Crestfall General at 10 p.m. is a symphony of chaos: patients groaning, nurses power-walking like they're competing in the Olympics, and the distinct smell of antiseptic trying very hard to cover up the smell of despair. Star stands in the middle of it all, her heart doing a violent drum solo against her ribcage. When she woke up at the Château, she felt disturbingly fine. Zero pain. The doctor said she was fine. And speaking of that doctor—Star's heart actually stops when she spots him walking toward her.
Same guy. Same calm, professional stride. Same face she saw first thing after opening her eyes in that beautiful prison.
She's in a hospital corridor leading to the nurse rooms, exactly where the receptionist told her to go for tests. But suddenly, the hair on her arms stands up like it's trying to escape. If this doctor is here—at a public hospital, wearing a workbag, looking all legitimate—doesn't that mean this hospital is just as dangerous as the Château? She was kidnapped. Fell into a two-week coma. Woke up in her dream house with this man checking her vitals. For all she knows, he plucked her off the street. And now here he is, strolling through Crestfall General like he pays taxes and everything.
Alex stops mid-step, frowning. Of all the sample-collection errands in all the hospitals in the city, she had to be here. He only came to grab some lab samples—his current patient has a rare condition and can't produce the sample he needs, so Crestfall General it was since they handled the patient's first treatment. Simple and quick.
And yet.
Lucian is probably laughing somewhere. Probably doing that insufferable thing where he doesn't smile, but you know he's enjoying this. Alex never wanted to be involved with his crush. Now he has to lie again. If not for Lucian, Alex would have already killed Star the night she was dropped on his table unconscious. He's holding that urge back with both hands, and it's getting heavier.
Star scans the corridor. People are going about their business—a tired mom comforting a crying kid, an old man shuffling with an IV pole, a nurse yawning into her coffee. No one cares that her probable kidnapper is six feet away. No one is sounding alarms. No one is even looking twice.
And now she's spiraling: Will my test results even be accurate if he already tampered with everything? Did he bribe the lab? Is the receptionist in on it?
Alex closes the distance. Star freezes. Her eyes squeeze shut. Her lungs fill with air for a scream that never comes.
He walks right past her.
Just... keeps walking. Like she's a potted plant. Like she's not even worth a second glance.
Her eyes snap open. She watches his back retreat down the corridor, through the double doors, out into the parking lot. Her fear evaporates, replaced by pure, indignant confusion. She follows.
Outside, Alex is already at his car, hand on the door handle, ready to vanish into the night like a very muscular, mildly guilty ghost.
"Hey!" Star yells.
His hand freezes. For a moment, he considers pretending he didn't hear. But no—she's already marching toward him. He opens the door, tosses his work bag inside, closes it, and turns around just as she stops an inch from his personal space.
"You managed to get out of there," she says, eyes narrowed like she's solving a puzzle made of lies.
Alex stares at her. He's older than she remembered—gray threading his temples—but his build says he's never met a push-up he didn't like. And right now, every muscle is screaming.
Lucian, I swear to everything unholy—
"Yes," he says flatly. Then, because small talk is a nightmare, "What are you doing here?" His hands slide into his pockets. Star can't see that they're balled into fists, knuckles white as fresh snow.
"You said someone forced you to nurse me back to health." She tilts her chin up. "Am I healthy?"
"Yes."
"How do I know you're not lying?"
Alex scoffs and turns his head sharply, like looking at her any longer might actually hurt. The parking lot is poorly lit. A single flickering streetlamp. Perfect for brooding, which is exactly what he's doing.
He groans. Loudly. From the chest. "Why are you even asking if you're just going to assume I'll lie?"
Star frowns. She's studying him now. The gray hair. The jaw. The way he's vibrating with barely contained something. He definitely never skips exercise. Or anger management.
"Am I healthy?" she repeats.
"You're—" Alex stops. Breathes in. Holds it. Lets it out in a long, defeated huff. "Fine. When my boss saved you, you were about to be assaulted. You weren't. But you had Neuroxa-9 in your system."
