Page 1 of Crushed Vow (Broken Vows #2)

CHARLOTTE

The psych ward is a sterile hell, its fluorescent lights buzzing like trapped wasps, the walls a peeling gray, streaked with scratches from desperate fingernails.

I sit on a thin cot, the coarse fabric of my standard-issue gray smock scratching my skin, my once-vibrant hair matted, my face a dim shadow of the woman who stormed out of Cassian’s penthouse... months ago? A year? I’d lost track—but time had passed. Enough to forget the sound of my own laugh.

My fingers tremble around the edges of a tattered jotter, its pages worn thin from repetition—every inch crammed with desperate ink:

I AM NOT MAD.

I AM NOT MAD.

I AM NOT MAD.

The letters bleed together. My vision swims. My mind is a shattered mirror, reflecting jagged fragments of a life I can’t escape. Cassian’s voice slithers through the cracks, sharp and cruel:

“ Slutty daughter of a bitch.”

“flat as a boy.”

His chains. My scars. The cold laughter. The burn of humiliation.

My body curls in on itself, breath shallow, heart dragging itself across broken glass.

“I’m not mad,” I whisper, again and again, rocking slightly as the heat presses in around me like a fever. Sweat beads on my temple, but I’m still shivering.

The door creaks open.

I flinched.

Tess stepped in—my roommate, if that word meant anything here. Wild, unbrushed curls and twitchy eyes, always barefoot and whispering to her own shadow. Her diagnosis was something dissociative. Split reality. We never talked about it.

She marched over and ripped the notebook from my hands. “You’re at it again, Charlotte?” she snapped. “Everyone here’s fucked in the head. Get over it.”

“I’m not...” My voice cracked. “I was never meant to be here. I’m not like the rest of you.”

Tess gave a sharp, humorless laugh. “That’s what we all say—right before they up the meds.”

It started when I left Cassian.

I had walked away. For the first time, I truly walked away. I packed my bags, turned off my phone.

I’d called Ethan, an old high school friend, arranging to meet at his Brooklyn loft to hide me while I planned my next move. I’d booked a cheap hotel in Hell’s Kitchen, a backup, my heart pounding with freedom.

But as I reached Ethan’s brownstone, two black SUVs screeched to a stop.

Men in dark suits leapt out, their faces blank, and I froze, my mind screaming they’d shoot.

Instead, a cloth pressed over my mouth, chloroform burning my lungs, my body slumping as darkness swallowed me. That’s the last I remember.

I woke here, in this psych ward, strapped to a cot, the smock itching, my wrists bruised from restraints.

Dr. Hargrove, the clinical director, met me that first day, his voice cold, clinical. “Your family brought you here, Charlotte. Acute psychotic episodes, triggered by substance abuse—hallucinogens, amphetamines. You were a danger to yourself.”

Bullshit. I don’t smoke, don’t touch drugs, but his file had my name, my photo, a forged history of addiction.

By reason of being caged with others like Tess—screaming, scratching, lost—I’ve started to doubt who I am.

My name? My memories? My mind?

The lines had all blurred.

If I was really mad... would I even know

The ward’s intercom crackles, Dr. Hargrove’s voice barking, “Exercise rotation, Group C, report to the courtyard.”

My group.

I stand, my legs weak, my smock hanging loose, and shuffle to the door. A nurse stops me, her eyes flat. “Not you, Charlotte. You’ve got a visitor.”

My heart stutters, hope and dread colliding.

I follow her down a fluorescent-lit corridor, the linoleum cold under my bare feet.

She leads me to the visitor’s room, a sterile box with a thick glass partition, two mics on either side.

I sit.

And then I saw him.

My father.

Seated on the other side, calm as sin, lips curled in that smug, signature sneer.

“Charlotte,” he said smoothly.

My chest caved in. “You... locked me in here?”

He exhaled slowly, like he was doing me a favor by breathing. “I needed to break you, Charlotte. Remind you who holds power in this family. You were beginning to forget.”

I grip the chair’s arms, my nails digging into cracked plastic, rage and heartbreak choking me. “How long have I been here?” I ask, my voice shaking. The ward’s endless light, no clocks, no phones, has stolen time. I can’t tell day from night, reality from nightmare.

He leaned back, smirk sharpening. “A year. Today.”

A year? My breath stops, my vision tunneling, my heart pounding so hard it hurts.

A whole fucking year? I want to scream, to tear at the glass, but not in front of him. Tears burn my eyes, but I blink them back. “Why?” I whisper, my voice breaking. “Why would you do this to your daughter?”

He slams his fist on the table, his mic crackling.

“Your choice at that altar cost me everything!” he yells, his face red, eyes blazing.

“You married Cassian, not Luca, and ruined my deal. And that man you said ‘I do’ to? He’s moved on, Charlotte.

