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Unknown: I own those lips. I’m checking in to see if you’re holding firm to your side of the deal.

My heart drops to my stomach, and with it, my courage.

His lips? It’s the stranger from the party!

My middle gets warm as if lava surges through me, and my adrenaline spikes.

Ben? How did you get this number?

Unknown: Not exactly Ben. And I have my ways.

Annoyance flares in my chest. Is he playing with me? Checking to make sure I stay pure, and he keeps my secret of letting a would-be assassin go free?

Another stipulation by a man.

And so do I.

I turn my phone off and throw it back onto my bed. My shoulders shake with each deep breath as my anger rises. How dare he? He has the nerve to scare me and then threaten me? I may be the one trapped, but I am a Bruno. I am not the one to terrorize.

Stepping into my closet, I slip on black leggings and a sweatshirt. Flipping up my hood, I stuff a set of keys from under my sweater into my pocket.

Forget him—the stranger, Ben, stalker, whoever he is—I have to do something tonight. Something I’ve been delaying long enough. My irritation with him will not ruin my next act of rebellion.

It’s been in the works for months. Once I do this, I’ll have chipped away at Roman in ways no one else has. It’ll kill him, maybe the business; it makes me giddy with hope.

Sneaking down the main stairs, I take to the walls, hiding from the cameras.

Crossing the grand living room, with its high ceilings and sickening roses, I move to my father—now Roman’s—office. Stalling, I listen for a noise. Nothing comes. I slip my fingers under the painting behind the desk—a beautiful piece from my mother’s countryside in Italy she had commissioned—and pull.

There, a large black safe sits, worn with age. It has a designated dial and a special code. There are three chances to put in the correct code before it locks down, keeping everything inside a secret.

When Hayes escaped his horrors downstairs, he cracked this and left with his mother’s ring. My father was never the same after that.

I think, somewhere in his deluded, terrible heart, he actually loved Hayes’s mother. That ring was his last connection to a woman he destroyed with that adoration.

It doesn’t make up what he did to her—or to Hayes.

Entering the new code—my brother’s birthday because duh—I remove a stack of money. All one-hundreds. All stained with my family’s misdeeds. They don’t belong to the Bruno family, anyway.

Stuffing it into my pocket, I quickly replace the painting and slink back out into the hall. Around the corner is the kitchen, and further back, the door to the basement.

I stop short. It’s huge, made of black iron, and with a bulky lock on the outside.

Glancing to my left, I rock back on my heels before Ello appears.

He materializes from the shadows as if born from them. He’s in his late fifties, with graying hair and a stocky build. There’s always a gun on his hip, and he’s never in anything but his black suit.

He signs, “Are you sure about this?”

I nod and sign back, “It’s my turn to help.”

“And if your brother finds out?”

I roll my eyes. “I’ll deal with it.”

Ello nods, but he doesn’t look happy. Since Carina died when I was eight, he’s become the closest parental figure in my life. Without him, I wouldn’t know how to ride a bike or locate the constellations in the sky. He’s been my protector, and he doesn’t want me to risk harming myself.

Right now, there’s no other choice.