Chapter 7

Kimberly stumbled out into the street, waving down a passing Uber with trembling hands. The driver glanced nervously at her in the rearview mirror, clearly uncomfortable with her torn clothes and visible injuries, but mercifully asked no questions.

When she finally dragged herself through the front door of the Jordan mansion, the scene in the living room stopped her cold. Agatha was curled on the Italian leather sofa, wrapped in a plush cashmere throw, playing the role of traumatized victim to perfection. Jayden knelt beside her like a devoted knight, tenderly spooning liquid medicine between her lips, murmuring soft encouragement with each swallow.

Something shifted in the air—a change in pressure, a sixth sense—and Jayden’s head snapped up. When his eyes locked on Kimberly, they contained such visceral disgust that she physically recoiled.

“You little psycho bitch,” Ronald appeared from the hallway, crossing the distance between them in three swift strides. His palm cracked across her face with enough force to make her ears ring. She stumbled sideways, vision swimming, her burned and battered body screaming as fresh pain radiated from her cheekbone.

“What kind of sick, twisted monster are you?” Ronald’s face contorted with rage. “Jealous that your sister’s back? So fucking jealous you’d stage a goddamn kidnapping? She could have been killed!” He jabbed his finger into her chest. “If Jayden hadn’t gotten there when he did—”

Agatha interrupted with a performance worthy of an Oscar. “Daddy, please. It’s enough.” Her voice dripped with manufactured concern. “I’m okay, really. Let’s not make this worse.”

“Shut up, Agatha! Stop defending this worthless piece of trash!” Ronald’s neck bulged with popping veins, his face mottled purple with fury.

Kimberly stood frozen, her body a battlefield of competing pains, her mind strangely detached from the scene unfolding around her. After what seemed an eternity of charged silence, Jayden spoke. “Apologize to Agatha.”

Three words, delivered with such cold finality they might have been carved from ice.

Something long-dormant stirred in Kimberly’s chest. “No.” The word emerged quiet but firm, surprising even herself. During those hours in the warehouse, as cigarettes burned patterns into her skin and rough hands violated her body, clarity had finally come. Agatha had orchestrated the entire kidnapping—the perfect scheme to cement Kimberly’s role as the villain in their family drama. She was done being the scapegoat. Done apologizing for crimes she hadn’t committed.

Agatha released a theatrical sigh. “It’s fine, Jay. She probably didn’t mean it.” Her voice honeyed with false magnanimity. “I’d hate for this to destroy what little relationship we have…”

“She tried to have you killed and you’re worried about her feelings?” Jayden never took his eyes off Kimberly, his disgust palpable. Something else flickered there too—confusion, perhaps even unease at this unexpected resistance. The meek, desperate-to-please girl he’d manipulated for years had somehow grown claws.

Ronald, further enraged by Kimberly’s defiance, grabbed her arm and yanked her toward Agatha. Only when an involuntary cry escaped her lips did he notice the cigarette burns covering her skin—dozens of them, angry red circles dotting her arms like grotesque polka dots. His momentary confusion was quickly erased by Jayden’s cutting assessment:

“Jesus Christ, you burned yourself to frame Agatha?” His voice held equal parts revulsion and disbelief. “That’s fucking pathological, even for you.” Any flicker of paternal concern in Ronald’s eyes immediately hardened back to rage.

He forced Kimberly down, his fingers digging into her shoulders until her legs buckled and she crashed to her knees on the marble floor.

“You ungrateful little shit,” he snarled. “You’d mutilate the body your mother gave you just to get attention? You’re no daughter of mine. You’re nothing but a cancer in this family!”

From her position on the floor, Kimberly’s empty gaze drifted up, accidentally connecting with Jayden’s arctic stare. The tableau was perfect in its cruel symbolism—Jayden and Agatha on their throne-like sofa, looking down at her kneeling form with twin expressions of contempt, as if she were something that had crawled in from the sewers.

Something about her hollow, unblinking stare made Jayden shift uncomfortably. “Kimberly,” he repeated, voice sharp as a blade, “apologize to Agatha, and we can move past this.”

A broken laugh bubbled up from her raw throat. Her bloodshot eyes locked onto his, each word deliberate and clear: “I will never apologize for something I didn’t do. Beat me. Kill me. I don’t give a fuck anymore.”

Jayden went completely still, whatever microscopic trace of humanity he might have felt toward her vanishing. Ronald’s fists came next—raining down on her shoulders, her back, anywhere he could reach. Words like “disgrace” and “should have drowned you at birth” filtered through the haze of pain until blackness mercifully claimed her.

When consciousness returned, the living room was empty. The grandfather clock showed it was after midnight. She’d been unconscious for hours. Every movement sent fresh waves of agony through her battered body as she used the sofa to pull herself upright. She staggered to her bedroom where her packed suitcase waited on the bed—her escape route from this hell.

As she clicked the final latch closed, a voice slithered from the doorway, “How’d you enjoy my special going-away present?”

Agatha leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over her designer pajamas, her smile vicious. “I was hoping to keep you around for the engagement party next week—make you serve champagne, maybe give a little toast to how happy you are for us.” She inspected her manicure. “But Daddy insists you’ve embarrassed the family enough. He doesn’t want your pathetic face ruining any more photos.”

She sauntered closer, her expensive perfume suffocating in the small space. “Don’t even think about coming back, you worthless cunt. This family only functions when you’re not in it.” Her voice dropped to a cruel whisper. “Oh, and thanks for keeping my man’s dick wet for two years. He said you were a decent enough hole to fuck when he was bored, though he had to close his eyes and think of me to get it up.”

Kimberly’s face remained perfectly blank, a skill honed through years of hiding her emotions. She wouldn’t give Agatha the satisfaction of a reaction. The suitcase closed with a final, decisive click—sealing away any lingering attachment she might have felt toward this house or the people in it.

Before sunrise, Kimberly was at Logan International, boarding a one-way flight that would take her four thousand miles from Boston. She left without hesitation or backward glance. At the gate, she deleted Jayden’s contact information from her phone, erasing the last digital trace of him from her life. As the plane carved through endless sky, the white contrail fading in its wake symbolized the final period at the end of this chapter of her life. A chapter she would never revisit.