In Chap­ter 32 of “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” Mikael Blomkvist arrives at Göte­borg Cen­tral Sta­tion at night, real­iz­ing he has fall­en behind sched­ule. After attempts to rent a car and even­tu­al­ly secur­ing a Volk­swa­gen, he dri­ves towards Alingsås, buy­ing a map and refresh­ments along the way. Mean­while, Bublan­s­ki reach­es out to Modig, dis­cussing Björ­ck­’s report that impli­cates Lis­beth Salan­der in seri­ous crim­i­nal mat­ters stem­ming from her trou­bled past involv­ing men in pow­er. They plan to con­front Björ­ck the fol­low­ing morn­ing.

At home, Berg­er con­fides in her hus­band Beck­man that she has been offered the posi­tion of edi­tor-in-chief at *Sven­s­ka Mor­gon-Posten*. Beck­man encour­ages her to seize the oppor­tu­ni­ty despite her guilt about leav­ing dur­ing a cri­sis. The nar­ra­tive tran­si­tions to Palm­gren and Arman­sky, who dis­cuss Salander’s trou­bling sit­u­a­tion, with Palm­gren reveal­ing a new­found vig­or and refus­ing to let oth­ers redeem Lisbeth’s choic­es.

The ten­sion builds as Miri­am Wu, recov­er­ing in the hos­pi­tal after a bru­tal assault, reflects on her con­fronta­tion with dan­ger and her bond with Salan­der. Salan­der her­self, in severe dis­tress after being buried alive, fights through excru­ci­at­ing pain to exca­vate her­self from the grave. Her ordeal illus­trates her resilience as she slow­ly digs her way to free­dom, recall­ing the instinct to sur­vive.

The chap­ter esca­lates fur­ther as Salan­der makes her way back to Zalachenko’s farm­house. Using an axe as a weapon, she con­fronts her father in a bru­tal and chaot­ic bat­tle, prompt­ing Nie­der­mann to flee in ter­ror. Blomkvist, who has been track­ing Nie­der­mann, even­tu­al­ly cap­tures him. The stakes rise as Blomkvist arrives at Zalachenko’s farm­house, encoun­ter­ing a blood­ied scene with Salan­der weak­ened but still alive.

Ulti­mate­ly, their paths con­verge as Blomkvist finds Salan­der uncon­scious but hold­ing a pis­tol, sig­ni­fy­ing a moment of pre­car­i­ous hope in the face of over­whelm­ing adver­si­ty. The chap­ter encap­su­lates themes of sur­vival, con­fronta­tion, and the per­son­al bat­tles each char­ac­ter faces, set­ting the stage for the intense cli­max that lies ahead.

In mid-May 2002, the shock­ing news of Bre­itwieser’s illic­it activ­i­ties in the art world is broad­cast­ed on tele­vi­sion while he is incar­cer­at­ed in a Swiss jail. The sen­sa­tion­al tale reach­es the pub­lic fol­low­ing his mother’s police inter­ro­ga­tion, dur­ing which she admits to destroy­ing the paint­ings, lead­ing to a media fren­zy over the unprece­dent­ed crime involv­ing a moth­er-son-girl­friend dynam­ic. As Bre­itwieser learns the extent of the sit­u­a­tion through TV reports, he grap­ples with his mother’s vague admis­sions about their destruc­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly her cryp­tic state­ment that “there are no paint­ings, and there nev­er were.”

Var­i­ous media out­lets esti­mate the val­ue of the stolen art­work, with fig­ures rang­ing from $1 bil­lion to over $2 bil­lion, a num­ber that over­whelms him con­sid­er­ing he had always min­i­mized his collection’s worth to under thir­ty mil­lion dol­lars. He feels doomed by the pos­si­bil­i­ty of need­ing to reim­burse such an insur­mount­able amount. In jail, he choos­es to decline all inter­view requests, remain­ing silent about his ordeal. While his moth­er faces impris­on­ment, his girl­friend, Anne-Cather­ine, is still free but has a tri­al ahead, adding to his despair.

