Chapter 1
I could hear everything. Whispered prayers. Muffled crying. Dress shoes scraping against gravel. But I couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't scream.
I'm in a coffin. This is my funeral.
Oliver's voice drifted down from above, smooth as always. "Lara was the most precious gift in my life. She was so pure, so innocent... she needed protection from a world that would've crushed her gentle spirit."
Even when I'm dead, you're still putting on a show.
Here he was, giving my eulogy, painting himself as the devoted brother who'd tried so hard to save me. When really, he was the reason I'd swallowed those pills three nights ago.
Someone was crying—ugly, broken sobs that cut through the formal atmosphere. I knew that voice. Sophia.
"This is all my fault," she choked out. "If I had just... if I hadn't..."
Sophia? You came to my funeral?
I figured we'd been done since college. Since Oliver played me that recording of her supposedly calling me naive. Since I believed him and cut her out completely.
Wait.
Something was off. I could think. I could hear. Dead people couldn't do either.
My eyes snapped open.
Instead of coffin lining, I was staring at a familiar cream ceiling. Instead of suffocating darkness, afternoon sunlight streamed through lace curtains. My room. My eighteen-year-old bedroom, complete with the pink walls I'd begged to repaint.
I sat up fast. My head spun. The calendar on my nightstand read Tuesday, March 15th. Three days before my eighteenth birthday.
"What the hell?"
This can't be real. I remember everything. The pills, the darkness, Oliver finding me on the bathroom floor...
But here I was, back in my teenage body, in my teenage room, with seven years of memories that technically hadn't happened yet.
My eyes landed on the diamond necklace draped over my jewelry box. A "sweet sixteen" gift from Oliver. The sight of it hit me like a punch to the gut.
College. That's when it really started.
I remembered the day Oliver showed me that recording. I was a sophomore, finally feeling like I belonged somewhere. Sophia and I were roommates, best friends, planning road trips and double dates.
"I think you should hear this, Lara." Oliver's voice had been gentle, worried. "I recorded it by accident when I called you last week. Your phone must've been on."
Sophia's voice came through crystal clear: "I love Lara, but honestly? She's so naive. She trusts everyone, believes everything. Someone's gonna take advantage of that someday."
I'd been crushed. My best friend thought I was an idiot, a kid who couldn't take care of herself. So when Oliver suggested I room alone next semester, "just until you find people who really get you," I'd jumped at it.
But now I see it. The recording was too clean, too perfect. Oliver probably paid some girl to fake Sophia's voice, or used one of those new AI programs. And I'd been too hurt to question it.
One by one, he picked off everyone around me. Marcus was "obviously using me to get closer to the Sterling money." Jessica was "clearly jealous of my looks." Even Professor Williams, who'd pushed me to try journalism, was "just filling his classes with pretty girls to make himself look good."
By senior year, I had nobody left. Only Oliver.
And then Emma happened.
Emma Chen was Oliver's girlfriend when I turned twenty-two. She was a reporter, sharp and fearless, and she liked me right away. Maybe she saw what I couldn't—that I was drowning.
"Your brother's kinda intense, isn't he?" she'd said once, after Oliver insisted on picking me up from lunch because it was "getting dark."
It was two in the afternoon.
But Oliver was ready for that too. "Emma's jealous of how close we are, Lara. She thinks I pay too much attention to you. She wants to mess with our relationship."
So I pulled away from Emma. Stopped taking her calls, avoided places I knew she'd be. When Oliver dumped her six months later, she tried like hell to reach me, leaving voicemails I never returned.
She was trying to save me, and I picked my jailer instead.
The whole thing was so obvious now. By twenty-five, I had no job I'd chosen, no friends I'd made, no life that wasn't filtered through Oliver's "protection." When I finally saw the prison he'd built around me, it was way too late. I had nowhere to go, nobody to call.
The night I killed myself, he stood outside my bathroom door, still playing the worried brother. "Lara, please talk to me. You know you're all I have left in this world. You're everything to me."
Even my suicide was about him.
I stared at my reflection in the vanity mirror. Eighteen years old, clear skin, bright eyes. But the innocence was gone. I'd lived through seven years of being systematically cut off from the world. I knew exactly what Oliver Sterling could do.
"This time," I whispered, "I'm not falling for any of it."
A knock interrupted me.
"Lara? You up?" Oliver's voice carried that same warmth, that same caring tone with just enough protective worry mixed in.
"Yeah, come in."
He walked in with a breakfast tray, flashing that perfect smile. "Had the kitchen whip up your favorite—French toast with strawberries."
Same breakfast. Same smile. Same bullshit.
"Thanks." My voice came out cooler than he expected.
His smile slipped a little. "You okay? You seem... different this morning."
"Do I?" I kept my tone even. "Maybe I'm just growing up."
"Growing up?" Something flickered behind his eyes. "Lara, you're still so young. The world's complicated, and you—"
"I'm turning eighteen in three days." I cut him off, watching his face carefully. "Think it's time I started making my own calls."
Oliver's jaw tightened, barely noticeable. "Of course you can make decisions. I just think you should be careful about—"
"I want to plan my own birthday party." I kept going, testing him. "Invite whoever I want. Maybe even check out some colleges that aren't right down the street."
The room got colder. Oliver's smile stretched too wide.
"Lara." Still gentle, but with steel underneath. "You know I only want what's best for you. The world outside this house... there are people who'd hurt you. Use you."
There it is. The first bar of the cage.
But as I looked at him—really looked—I saw something that made my stomach drop. In his eyes, just for a second, I caught a flash of something I'd never seen before.
Unless… he remembers too…?
If so, Oliver wasn't just planning to repeat his old tricks—he was planning to perfect them. He knew exactly where his first attempt had gone wrong, exactly why I'd broken free enough to end it all.
This time, he was gonna make damn sure I never got the chance.