Star blinks. She's an engineering student, not a pharmacist, but the name sounds like something that should come with a warning label. Her mind flashes back to Ramon injecting her with that milky-looking liquid. Five times. Five.
"What's Neuroxa-9?"
"A drug designed to make you... enthusiastically willing to have sex." He says it like he's reading a particularly boring grocery list. "It didn't take full effect. You were saved just in time to get flushed out." He glances at his car. "Now. Can I go?"
"Who saved me?" Star steps closer. "I want to thank them."
Alex's hand is already on the door handle. "Can't do that."
"Why not?"
"Because I can't." He opens the door. "You're healthy. If you don't believe me, go back inside and verify." He slides into the driver's seat, starts the engine, and zooms off before Star can fire off another question—leaving her alone in the parking lot, under a flickering light, with more questions than answers and a brand-new drug name living rent-free in her head.
***
The local fast-food stall is still doing business at 10 p.m., because hunger doesn't care about reasonable bedtimes. Frieda and Tomas sit on a wobbly plastic bench under a buzzing fluorescent light, their order arrived: two wrapped toasted meats dripping salsa onto the paper. Tomas holds his like a precious artifact. Frieda holds her phone to her ear for the seventh time.
Straight to voicemail.
Again.
Her worry is no longer a roof—it's a collapsing skyscraper. Because if Lucian got to Ramon, her brother is either dead or wishing he was.
"How much do you think a Ferrari costs?" Tomas asks, handing over her food like he just asked about the weather.
"You've been talking about this since we sat down." Frieda snatches the wrap. "Do you really think Star is going to sell it? And how do you even know it belongs to her?"
Tomas ignores her. He's already gone—eyes on the greasy sky, imagining himself behind the wheel of N$2 million worth of Italian screaming metal. "Two million, maybe?" He takes a bite, chews slowly, and nods at his own genius. He's never seen N$2 million. He's never held N$2,000 without sweating. But in his mind, that Ferrari is already listed on Marketplace.
"Where are we going to sleep?" Frieda asks, dragging him back to reality.
Star locked them out. Frieda can already feel the trouble coming—not the fun kind, either.
"My house," Tomas says confidently. "I have a spare key in my—" He stops. His face goes blank. The kind of blank that precedes bad news. "Work pants. The ones I changed out of."
"Great." Frieda sets down her wrap. Her appetite has left the building, taken a cab, and isn't coming back. "You asked me to move in, and now we're sleeping outside?"
Before Tomas can invent an excuse involving a locksmith who owes him a favor, Frieda's neck prickles. Someone is watching her. Intently. The way a cat watches a mouse it hasn't decided to eat yet.
She turns.
Her brother is standing in a tree. A tree. Fifteen feet up, one foot on a branch, looking like the world's most depressed owl.
"I'm coming now." She drops her food into Tomas's lap—he catches it with the reflexes of a man who has never dropped food in his life—and walks toward the tree.
Ramon doesn't wait for her to climb up. He jumps down, lands badly, and doesn't seem to notice his ankle. His eyes are red. His voice is raw.
"Care to explain why every single man I hired—including Jay—has been eliminated by Lucian?"
Jay was the one he'd worked with to grab Star two weeks ago. And then there were the others—the men he'd hired for the gang rape. Dozens of them. Over the past two weeks, every single one had turned up dead. Dozens, one after another, like someone was checking names off a list.
Ramon did his own digging. Quiet. Careful. And what he found made his blood go cold: the notorious mafia boss of Crestfall was behind the killings. Every last one.
Now he's the only one left.
Frieda pales. Then she pulls herself together.
"I've been calling you!" The words come out sharper than she intended. Her worry was bad before. Now it's a full-blown forest fire.
"Frieda." Ramon's voice is quiet. Too quiet. "Who is Star to Lucian?"
"I don't know... friends, maybe?" She's reaching and they both know it. "He won't come after you. I promise." She says it like she has armor. Like she has anything at all to shield her little brother.
Ramon is the only family she has left.