Over­whelmed with sad­ness and feel­ing the crush­ing weight of soli­tude, Bre­itwieser attempts to take his own life using den­tal floss. For­tu­nate­ly, a guard inter­venes, plac­ing him on sui­cide watch and pre­scrib­ing anti­de­pres­sants. Despite this, thoughts of Anne-Cather­ine begin to occu­py his mind, ignit­ing a desire to rekin­dle their roman­tic con­nec­tion as a rea­son to keep liv­ing. Unable to com­mu­ni­cate direct­ly due to restric­tions imposed by the author­i­ties, he mails her let­ters packed with apolo­gies and dec­la­ra­tions of love, but he receives no reply.

In a sur­pris­ing turn, Bre­itwieser’s father reach­es out, break­ing an eight-year silence with a heart­felt let­ter of sup­port. This rekin­dles a rela­tion­ship that had long been lost, and his father’s vis­its become a source of com­fort, help­ing him adjust to prison life. Inmates intro­duce him to new skills, and he finds him­self grow­ing increas­ing­ly accli­mat­ed to his sit­u­a­tion. As prepa­ra­tions for his tri­al begin, it becomes evi­dent that the con­se­quences of his actions will extend beyond the Swiss bor­ders, lead­ing to poten­tial tri­als in mul­ti­ple coun­tries. On Feb­ru­ary 4, 2003, he is escort­ed to the court­room in Gruyères, where he faces the daunt­ing task of defend­ing him­self against a back­drop of pub­lic scruti­ny.

In Chap­ter 32 of “James,” the pro­tag­o­nist endures a long jour­ney, strug­gling with painful blis­ters from the boots pro­vid­ed for him. The dis­com­fort leads him to remove his shoes, find­ing some relief as he walks bare­foot on the damp ground. He reflects on Huck­’s well-being and miss­es him, acknowl­edg­ing the like­li­hood that Huck remains cap­tured.

Upon reach­ing a small log­ging camp, char­ac­ter­ized by hasti­ly con­struct­ed shacks and mills, he observes the stark racial divide where black men labor under the watch­ful eyes of white men equipped with bull­whips. The slave work­ers bear vis­i­ble signs of their toil, prompt­ing the pro­tag­o­nist to won­der about his own future and the avail­abil­i­ty of paper to write.

As they set up tents for the evening, Big Mike inquires about the town’s name, jok­ing­ly sug­gest­ing it could be “Hell.” Con­ver­sa­tions among the men turn nos­tal­gic and long­ing as they men­tion their desires to be in St. Louis or New Orleans, cities known for their excite­ment. The pro­tag­o­nist admits he has nev­er trav­eled to these places, leav­ing him feel­ing dis­tant from their expe­ri­ences.

The dis­cus­sion veers toward Emmet­t’s char­ac­ter, reveal­ing mixed feel­ings regard­ing slav­ery and the social dynam­ics of their group. It’s echoed that Emmett doesn’t sup­port slav­ery, but Big Mike’s per­spec­tive notes that some peo­ple rely on it for labor, imply­ing that they are all tied to this com­plex socio-eco­nom­ic sys­tem in one way or anoth­er.

Emmett warns the group about the inher­ent dan­gers in the area they are per­form­ing, cau­tion­ing them regard­ing their tenor poten­tial­ly being harmed if his iden­ti­ty is revealed. Amidst the prepa­ra­tions for the per­for­mance, the pro­tag­o­nist cleans up, feel­ing the sting­ing real­i­ty of his sta­tus as a slave while his com­pan­ions pre­pare for the show.

Antic­i­pat­ing the group’s depar­ture, he makes a deci­sive choice to escape. He gath­ers bread, his ill-fit­ting shoes, and Emmett’s leather note­book, sym­bol­iz­ing his break from both his posi­tion and his mas­ter. He sprints into the wilder­ness, deter­mined to dis­tance him­self from his sta­tus as a dou­ble run­away slave. Despite his injuries, he runs with urgency, feel­ing lib­er­at­ed yet haunt­ed by the con­se­quences of his actions. Tak­ing refuge in the trees, he con­sumes bread and takes a moment to rest, sig­nal­ing a crit­i­cal turn­ing point in his jour­ney toward free­dom.

In Chap­ter 32 of “We Solve Mur­ders,” Susan Knox, head of HR at Max­i­mum Impact Solu­tions, is in the board­room scru­ti­niz­ing Jeff’s file on François Lou­bet while Bloomberg News dis­cuss­es high inter­est rates. Uncer­tain about Jef­f’s fate, she reflects on his car being found with bul­let holes and blood, mark­ing a grim pos­si­bil­i­ty. Despite her con­stant attempts to reach him through sev­er­al phones, she has yet to receive a response.

