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“ Y our turn."

Daphne's knife whistled through the air above me, missing my face by inches as I twisted sideways. With a grunt, I heaved against Chet's shoulder, creating just enough space to slide partially out from under him. My fingers brushed against something rigid and metal on the floor—the knife Chet dropped. I clutched it tight alongside the watch, careful to keep both hidden from Daphne's view.

Daphne grabbed me by the hair, yanking upward with savage force. "Get out from under him. He's dead."

Agony exploded across my scalp as she dragged me from beneath Chet's body, clumps of hair tearing from my head. My skin caught on broken glass, each shard slicing shallow cuts that stung like paper cuts dipped in alcohol. His body rolled lifelessly to the side as I was pulled free, the vacant stare of his eyes following me.

She threw me down hard onto the destroyed living room floor, my head bouncing against it with enough force to make my vision splinter into fractured light.

She squatted down, getting in my face. "Men are only good for a few things, Oakley. What's in their wallet and what's between their legs."

I thrust the blade forward, cutting the exposed skin above the collar of her shirt.

She didn't even flinch.

My eyes grew wide.

The knife fell from my nerveless fingers, clattering to the floor between us. My throat sealed shut with horror so thick I couldn't even scream.

She smiled as she ripped open her collar. There, carved into the pale flesh of her collarbone, was the scar I'd given her when she'd broken into my apartment.

"Finally figured it out?" She leaned closer, her face inches from mine, dropping her voice to a cruel whisper, "I made my son pretty, don’t you love his scars, Oakley?”

Son.

The word exploded in my brain like a bomb, shattering everything I thought I knew. The universe collapsed around me as pieces locked together with sickening clarity.

Daphne. V's mother. The monster from his nightmares. The woman who'd tortured him. The demon who'd sewn his lips shut with thread and needle.

Right in front of me. Making me tea. Tasting my pastries. Hugging me. For a year.

The world tilted violently beneath me. The room blurred around the edges, oxygen suddenly scarce as my lungs forgot how to function. The simple, automatic process of inhaling—in, out, repeat—became difficult. My mind couldn't form coherent thoughts, just fragments that crashed against each other like waves in a storm.

I couldn't swallow. Couldn't blink. Could only stare, my mind replaying every interaction we'd ever had through this new, terrible lens, recategorizing what I'd thought was maternal warmth as calculated manipulation.

Her smile widened at my stunned silence, feeding on my horror like it was sustenance. She traced one stained finger down my cheek in a grotesque parody of motherly affection.

"Nothing to say, Oakley? No defense for my precious boy?" Her mocking tone sliced through the air. Her nail dug into my cheek, breaking the skin. "You know those scars intimately now—but do you think your kisses ever soothed the memories I stitched into him?"

Tears slid down my temples, into my hair. Not for me—for him. For the child who never had a chance. For the boy who'd grown into a man incapable of love because he'd never seen it modeled. For the monster V had become because being human had brought him nothing but anguish.

Her fingers hovered near my lips, their proximity making me retch. "Want to know why? Because he kept stealing my fucking boyfriends." She tapped my lips. "So I shut him up permanently. Sewed those pretty lips together while he squirmed. Embroidery thread, actually. Blue, I think? I was quite the artist back then."

The way he sometimes touched his lips absently when deep in thought. The first time I'd kissed him, how he'd gone completely rigid, how his breathing had stopped, how he'd trembled beneath my touch. I'd thought it was a desire.

It was trauma.

"My men always wanted him—my beautiful boy," Daphne continued, her eyes glittering with sick nostalgia. "They'd offer me more money, more drugs to have him instead of me. Always slipped a sleeping pill in his drink to have a turn."

That was why sleeping pills didn't work on him anymore.

The image her words painted burned into my brain—a young V, terrified, in anguish, betrayed by the one person who should have protected him. What kind of monster could do that to her own child? I thought of the V I knew—dangerous, intense, possessive—and for the first time, I saw those traits not as flaws but as armor, forged in the fires of a childhood I couldn't even imagine.