Ramon laughs. It's a wet, broken sound. "I'm already a dead man." His eyes fill—actually fill—with tears. "I knew with my line of work, I'd get killed someday. Just didn't think my own sister would be the reason." He wipes his whole face with his sleeve like a kid who fell off a bike.
"Don't talk like that. You're not dying." Frieda's own eyes are glistening now. She reaches for him—
"Don't make promises you can't keep."
The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. Smooth. Amused. The voice of a man who has never been late to anything because the world rearranges itself around his schedule.
Frieda freezes.
A tall figure emerges from the shadows behind Ramon. One arm wraps around her brother's chest. The other hand holds a knife to his throat—casually, like it's a pen.
She screams.
The sound dies when cold metal presses against the back of her head. A gun. Definitely a gun. The kind that doesn't click dramatically because it doesn't need to.
The night stall is still bustling. Customers laugh, order more salsa, argue about soccer. The tree is shrouded in darkness—just enough shadows to hide a massacre. And Tomas? Tomas is two bites into Frieda's abandoned wrap, absolutely oblivious, probably already planning which rims to buy for the Ferrari or who to sell it to.
"So." Lucian tilts his head, a smirk playing on his lips like he's about to tell a joke. He holds Ramon tight against his chest, the knife glinting. "Tell me, Frieda."
"Please." The word tumbles out of her like a rock falling down a well. "Please don't. I brought him into this. I did this." Tears stream down her cheeks—hot, ugly, relentless. She's killed before. She's done worse than kill. It was survival. Then she got a job at Rent-a-Hand Cleaning Service, scrubbed toilets, smiled at clients. But she never stopped. She just got better at hiding.
She hates Star's confidence. She loathes Louise with every fiber of her being. Hurting Star meant hurting Louise. That was the math. Simple. Clean.
She didn't think about consequences.
She didn't know how deep Star's connection ran.
"I didn't know who Star was to you." Her voice cracks. "Please. Spare him. Kill me instead."
She means it. She's a hurtful bitch, yes. A schemer. A backstabber. But watching her little brother die? No. That's a line she didn't know she had until it was staring at her with a knife.
Lucian hums as if in deep thought. A man considering dessert options. His eyes narrow into pleased slits.
"No."
Frieda's heart drops through the floor, through the earth's crust, straight into hell.
"Scream," Lucian continues, his voice soft as velvet and twice as suffocating, "and Daniella and Daniello follow their uncle to the grave."
He says it like he's discussing ice cream flavors. Oh, the pistachio is lovely this time of year.
And then horror begins.
Slowly. Deeply. Painfully. Lucian drags the knife across Ramon's throat. Not fast. Not merciful. He takes his time—the way a chef savors carving a roast. His smirk never wavers. His eyes never leave Frieda's.
One of his men forces her head forward. Watch. She has no choice. Her brother's blood catches the faint light. His body goes slack. His eyes go wide, then empty.
The thud of Ramon hitting the ground is the loudest sound Frieda has ever heard as she watches her little brother take his last hoarsed breathe and dies.
She collapses to her knees. A scream tears out of her—raw, animal, loud enough to make the stall's customers turn their heads. Someone drops a cup. Someone else says, "What was that?"
Lucian wipes the knife on a handkerchief. Folds it. Pockets it. Glances at Frieda like she's a mildly interesting stain on his shoe.
"Why don't you just kill me?" Frieda sobs, her voice ragged, her hands clawing at the dirt. "Because I will find you. I will put a bullet in your head. I don't care how much power you have. I don't care who you are. I will end you."
Lucian's smirk doesn't change. He doesn't answer. He simply turns and walks into the shadows, his men falling in step behind him. They vanish like they were never there—like the whole thing was a fever dream and the only evidence is a cooling body and a sister who just lost everything.
***
Meanwhile, the birthday celebration had ended about as smoothly as a porcupine in a balloon factory. Maria sent every guest packing, sensing the evening was about to get long—and not the fun kind of long. The kind of long where you regret every life choice that led you to this exact moment.
And she did regret it. Kissing Kefas. Showing affection out in the open. She did it every day without getting caught, but today? Today the universe decided to clock in for work.