Delv­ing into Jeff’s var­i­ous bank accounts, which range from a high-yield tax-free invest­ment in the Cay­man Islands to a decades-old NatWest account, Susan dis­cov­ers bal­ances total­ing over two mil­lion but finds an alarm­ing lack of recent activ­i­ty. Only rou­tine pay­ments and a recent fuel trans­ac­tion from a South Lon­don petrol sta­tion appear, point­ing to pos­si­ble iso­la­tion if Jeff is indeed alive. This rais­es con­cerns about where he might have hid­den phones and mon­ey.

With Jeff absent—his sta­tus haunt­ing­ly ambiguous—Susan pon­ders whom to con­sult. Most work at Max­i­mum Impact Solu­tions is free­lance, leav­ing the office silent at this hour. She con­sid­ers con­tact­ing Henk, Jeff’s long-time friend, who might offer help if Jeff has indeed faced per­il.

As she reads threat­en­ing emails from Lou­bet, penned in a strange­ly cheer­ful man­ner, she search­es for clues in Jef­f’s mark­ings through­out the doc­u­ments, reveal­ing his own inquiries into Loubet’s iden­ti­ty. The sparse Client Iden­ti­ty Form is devoid of help­ful information—merely list­ing Loubet’s name and an Indone­sian bank. Feel­ing stuck, Susan con­fronts the real­i­ty that she can­not seek answers from Jeff direct­ly, thus con­tem­plat­ing her next steps.

Her gaze falls on a mir­ror shield­ing Henk’s secret den, rais­ing doubts about trust­ing him. Ulti­mate­ly, she resolves that reach­ing out to Amy Wheel­er might be her best option, real­iz­ing the urgency to get oth­ers to review these files before more lives are endan­gered. The chap­ter clos­es with a sense of urgency and ten­sion, empha­siz­ing the unfold­ing mys­tery sur­round­ing Jeff and Lou­bet.

In Chap­ter 32 of “All the Col­ors of the Dark,” Saint begins her day by tak­ing the first bus of the morn­ing, jour­ney­ing along­side tired shift work­ers, their heads droop­ing as they try to catch a few more min­utes of sleep. The bus rolls over a gray road, weav­ing through fields of brown wheat that sprawl like a car­pet only half-formed after being yanked away by divine hands. Along the way, pylons stand as a makeshift army, with a fad­ed water tow­er punc­tu­at­ing the bar­ren sky.

Upon reach­ing Chester­wood, she trans­fers bus­es. The dri­ver seems unusu­al­ly curi­ous, watch­ing her close­ly from his rearview mir­ror as she con­tem­plates the uncer­tain future ahead. As she trav­els fur­ther, the land­scape shifts, flat­tened grass­land and salt-col­ored grav­el emerg­ing along the road. Even­tu­al­ly, the bus slows to a crawl, its gear­box grum­bling and sus­pen­sion bounc­ing uneven­ly.

Saint exits the bus far from civ­i­liza­tion, and the dri­ver hes­i­tates before dri­ving away, his eyes lin­ger­ing on her until she’s wrapped in the hill­side’s embrace. Fol­low­ing the straight road, she enters a sprawl­ing wood­land, ref­er­enc­ing her map repeat­ed­ly to ensure she fol­lows the right path.

She encoun­ters a warn­ing sign that reads “Cau­tion Min­i­mum Main­te­nance Road,” indi­cat­ing the risks of pro­ceed­ing fur­ther. Strolling down the grassy twin tracks, she observes the fields around her: tight­ly rolled bales of crops, a trac­tor enveloped in mud, and the dense wood­lands ahead that beck­on her to slow down as pos­sum haw leaves tum­ble into a gul­ly, their bright red berries con­trast­ing with the sur­round­ing shad­ows.

As she splash­es through a cold stream, Saint finds her­self amongst the wildlife—deer in the dis­tance, rac­coons, and watch­ing ravens over­head. At the first hint of rain, she peers through the canopy of leaves that flick­ers with the shift­ing light.