I understood now why he sometimes went days barely speaking, communicating only in touches and glances. Why he'd go rigid when someone mentioned their mother. Why he'd looked at me with such confusion, such disbelief, when I'd first shown him kindness. He'd never known it before—had been taught from his earliest memories that love was just another word for hurt.

"Divine Diligence," Daphne continued, her voice taking on a reverent quality that made my skin crawl. "Such a pretty name for what it really was. Men in clerical collars who'd press their erections against you while praying over your sins. Women with gentle voices who'd hold you down for purification rituals that always seemed to involve being stripped naked."

The name "Divine Diligence" echoed in my mind, connecting to the recent revelations about my parents that I was still struggling to process. The place my father had escaped from with me as a baby. The place where my real mother Valerie had died trying to save us. Daphne had no idea about my connection to that same hellish place—and I felt a small, desperate relief in that one small mercy.

My father's haunted eyes whenever he spoke of that place. The nightmares that still plagued him decades later. The scars on his back that he'd never fully explained. All of it connected to this woman, to V, to a cycle of horror that had somehow, impossibly, brought us together.

"You know..." Daphne's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "Years ago, there was a story at Divine Diligence. A whisper about a couple who tried to escape. They were made examples of." Her smile turned knowing. "But that story gave me hope that escape was possible. That there might be a way out."

My pulse hammered against my ribs, deafening in the silence. Was she talking about my parents? Did she know more about what happened to my mother? I fought to keep my expression neutral, terrified that any reaction would reveal my connection.

"When they wouldn't let me leave with my son, I made them promise," she continued, oblivious to the dread spreading through me. "They would help me escape, give me a new identity, a new life—but only if I brought them my son in return." She shrugged, as if discussing a minor business transaction rather than sacrificing her child. "Fair trade, I thought at the time. The boy for my freedom."

Her expression softened into something almost dreamy. "Now they pay me well. For every girl I send them, every troubled teen whose parents are desperate for spiritual guidance—I get a cut. The pretty ones fetch the highest prices." She touched her expensive watch, the diamond earrings that caught the light. "And the men there—they appreciate a woman who understands the game. Who doesn't pretend to be better than what she is."

My stomach twisted with revulsion. My parents had risked everything—my mother had given her life—to get me away from Divine Diligence, while this woman had not only abandoned her son to them but now actively helped them find new victims.

"They're still there, you know," she continued. "Still saving lost girls. Don’t know how many there are, haven’t done business with them in over a year." She leaned closer, her lips brushing my ear, teeth scraping the sensitive shell. "But that just changed."

She began to laugh, the sound high and broken, her body trembling with it. Suddenly, her hand flew to her own stomach, clawing at it through her blouse as if trying to tear something out. "You want to know why I hate him?" she screamed, spittle flying from her lips. "I was sixteen. My daddy's friend—fifty-three years old—pinned me down in our pool house." Her words came faster now, her breathing erratic. "Thirty seconds. That's how long it took him to rape me and destroy my life. I still remember the chlorine smell in my hair, the way the concrete scraped my back raw, how he grunted like a pig." Her face contorted with remembered anguish and rage. "I never knew who the father was. Could have been him, could have been any of the men my mother's friends brought around. They all had their turn. When they found out I was pregnant, my parents didn't believe me. Said I was lying to cover my sin. Sent me to Divine Diligence to be cleansed."

She suddenly straddled me, pinning me down, her face inches from mine, eyes wide and unblinking. "Do you know what it's like to push something out of you that was forced into you? To look into the face of the thing that destroyed your life? He had those same black eyes even then, staring at me like he knew what he'd done. Like he enjoyed it. I begged God for death, and instead, he gave me something worse—him.”

Her eyes refocused on me with terrible clarity. "He thinks he suffered? He has no idea what hell is. But I'm going to show both of you."

Take care of him for us, Oakley.

I knew some extent of V's trauma. He'd shared the horrific details with me in fragments over time—nightmares that woke him gasping, memories triggered by seemingly innocuous things. The scars that mapped his body told only part of the story. And now, faced with the source of his suffering, I understood how miraculous it was that he had survived at all, that he could still reach for connection despite everything.

