Chapter 3

The moment the chamber door sealed shut behind me, I knew it was over.

Chloe pressed the lock from outside. The screen flashed red: LOCKED. I threw myself against the door, palms hitting the surface with a dull, deadened thud.

"Let us out!"

Through the glass, I watched Chloe's finger glide across the touchscreen—the casual ease of someone choosing a coffee order.

Then she pressed confirm: negative forty degrees Celsius.

The vents above let out a low, grinding roar. Cold air erupted from every direction, coiling upward like invisible snakes wrapping around my legs, my arms, my throat.

"Grandma!" I spun and threw myself back toward Eleanor. Her body had already begun to shake—deep, violent tremors she couldn't control.

I stripped off my jacket and wrapped it around her, pulling her into my arms, trying to press whatever warmth I had left into her skin.

But my warmth was already going.

The cold bored into my pores and froze the blood beneath them. My fingers went numb first, then my lips. Frost gathered on my lashes, and a thin shell of ice began to form along the length of my hair.

"Beg me." Chloe's voice drifted through the glass, sweet and satisfied. "Beg nicely and I might think about letting you out~"

Her two friends collapsed into laughter. The cameraman kept the lens steady, still streaming.

When no begging came, Chloe didn't hesitate. She turned back to the panel and pushed the dial further down.

Negative sixty.

Eleanor's breathing became almost imperceptible. Her chest had stopped rising in any visible way. Her lips had turned black-purple, and the last trace of color had drained completely from her face. Her trembling had stopped—which was the thing that frightened me most. She had gone past shivering. She no longer had the strength for it.

"Grandma!" I patted her face. Nothing. I pressed my fingers hard into her philtrum. Her eyelids flickered but didn't open.

She was leaving.

I turned back to the door and slammed both palms against the glass. My nails broke. Blood smeared across the surface.

"Please!" My voice came out in a ragged tear—unrecognizable, stripped raw. "Let her out! She's dying!"

On the other side of the glass, Chloe tilted her head and watched me the way you'd watch a mouse trapped inside a jar.

"Oh?" The corner of her mouth pulled into something slow and cruel. "Whatever happened to that attitude you had earlier?"

"She just had open-heart surgery!" I forced each word out through clenched teeth. "She could die at any moment! If she does, this is murder—the police won't let you walk away from this, and neither will this club!"

The cold was cutting through my skin now like broken glass, pressing deeper with every breath. My heartbeat had slowed. My thoughts were starting to blur at the edges. But I kept my arms locked around Eleanor. I didn't let go.

The warmth in her body was disappearing.

I could feel it going. Like sand running through a fist—no matter how hard I held on, I couldn't stop it.

My voice shook—not from fear, but from the cold eating through me. "If she dies here, Julian doesn't walk away from this either."

I saw it—a flicker on the cameraman's face. He'd only just seemed to register what he was looking at: lips that had gone past purple, past blue, and were turning black.

He leaned close to Chloe and lowered his voice. "She really doesn't look good. Maybe let them out first? If someone actually dies—"

"Shut up." Chloe cut him off with a glance.

She stood there. Watching me. Something moved behind her eyes.

I pressed into that fraction of hesitation with everything I had left.

"Let her out! Do whatever you want to me—but she can't die in here!"

Then Chloe smiled.

"Fine. I can let them out—but you have to do exactly what I say."

She pointed her phone toward me, screen first. "You made a little comment earlier about my necklace being designed by Clara. So here's what you're going to do." The smile settled into something practiced and merciless. "In front of my hundred thousand followers, you're going to say: Clara is a shameless stalker who threw herself at Julian. She's nothing but trash."

My nails drove into my palms.

Rage and humiliation surged up through my chest, scalding, volcanic.

I looked down at Eleanor in my arms.

Her life was draining away, second by second.

Every second might be the last.

Chloe had no idea I was Clara. And yet she had managed to find the worst possible thing she could make me say.

I bit down on my lower lip until it broke.

The taste of blood spread across my tongue.

I swallowed every last piece of my pride. Ground it down and forced it under.

"Clara…" My voice barely held. "Is a shameless stalker who threw herself at Julian. She's nothing but trash."

"I did exactly what you said!" I screamed, the sound tearing out of me—raw, desperate, on the edge of breaking. "Open the door! Now!"

Chloe let out a sharp, delighted laugh. Pure triumph, nothing else.

"I just wanted to watch you beg like a dog." She shrugged lightly.

"But now I've changed my mind. You two can stay right where you are."