Even­tu­al­ly, she spots a soli­tary house, its tim­ber face weath­ered and worn, with a cor­ru­gat­ed steel roof and sev­er­al dilap­i­dat­ed out­build­ings near­by. Each struc­ture tells the sto­ry of neglect—a rusty trac­tor, a decay­ing shack—yet it is the sight of a navy steel van inside the largest barn that stirs dread with­in her.

The atmos­phere thick­ens with ten­sion as she hears a noise and spins around, only to find a fox squir­rel climb­ing a beech tree. With her heart rac­ing, she approach­es the porch and paus­es, lis­ten­ing intent­ly. In her bag lies her sling­shot and her grandfather’s gun, her only means of defense in this uncer­tain set­ting.

Wait­ing ai

Alis down here with­out even know­ing the full extent of your own inep­ti­tude?”

“Because I must,” I said sim­ply. “Because I love him.”

Alis’s expres­sion soft­ened for a moment before she sighed, “I will help you, but know this: Ama­ran­tha is cru­el beyond mea­sure. The jour­ney will test you in ways you can­not imag­ine.”

In Chap­ter 32, the pro­tag­o­nist returns to the estate, find­ing it in ruins and signs of a bru­tal fight but no bod­ies, hint­ing that Tam­lin and Lucien might be alive. Inves­ti­gat­ing the dam­age, she encoun­ters Alis, who ini­tial­ly is star­tled but then con­firms that Tam­lin and Lucien are indeed alive but have been tak­en by Ama­ran­tha to her court Under the Moun­tain due to a curse. Alis nar­rates the his­to­ry of Ama­ran­tha’s rise to pow­er, reveal­ing she was once a gen­er­al for the King of Hybern and became known for her bru­tal­i­ty dur­ing the war with humans. After the war, she charmed her way into the courts of Pry­thi­an, slow­ly infil­trat­ing and even­tu­al­ly seiz­ing pow­er by trick­ing the High Lords and steal­ing their strengths. The curse on Tam­lin was a result of his refusal to become her lover, a chal­lenge set by Ama­ran­tha that he had to find a human who despised faeries to fall in love with him as a means to break the spell. The pro­tag­o­nist real­izes the depth of her fail­ure to see through the curse and her role in the fate of the faerie lands. Deter­mined to save Tam­lin and the oth­ers, she insists on going Under the Moun­tain to face Ama­ran­tha, despite Alis’s warn­ings about the per­ilous jour­ney and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of her suc­cess due to her human frailty. This chap­ter is dense with back­sto­ry reveal­ing the antag­o­nist’s moti­va­tions and the com­plex­i­ties of the curse, set­ting the stage for a cli­mac­tic con­fronta­tion.

In Chap­ter Thir­ty-Two, the nar­ra­tor, Mil­lie, grap­ples with insom­nia and emo­tion­al tur­moil three days fol­low­ing a close encounter with the law at a gro­cery store. Her uneasy cohab­i­ta­tion with Nina, who holds sig­nif­i­cant con­trol over the house­hold, is fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by Mil­lie’s deep­en­ing feel­ings for Andrew. Despite a shared inti­mate moment and mutu­al attrac­tion, Andrew’s recent dis­cov­ery of Mil­lie’s crim­i­nal past casts a shad­ow over their bud­ding rela­tion­ship.

The nar­ra­tive unfolds in Mil­lie’s sti­fling bed­room, push­ing her to seek relief in the kitchen, where she stum­bles upon Andrew alone on the back porch. The encounter leads to a heart­felt con­ver­sa­tion where Mil­lie attempts to bridge the gap their secrets have cre­at­ed. Andrew, drink­ing and detached, ini­tial­ly shuts down her expla­na­tions and apolo­gies, sig­ni­fy­ing his strug­gle with Mil­lie’s rev­e­la­tion. Despite his cold demeanor, a moment of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty sur­faces as they both acknowl­edge the gen­uine hap­pi­ness they felt dur­ing their time togeth­er. This shared admis­sion cul­mi­nates in a kiss, charged with ten­sion and regret, sug­gest­ing a pos­si­ble yet com­pli­cat­ed future for their rela­tion­ship.