The pocket watch pressed against my palm, another reminder of what was at stake. If I died here—if I let Daphne win—V would face this alone. Would face her alone. Would be dragged back into the nightmare she'd tried to instill in him at Divine Diligence, with no one to remind him that he was more than what she'd tried to make him.

I would survive this. Not just for myself, but for V. For Chet’s son. I would find Rurik and give him Chet’s pocket watch.

I met Daphne's gaze, something new hardening behind my eyes. She must have seen it—the shift from prey to opponent—because her smile faltered, just for a moment, before stretching wider to compensate.

"There she is," Daphne whispered, almost admiring. "I was wondering when you'd stop being so pathetic." She tilted her head, studying me with renewed interest. "Maybe you're worthy of him after all. My son always did like pretty things."

I said nothing, conserving my strength, my thoughts, my breath. I would wait. I would watch. I would survive.

For V. For the future neither of us had dared to name but that I now clung to like a lifeline in the darkness his mother had created.

"A mother knows her son." Her hand wrapped around my throat, fingers digging into the soft flesh with practiced ease. Her other hand slipped into her pocket, pulling out something that caught the light—a sewing needle threaded with blue embroidery floss. She held it inches from my eye, the point gleaming. "You've kissed his scars, haven't you? Traced them with your fingers, telling him they're beautiful." Her thumb pressed against my lips, forcing them together. "I wonder if he'll find you just as beautiful when I'm done. I still remember how to do the stitches—nice and tight so the words can't escape."

In that moment, survival instinct surged through me. I twisted violently, my knee connecting with her stomach. She grunted, momentarily loosening her grip. I seized the opportunity, shoving her sideways with strength I didn't know I possessed. Her body crashed against the overturned coffee table as I scrambled to my feet, my only thought to reach the door.

"You little bitch," she snarled, recovering faster than should have been humanly possible.

I made it three steps before her hand caught my ankle, sending me sprawling across the hardwood. My chin slammed against the floor. I kicked frantically, trying to free myself from her grasp.

Daphne's face contorted with rage as she lunged toward me. I rolled, narrowly avoiding her grasp, inching closer to the hallway and freedom. But she was too fast, too determined. With inhuman strength, she grabbed Chet's lifeless body by the shoulders and heaved it toward me. His massive frame crashed into mine, pinning me beneath frigid, dead weight.

"Now," she panted, straddling both me and Chet's corpse, "let's make you pretty for my son."

I thrashed beneath the crushing weight, but Chet's body held me in place more effectively than any restraints. My face pressed awkwardly against the floor, one cheek exposed as Daphne leaned down, needle gleaming between her fingers.

"This is going to hurt," she whispered, almost tenderly. "But anguish makes such beautiful art."

Before I could struggle, the needle punched through my bottom lip. White-hot agony exploded through my face as she pulled the thread tight, blue fiber slick with what flowed from the wound. I screamed, the sound warped and strangled as she pinched my lips together for the next stitch.

"Shh, hold still now," she cooed, as if soothing a child. The needle pierced my top lip, then through the bottom again. The frigid, unyielding weight of Chet's body made it impossible to escape as her knees dug into my sides. Tears streamed down my temples as she knotted the second stitch. "My son cried too. Begged with his eyes when he couldn't use his mouth anymore."

She pushed the needle through a third time, but her hand slipped in the wetness now coating my chin and neck. The thread pulled crooked, tearing slightly at the fresh puncture.

"That's enough for now," she decided, snipping the thread with small scissors that appeared from nowhere. “They’re waiting.”

She grunted as she pushed off Chet's body but left it crushing me, her hand returning to my throat. I gasped around the partial stitches, iron filling my mouth, the metallic taste making me gag. Chet's dead weight pressed me into the floor, his cooling body a grotesque reminder of what awaited me if I couldn't escape.

My last thought was of V—wondering if he would ever know the truth of who had taken me, wondering if he would blame himself when he found Chet's body, wondering if I would ever see him again.

Daphne's laughter merged with the ringing in my ears—a symphony of horror drowning out everything but one final, terrible certainty.

She wasn't just going to kill me.

She was going to use me to destroy him.