Chapter 21

EVADNE

I used to think fights with my mother were ordinary. Every teenager had them, didn’t they? Rolling eyes, slammed doors, words sharpened into knives. But this one—I can still feel it when I close my eyes, like the taste of copper on my tongue, like the press of rain on my skin. It’s a memory I wish I could cut out of myself, but she did say the bad decisions I make would haunt me in the future didn't she.

It had started stupidly. Almost every fight did. She had caught me sneaking in late again, mascara smeared from all the fun I had and maybe cheap vodka I wasn’t supposed to be drinking. My friends had egged me on, saying all sorts of things that had to do with me being too careful, too sheltered, and I should break the leash a little, Evadne. I wanted to prove them wrong. I wanted to be free, even if it was only until curfew.

Curse, peer pressure.

But that night, the second I stumbled in through the door, dripping hair from the drizzle outside, she was waiting. Arms crossed, that look on her face—the one that said she wasn’t just angry, she was disappointed. And disappointed mothers always, keyword, always do things they regret.

“Where the hell have you been?” She yelled over the sound of the rain pattering hard against the roof.

I tried to brush past her, muttering, “Out. Don’t worry about it.”

But she grabbed my arm her ails biting into my skin as she dragged me back to stand in front of her. “Don’t worry about it? You think you can just disappear whenever you feel like it? You’re seventeen, not grown. You don’t get to live like the rules don’t apply to you.”

I yanked free angrily, I swear I didn't know where that anger came from, I only had a little vodka nothing else, I wasn't even high. “I’m sick of your rules okay? I’m sick of you treating me like a prisoner.”

Her mouth tightened. “Prisoner? Is that what you think? We keep a roof over your head, food in your stomach, everything you need, and this is how you repay us? By sneaking out like some—some street whore? You're seventeen, Evadne, seventeen!”

The insult burned. “I’m not a street whore! You don’t get it—you don’t know what it’s like trying to live with everyone breathing down your neck, judging every little thing I do! I just wanted one night to feel like I could breathe, and you can’t even let me have that!”

My father had appeared in the hallway, silent at first, watching like a shadow carved into the wall. He always stayed quiet until things got too loud. That was his way to avoid the storm, and wait for the calm, which sounds stupid to me if you asked. And I wasn’t calm, and neither was she.

Mother’s voice rose higher, trembling with fury. “Breathe? What responsibility does a seventeen have to feel people breathing down throat? You think the bar guys out there won’t swallow you alive the second you walk out unprotected? You are my daughter, Evadne, and I will not let you throw your life away chasing some fantasy of freedom! When you have it here.”

“I don't fucking have it here. Because of this same shit I missed my graduation, because of you and your belief that I was safe here, I missed one of of the most important part of my life! You didn't let me cheer, you didn't let me do anything, why? Because you lived your mother's life and you're so bitter about it you want me to live yours.”

She raised her hand to hit me but held herself back. “You stupid child. I just hope you don't pit yourself in a situation you'll find it hard to get out of, and it's still going to hurt me because you're my daughter”

All her words stung in ways I didn’t want to admit. Maybe because somewhere deep down, she was mother and my father would say mother's are always right, but was she? If she hadn't put me in cages of different sizes all through my life I wouldn't be searching for freedom.

So I did what hurt her most. I spat the words without thinking, venom wrapped in every syllable, “Maybe I don’t want to be your daughter anymore.” I wanted her to feel the exact thing I was going through, to have the one person you love so much against you.

Her face went pale, then flushed red with anger and pain. “Get out,” she whispered, breathing heavily and loudly.

I blinked. “What?”

“Get out of my sight, Evadne. If you can’t respect this house, if you can’t respect me, then I don't think you don’t belong here tonight, get out before I throw you out myself and you won't like that.”

The rain outside grew louder, or maybe I just started hearing it for the first time.

I laughed bitterly. “Fine. Maybe I’m better off without this house. Without you breathing down my throat every second, eat your fucking house.”