How­ev­er, the chap­ter clos­es on a sus­pense­ful note as Mil­lie encoun­ters Nina stand­ing omi­nous­ly in the hall­way, pos­si­bly hav­ing wit­nessed the inti­mate moment between Mil­lie and Andrew. Nina’s pres­ence and the eerie descrip­tion of her in the dark hint at under­ly­ing con­flicts and pow­er dynam­ics with­in the house­hold. The nar­ra­tor’s final thoughts reveal her con­flict­ed desires and the com­plex web of rela­tion­ships and secrets that frame her cur­rent predica­ment.

The chap­ter, laced with the themes of for­bid­den love, guilt, and the strug­gle for auton­o­my with­in oppres­sive cir­cum­stances, sets the stage for esca­lat­ing ten­sions and deci­sions that could alter the lives of every­one involved.

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

CHAPTER
32
In the end, only Amren and I joined Rhys, Cass­ian hav­ing failed to sway his
High Lord, Azriel still off over­see­ing his net­work of spies and inves­ti­gat­ing
the human realm, and Mor tasked with guard­ing Velaris. Rhys would
win­now us direct­ly into Adri­a­ta, the cas­tle-city of the Sum­mer Court—and
there we would stay, for how­ev­er long it took me to detect and then steal
the first half of the Book.
As Rhys’s newest pet, I would be grant­ed tours of the city and the High
Lord’s per­son­al res­i­dence. If we were lucky, none of them would real­ize
that Rhys’s lap­dog was actu­al­ly a blood­hound.
And it was a very, very good dis­guise.
Rhys and Amren stood in the town house foy­er the next day, the rich
morn­ing sun­light stream­ing through the win­dows and pool­ing on the ornate
car­pet. Amren wore her usu­al shades of gray—her loose pants cut to just
beneath her navel, the bil­low­ing top cropped to show the barest slice of skin
along her midriff. Allur­ing as a calm sea under a cloudy sky.
Rhys was in head-to-toe black accent­ed with sil­ver thread—no wings.
The cool, cul­tured male I’d first met. His favorite mask.
For my own, I’d select­ed a flow­ing lilac dress, its skirts float­ing on a
phan­tom wind beneath the sil­ver-and-pearl-crust­ed belt at my waist.
Match­ing night-bloom­ing sil­ver flow­ers had been embroi­dered to climb
from the hem to brush my thighs, and a few more twined down the folds at
my shoul­ders. The per­fect gown to com­bat the warmth of the Sum­mer
Court.
It swished and sighed as I descend­ed the last two stairs into the foy­er.
Rhys sur­veyed me with a long, unread­able sweep from my sil­ver-slip­pered
feet to my half-up hair. Nuala had curled the strands that had been left down
—soft, sup­ple curls that brought out the gold in my hair.
Rhys sim­ply said, “Good. Let’s go.”
My mouth popped open, but Amren explained with a broad, feline smile,
“He’s pis­sy this morn­ing.”
“Why?” I asked, watch­ing Amren take Rhys’s hand, her del­i­cate fin­gers
dwarfed by his. He held out the oth­er to me.
“Because,” Rhys answered for her, “I stayed out late with Cass­ian and
Azriel, and they took me for all I was worth in cards.”
“Sore los­er?” I gripped his hand. His cal­lus­es scraped against my own—
the only reminder of the trained war­rior beneath the clothes and veneer.
“I am when my broth­ers tag-team me,” he grum­bled. He offered no
warn­ing before we van­ished on a mid­night wind, and then—
Then I was squint­ing at the glar­ing sun off a turquoise sea, just as I was
try­ing to reorder my body around the dry, suf­fo­cat­ing heat, even with the
cool­ing breeze off the water.
I blinked a few times—and that was as much reac­tion as I let myself
show as I yanked my hand from Rhys’s grip.
We seemed to be stand­ing on a land­ing plat­form at the base of a tan stone
palace, the build­ing itself perched atop a moun­tain-island in the heart of a
half-moon bay. The city spread around and below us, toward that sparkling
sea—the build­ings all from that stone, or glim­mer­ing white mate­r­i­al that
might have been coral or pearl. Gulls flapped over the many tur­rets and
spires, no clouds above them, noth­ing on the breeze with them but salty air
and the clat­ter of the city below.
Var­i­ous bridges con­nect­ed the bustling island to the larg­er land­mass that