"Grandma, we miss you so much," Bonita says, scooting closer to her grandmother like a tiny warmth-seeking missile.
"Mom, you didn't say you were coming," Maria says cautiously. The kind of cautious you use when approaching a sleeping lion. With a toothache.
"And I didn't expect to meet my supposed daughter-in-law mingling with our business rival." Grandma Christine's voice could cut glass. "Are you stupid?"
She'd traveled from abroad to visit her son's family. Instead, she got a front-row seat to Maria making out with Kefas like a pair of shameless teenagers at prom.
Tiffany nearly choked on her drink. She coughed, excused herself with the speed of someone fleeing a crime scene, and mentally recalculated her life choices. She was just Adrian's girlfriend—not family, not a shield, and definitely not brave enough to stick around for whatever grenade was about to go off.
"It was nice meeting you, Grandma Christine," Tiffany says, standing up with the grace of a gazelle preparing to sprint.
"Are you already leaving?" Bonita asks.
"Yes, it's late. My dad's waiting for me outside." Tiffany grabs her jacket from the stand, and Bonita follows her out.
Maria watches them go. The air in the room feels thinner now. Harder to breathe. Like someone sucked out all the oxygen and replaced it with regret.
"Mom, this isn't about business. I love Kefas," Maria protests.
"I don't care." Christine's face is stone. Absolute zero. "I'm not going to let you philander with him. The Sterlings stole our designs."
Maria's eyes widen. "They didn't—"
"Oh, they just happened to design the same building that Adrian had on renderings?" Christine's rage is no longer a simmer—it's a rolling boil. "For all I know, you've given them to him."
David had married Maria against Christine's better judgment. He claimed to be in love, but Christine never trusted that woman for one second. Maria may have come from money herself, but something never sat right. Something always smelled off. She'd even suspected—quietly, privately—that Maria had a hand in her son's disappearance.
"Mom, I know you don't like me." Maria's voice trembles, just a little. "But I kept myself faithful to David for eight years. He's the one who left. Not me. And I would never steal renderings for Kefas."
She's hurt. The accusation stings more than she wants to admit.
"Yeah." Christine stands up, smoothing her dress like she's smoothing away Maria's existence. "We'll see about that. You may fool Adrian and Sunshine, but you'll never fool me. And I'm here to make sure of that."
She picks up her gold bag and leather suitcase and marches up the stairs like a general heading to war.
Outside the mansion, the night air is thick enough to chew.
Adrian stands eye to eye with Kefas. Kefas is older—old enough to be Adrian's father, actually—but Adrian has the height advantage and the kind of glare that could curdle milk. The tension is so dense you could wrap it, sell it, and build a house out of it.
"If I see you next time in my house," Adrian says, each word dripping with ice, "I will make sure you go back in a body bag."
Kefas scoffs. Actually scoffs. Like Adrian just told him a mildly amusing joke. The kid is stubborn—painfully so—and no DNA test is needed to prove Adrian is David's son. The resemblance is uncanny. But Kefas isn't moved. Not an inch.
"Place your anger somewhere else," Kefas says, opening his car door. "I'm not your father."
The conversation is going nowhere. A waste of breath. Kefas slides into the driver's seat and starts the engine.
Adrian spots Bonita and Tiffany coming out of the house. The guard guides Kefas out of the yard, and his car rolls down the driveway. Adrian shoots daggers at the taillights until they disappear into the night.
Five buildings. Five exact copies of Adrian's original renderings. Kefas beat him to every single one. Someone is stealing from his company—feeding designs to the competition—and Adrian can't prove it yet. That's why his new smart city project is locked down tighter than a drum. At this point, he doesn't trust anyone.
Not even his own mother.
"Hey, did you get anything?" Bonita asks Tiffany.
Tiffany shakes her head as she zips up her jacket.
"Why don't you ask Adrian for help? He's connected—"
"No." Bonita cuts her off immediately. Sharp. Final. "Don't tell your boyfriend about this, okay?"