I grabbed my jacket, which was thin, useless against the storm and shoved the door open. The night air slapped me across the face, cold and wet, Washing the vodka off my eyes. Behind me, I heard her voice, sharp but breaking: “You go back to wherever you're coming from.”

I slammed the door and stepped into the rain.

Water soaked my clothes in seconds, plastered my hair to my skin. My shoes splashed through puddles, mud seeping in, cold biting my toes. Each breath came out ragged, my chest hot with leftover anger.

I walked fast, then ran, as though the faster I moved, the less I’d feel the weight of her words. Streetlights blurred into streaks of yellow, cars hissed by, their headlights glaring at me. My tears mixed with the rain until I couldn’t tell the difference.

By the time I slowed down, I was far from home, standing beneath the awning of a closed shop, shivering. My arms hugged myself, but it did nothing. I had wanted freedom, all I wanted was a little space to live and grow, not what she called protection. I can't even cross the street to get snacks afraid all the bad things she said would coke to pass.

“Evadne!”

I snapped my head around at my name, and my mother's voice, searching for her in the rain, my heart clenching, but I couldn’t see her through the sheets of rain. Maybe she hadn’t come after me. Maybe it was just my mind replaying her voice, the last thing I’d heard before I ran.

The fight replayed itself too, over and over,l. Maybe I don’t want to be your daughter anymore. I had said it, and I couldn’t take it back and now she was dead.

\---

At first, I thought giving in would kill me.

The first night I stopped fighting, my body felt like stone, it was cold, unmoving, a felt like a thing that didn’t belong to me anymore. I thought maybe I’d splinter, shatter into a thousand pieces if I let him do what he wanted without a single word from me. I thought surrender meant losing the last piece of myself I had left.

But something unexpected happened. The more I stilled, the more I swallowed my rage, the less he looked at me like prey to be broken. Dante Moretti thrived on defiance. On resistance. On the spark of rebellion he could snuff out with his own hands.

When I stopped giving him that fire—at least where he could see it—his interest shifted.

I learned the art of the mask. When he called, I would walked. When he demanded, I would obeyed. My eyes softened when he wanted them to, my lips curved into something that looked like a smile when he touched my face. It made me sick, every second of it, but with every performance, I bought myself time and space, he would get bored and he'll pick someone else, hopefully Nicole.

He summoned me again the next day

Fear, though—it never left. It clung to me like a second skin. Every knock on the door, every shadow in the hallway, every brush of his hand along my arm—I flinched even when I didn’t show it. The worst part was knowing he liked that too. He liked the way fear hollowed my eyes.

Sometimes at night, I pressed my face into the thin pillow and tried to slow my breathing, to trick myself into thinking I was back home again. That if I opened my eyes, I’d see my mother’s lamp still glowing in the hall, her way of waiting for me. But when I opened them, all I saw was the dim light of Moretti’s empire. The walls that smelled of smoke and power and rot.

And every morning, when Lissa came to rouse me with those words, I put the mask back on.

The others began to notice the change. Girls who had seen me thrash and spit and bite now watched me walk quietly at Moretti's side. Mostly because of that night with Enzo and the fact that they literally can do nothing about it. Some of them looked at me with pity, some with disgust, a few of them happy that I've been tamed.

Every time Dante summoned me, I built another piece of my plan in the silence of my mind. I memorized the way the guards rotated at the doors. I counted how many steps it took to get from the hall to the garden. I noted which windows were left unlocked, which doors stuck in their frames.

And at night, when the nightmares returned, rain, gunshots, my mother’s broken voice, I forced myself awake and reminded myself of the truth.

I wasn’t going to die here.

I would find out who killed my parents.

And when I did, Dante Moretti would no longer be my captor. He would just be another name on the list of people I'd kill for the fun of it.

But then there was the hardest part?

Every mask I wore for him, every false smile I put on, felt like I was fooling myself too.

There were moments, fleeting, when I caught myself softening to the sound of his voice, or pausing when his hand brushed mine as though it meant something more than control

And that, that scared me more than anything.

Because the line between my mask and self was starting to blur.

And I couldn’t afford to forget who I was.

Not now.

Not ever.

I believe I was only getting perfect at it.