cir­cled it on three sides, one of them cur­rent­ly rais­ing itself so a many-
mast­ed ship could cruise through. Indeed, there were more ships than I
could count—some mer­chant ves­sels, some fish­ing ones, and some, it
seemed, fer­ry­ing peo­ple from the island-city to the main­land, whose slop­ing
shores were crammed full of more build­ings, more peo­ple.
More peo­ple like the half dozen before us, framed by a pair of sea glass
doors that opened into the palace itself. On our lit­tle bal­cony, there was no
option to escape—no path out but win­now­ing away … or going through
those doors. Or, I sup­posed, the plunge await­ing us to the red roofs of the
fine hous­es a hun­dred feet below.
“Wel­come to Adri­a­ta,” said the tall male in the cen­ter of the group.
And I knew him—remembered him.
Not from mem­o­ry. I’d already remem­bered that the hand­some High Lord
of Sum­mer had rich brown skin, white hair, and eyes of crush­ing, turquoise
blue. I’d already remem­bered he’d been forced to watch as his courtier’s
mind was invad­ed and then his life snuffed out by Rhysand. As Rhysand
lied to Ama­ran­tha about what he’d learned, and spared the male from a fate
per­haps worth than death.
No—I now remem­bered the High Lord of Sum­mer in a way I couldn’t
quite explain, like some frag­ment of me knew it had come from him, from
here. Like some piece of me said, I remem­ber, I remem­ber, I remem­ber. We
are one and the same, you and I.
Rhys mere­ly drawled, “Good to see you again, Tar­quin.”
The five oth­er peo­ple behind the High Lord of Sum­mer swapped frowns
of vary­ing sever­i­ty. Like their lord, their skin was dark, their hair in shades
of white or sil­ver, as if they had lived under the bright sun their entire lives.
Their eyes, how­ev­er, were of every col­or. And they now shift­ed between me
and Amren.
Rhys slid one hand into a pock­et and ges­tured with the oth­er to Amren.
“Amren, I think you know. Though you haven’t met her since your …
pro­mo­tion.” Cool, cal­cu­lat­ing grace, edged with steel.
Tar­quin gave Amren the briefest of nods. “Wel­come back to the city,
lady.”
Amren didn’t nod, or bow, or so much as curt­sy. She looked over
Tar­quin, tall and mus­cled, his clothes of sea-green and blue and gold, and
said, “At least you are far more hand­some than your cousin. He was an
eye­sore.” A female behind Tar­quin out­right glared. Amren’s red lips
stretched wide. “Con­do­lences, of course,” she added with as much sin­cer­i­ty
as a snake.
Wicked, cruel—that’s what Amren and Rhys were … what I was to be to
these peo­ple.
Rhys ges­tured to me. “I don’t believe you two were ever for­mal­ly
intro­duced Under the Moun­tain. Tar­quin, Feyre. Feyre, Tar­quin.” No titles
here—either to unnerve them or because Rhys found them a waste of
breath.
Tarquin’s eyes—such stun­ning, crys­tal blue—fixed on me.
I remem­ber you, I remem­ber you, I remem­ber you.
The High Lord did not smile.
I kept my face neu­tral, vague­ly bored.
His gaze drift­ed to my chest, the bare skin revealed by the sweep­ing vee
of my gown, as if he could see where that spark of life, his pow­er, had gone.
Rhys fol­lowed that gaze. “Her breasts are rather spec­tac­u­lar, aren’t they?
Deli­cious as ripe apples.”
I fought the urge to scowl, and instead slid my atten­tion to him, as
indo­lent­ly as he’d looked at me, at the oth­ers. “Here I was, think­ing you had
a fas­ci­na­tion with my mouth.”
Delight­ed sur­prise lit Rhys’s eyes, there and gone in a heart­beat.
We both looked back to our hosts, still stone-faced and stiff-backed.
Tar­quin seemed to weigh the air between my com­pan­ions and me, then
said care­ful­ly, “You have a tale to tell, it seems.”
“We have many tales to tell,” Rhys said, jerk­ing his chin toward the glass
doors behind them. “So why not get com­fort­able?”
The female a half-step behind Tar­quin inched clos­er. “We have
refresh­ments pre­pared.”
Tar­quin seemed to remem­ber her and put a hand on her slim shoul­der.
“Cresseida—Princess of Adri­a­ta.”
The ruler of his capital—or wife? There was no ring on either of their
