.

“Lyric, can you believe this? A trip!”

Her father’s skeptical grumble:

“Hon, we don’t even know what you inherited yet… we might be wasting our time going all the way to Europe.”

Then Lyric snatched the envelope and read the name:

“Eddison Ashford… I heard you’re not supposed to trust a man with two last names.”

The same name.

The same man.

Not the same letter—but it might as well have been. It came from the same place. Seeing that name stirred the same cold dread.

And now it was here.

In this house.

Her heart kicked painfully against her ribs.

The paper trembled in her hands.

She crushed it instinctively to her stomach, shielding it—shielding herself—like the walls might have eyes.

The Thornwicks had known.

She didn’t know how .

She didn’t know why.

But somehow, they were connected.

To the letter.

To the trip.

To her parents’ murder.

Her stomach twisted so hard she thought she might be sick.

She reached into the envelope with shaking fingers.

A single photograph slipped out.

It landed face-up in her hand.

A candid shot—taken from a distance—of her, sitting between her parents on their front porch.

All three of them unaware.

All three of them smiling faintly, lost in some ordinary day.

Like prey captured before the trap snapped shut.

Her vision tunneled.

The photo fluttered from her fingers, landing face down on the study floor.

She ran.

Out of the study.

Down the hall.

Through the corridors.

The polished floors blurred under her feet.

Pregnant. Desperate.

The air outside hit her like a wall.

She barely felt it.

The only thing she felt was the need to get away—

Away from the lies.

Away from the house.

Away from the noose tightening around her life.

She didn’t make it far.

A sharp, tearing pain sliced across her lower belly.

Her knees buckled.

The world lurched sideways.

She hit the ground.

And everything went black.