Tiffany hands back the bug she'd given Bonita earlier. "Okay. And again—for the eighth year—be careful."
She smiles, hugs Bonita, and walks toward her dad's waiting car.
Adrian shoves his hands into his pockets, frowning deeply at the driveway where Kefas vanished. His fingers close around something small. Plastic. Metallic.
He pulls it out.
A bug.
"What the fuck?!"
His mind races. Who put this on him? When? And why? The questions pile up like bodies, and Adrian stands there in the dark, holding the evidence, realizing that trust is a luxury he can no longer afford.
***
Star still doesn't trust Alex's word. Not even a little. The man has "kidnapper's assistant" written all over his tense shoulders and suspiciously convenient answers. So she goes back inside Crestfall General to verify. Better to be paranoid than infected with a mystery disease.
Now she's lying on a hospital bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for results. The fluorescent lights buzz above her like they're mocking her life choices. Her heart pumps up and down—more up than down, really—doing a nervous cha-cha in her chest.
And then, as her brain scrambles for a distraction, it digs up a memory. A pact she made with Lucian when she was fifteen. Because apparently now is the perfect time for embarrassment.
Star had a little crush on someone. She told Lucian. Bad move. He looked like she'd just announced she was switching to decaf.
"He's not even that handsome," Lucian said, watching the guy play soccer on the field. The captain. The so-called "golden boy." Lucian's face was a masterpiece of disdain. "You will give birth to ugly babies."
Star couldn't figure out why he hated the guy so much. Jealousy?
"Always get married to someone handsome," Lucian added, crossing his arms. "Someone who will give you cute babies."
Star chuckled. Then she turned to stare at him—really stare—waiting for a crack in the mask. "You're jealous of him, aren't you?"
"What? No." His voice pitched higher than a boy band audition. Star noticed.
And then, because fifteen-year-olds are chaotic creatures with no sense of self-preservation, Star said, "Let's make a pact."
Lucian frowned. Deeply. The kind of frown that said I'm already regretting this and you haven't even said it yet.
"You're my brother," Star continued, "but we're not related. We could be in love."
Lucian's frown somehow deepened further. His heart—not that he'd admit it—did a little backflip. He had a massive crush on Star. Did this mean...?
"I plan to lose my virginity at twenty," Star announced, as casually as if she were discussing grocery lists. "And you'll be the one to do it."
Lucian choked on his own saliva. Actual choking. The kind where you have to pound your chest and question every decision that led to this moment.
"What?!" His voice cracked in two places.
"You will break my virginity," Star repeated, nodding like she'd just solved world hunger.
Here's the thing: Star doesn't see this as weird. At home, her parents fight like it's an Olympic sport. Screaming. Door-slamming. The slow, ugly death of a marriage played on repeat. Star is terrified of love itself. Terrified that what happened to her mother will happen to her. She's convinced all men are the same—abusive, manipulative, liars, cheaters. Every last one.
But she doesn't plan on keeping her virginity forever. So she'll lose it to her best friend. The one person who hasn't let her down. Lucian.
"Deal?" Star raises her hand for a shake. Like they're closing a business transaction. Lucian hesitates for a full minute—sixty seconds of internal screaming—and then shakes her hand.
"The results are here."
Star's trip down memory lane is rudely interrupted by a nurse entering the room with a pad in her hand. The woman looks tired. Overworked. The kind of tired that only hospital coffee and bad life choices can create.
"You are clean. No STIs. No infections," the nurse says, reading from the pad.
Star releases a long, shuddering sigh. Her heart, which had been tap-dancing on her ribs, finally settles down. "Oh, thank God." She presses a hand to her chest, feeling the steady beat. Finally. Something went right.
The nurse flips the page. Keeps reading.
"And you're pregnant."
Star's heart stops. Actually stops. Her blood drains from her face so fast she's surprised she doesn't hear a whooshing sound. The fluorescent lights buzz louder. The ceiling spins. And somewhere in the back of her mind, a fifteen-year-old girl who made a pact with her best friend suddenly realizes that life has a very sick sense of humor.