Married someone else, got her pregnant, forgot you like you were nothing. ”

My heart splits, the pain raw, searing. I believe him. Cassian hated me, his obsession a lie. The kisses we shared, the sex—his rare gentleness, all dust now. I was a fool to think we could be more..

“I’ll give you one chance to get out,” my father said. “One offer. If you refuse, you can rot here for another year.”

He smiled like a devil promising salvation.

“Marry Luca.”

I rip the mic off my ear, slamming it onto the holder, the plastic cracking.

I storm out, my bare feet slapping the linoleum, my chest burning with rage and grief. Luca? Never.

I’d rather die here than be anyone’s pawn again.

Tears spill now, hot and unstoppable, as I stumble back to my ward.

Cassian’s moved on, his love a mirage, and it fucking hurts—his groans, his touch, all lies.

I collapse onto my cot, unraveling, my sobs muffled by the thin pillow, Tess’s scratching a grim rhythm in the background. I’m not mad, but this place is breaking me, and no one’s coming to save me.

I barely had time to breathe before the door slammed open. Nurse Callahan, a hulking woman with a buzzcut, grabbed my hair, yanking me off the cot.

“Let go!” I scream, my scalp burning, my hands clawing at her grip. “How dare you!”

In all my time here—locked up, medicated, sedated—I’d never been dragged like this. Not until now.

She hauls me down a new corridor, the lights dimmer, the air colder, to a door marked “Therapy Room B.” Inside, it’s a torture chamber—padded walls, a single chair with restraints, a tray of syringes and electrodes.

My stomach drops, fear spiking. She straps me into the chair, my wrists and ankles bound, the leather biting my skin. “This is for your own good,” she says, her voice flat, as she attaches electrodes to my temples.

A low hum starts, and pain jolts through my skull—electroconvulsive therapy, unconsented, burning my nerves.

I grit my teeth, refusing to scream, my body jerking against the straps, my smock damp with sweat.

Grayson ordered this, I know it, to break me into submission, to make me beg for Luca. But I won’t break. I’ve survived cancer, Cassian’s chains, his betrayal. I won’t let them win.

The session ends, my head throbbing, my vision blurry, and Callahan drags me to a new room—a pitch-black isolation cell, the door slamming shut.

Darkness swallows me, no light, no sound, just my ragged breaths. Hours stretch into days, maybe weeks, time dissolving. I hallucinate—Cassian’s face, his blue eyes wild, my mother’s screams from the cell, spiders skittering over my skin.

I claw at the walls, my nails breaking, whispering, “I’m not mad,” my voice hoarse, my body shaking.

The dark is a living thing, crushing me, and I battle it, pounding the floor, screaming, “I’m Charlotte!” No one hears. No one’s coming.

Grayson’s won, Cassian’s gone, and I’m unraveling. I might die here, alone, a ghost in the dark, but I won’t break—not yet.

I didn’t know how many days—or weeks—had passed. Hunger gnawed at my ribs. My throat felt like sand. Sleep came in broken flashes of nightmares and delusion. I was beyond devastated.

Then the door creaked.

The sound sliced through the silence like a blade, and I flinched so hard my back slammed into the wall.

I couldn’t see. Not in this pitch black.

“Charlotte,” a voice called. Masculine. Familiar. A tremble laced the name.

I pressed myself tighter to the corner. My heartbeat thundered. No one came here to save me. They only came to hurt.

“Charlotte, can you hear me?” the voice came again, softer now, threading through the thick fog of my mind.

“What do you want?” I rasped. Even though the voice pulled at something deep inside me, I couldn’t trust it. Everyone here wore familiar faces and stabbed with hidden knives.

“It’s me. Ethan.”

The name struck like lightning.

I crawled forward, blinking into nothing. “Ethan?” My voice cracked. “How did you—how did you find me?”

Our hands touched—his was warm, alive. Real. He gripped mine firmly.

“I’ve been searching since the day you showed up at my apartment and disappeared,” he said, his breath quickening. “I saw it—two cars pulled up and men in black grabbed you. I caught it all on my building’s CCTV.”

“It wasn’t you,” I whispered. “I know who did it. My father.”

Ethan exhaled hard, jaw clenched. “Let’s talk later. We don’t have much time. I hacked the system and got us in. Now let’s get out before we’re caught.”

He led me down a narrow back hall, flashlight dimmed beneath his palm. We moved in silence, barefoot, careful. The walls whispered like they could speak our secrets.

At the end of the hallway, a shadow shifted.

Ethan shoved me into an alcove, his hand over my mouth.

Footsteps passed. Keys jingled. A figure paused, turned... and then walked away.

I didn’t breathe again until the sound faded.

We crept past the nurses’ lounge and through a utility door.

He had memorized every turn.

When the back door opened and the cold air hit my face, I almost wept.