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The ticking clock.
I step away from the table.
“Sit down,” Mum says. “Alice! Please!”
But I shake my head. Craving the one act of defiance I have the strength for.
“I said I’ll attend the dinner, but I’m going to leave this one. See you next week.”
Mum calls my name as I leave the room, but I don’t stop. Helen scurries into the entrance hall and grabs my coat, her expression carefully neutral.
I take it from her with a broken heart, hating how I have to swat the tears from my face as I say goodbye.
Her smile is still warm. She raises her hands as though she wants to give me a hug. But she lowers them. As beholden to the power of this household as I am.
“I’ll see you soon, Alice,” she says.
Alice.
A human being. Not just Miss Parker. Not right now.
“Yep, Helen. See you soon.”
Probably with Christopher Otley at my side.
Cold air hits my face when the door closes behind me.
For several seconds, I stand on the front step, shaking so badly I can barely think straight.
Then I walk. I just walk. Down the drive towards my one week of freedom and the black metal bars of the family gates. I can’t wait to be back outside them.
I could call Bryce for moral support.
I could call Jack, but he’d tell me to turn around, march back inside and tell Dad to fuck off properly this time.
Instead, I walk alone. One foot in front of the other until I’m out of the gate.
Seven days.
My broken soul now knows the countdown is for real. Reality.
The black line is solid and back in place, immovable, just like it always was.
No matter how hard I try, I’ll never be able to break it. Not as a Parker asset.
The consequences for both me and Bryce would be unbearable.
He’d have failed Dad.
Just like me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
JACK
Monday morning lands as miserable as fuck in the apartment.
Not for me, obviously. Emotionally disengaged and clinging on to it with every scrap of my being. I’m doing just fine.