fin­gers, and I didn’t rec­og­nize her from Under the Moun­tain. Her long,
sil­ver hair blew across her pret­ty face in the briny breeze, and I didn’t
mis­take the light in her brown eyes for any­thing but razor-sharp cun­ning.
“A plea­sure,” she mur­mured huski­ly to me. “And an hon­or.”
My break­fast turned to lead in my gut, but I didn’t let her see what the
grov­el­ing did to me; let her real­ize it was ammu­ni­tion. Instead I gave her
my best imi­ta­tion of Rhysand’s shrug. “The honor’s mine, princess.”
The oth­ers were hasti­ly intro­duced: three advis­ers who over­saw the city,
the court, and the trade. And then a broad-shoul­dered, hand­some male
named Var­i­an, Cresseida’s younger broth­er, cap­tain of Tarquin’s guard, and
Prince of Adri­a­ta. His atten­tion was fixed whol­ly on Amren—as if he knew
where the biggest threat lay. And would be hap­py to kill her, if giv­en the
chance.
In the brief time I’d known her, Amren had nev­er looked more delight­ed.
We were led into a palace craft­ed of shell-flecked walk­ways and walls,
count­less win­dows look­ing out to the bay and main­land or the open sea
beyond. Sea glass chan­de­liers swayed on the warm breeze over gur­gling
streams and foun­tains of fresh water. High fae—servants and courtiers—
hur­ried across and around them, most brown-skinned and clad in loose,
light cloth­ing, all far too pre­oc­cu­pied with their own mat­ters to take note or
inter­est in our pres­ence. No less­er faeries crossed our path—not one.
I kept a step behind Rhysand as he walked at Tarquin’s side, that mighty
pow­er of his leashed and dimmed, the oth­ers flow­ing behind us. Amren
remained with­in reach, and I won­dered if she was also to be my body­guard.
Tar­quin and Rhys had been talk­ing light­ly, both already sound­ing bored, of
the approach­ing Nynsar—of the native flow­ers that both courts would
dis­play for the minor, brief hol­i­day.
Calan­mai wouldn’t be too long after that.
My stom­ach twist­ed. If Tam­lin was intent on uphold­ing tra­di­tion, if I was
no longer with him … I didn’t let myself get that far down the road. It
wouldn’t be fair. To me—to him.
“We have four main cities in my ter­ri­to­ry,” Tar­quin said to me, look­ing
over his mus­cled shoul­der. “We spend the last month of win­ter and first
spring months in Adriata—it’s finest at this time of year.”
Indeed, I sup­posed that with end­less sum­mer, there was no lim­it to how
one might enjoy one’s time. In the coun­try, by the sea, in a city under the
stars … I nod­ded. “It’s very beau­ti­ful.”
Tar­quin stared at me long enough that Rhys said, “The repairs have been
going well, I take it.”
That hauled Tarquin’s atten­tion back. “Most­ly. There remains much to be
done. The back half of the cas­tle is a wreck. But, as you can see, we’ve
fin­ished most of the inside. We focused on the city first—and those repairs
are ongo­ing.”
Ama­ran­tha had sacked the city? Rhys said, “I hope no valu­ables were
lost dur­ing its occu­pa­tion.”
“Not the most impor­tant things, thank the Moth­er,” Tar­quin said.
Behind me, Cres­sei­da tensed. The three advis­ers peeled off to attend to
oth­er duties, mur­mur­ing farewell—with wary looks in Tarquin’s direc­tion.
As if this might very well be the first time he’d need­ed to play host and they
were watch­ing their High Lord’s every move.
He gave them a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, and said noth­ing more as
he led us into a vault­ed room of white oak and green glass—overlooking
the mouth of the bay and the sea that stretched on for­ev­er.
I had nev­er seen water so vibrant. Green and cobalt and mid­night. And
for a heart­beat, a palette of paint flashed in my mind, along with the blue
and yel­low and white and black I might need to paint it …
“This is my favorite view,” Tar­quin said beside me, and I real­ized I’d
gone to the wide win­dows while the oth­ers had seat­ed them­selves around
the moth­er-of-pearl table. A hand­ful of ser­vants were heap­ing fruits, leafy
greens, and steamed shell­fish onto their plates.
“You must be very proud,” I said, “to have such stun­ning lands.”
Tarquin’s eyes—so like the sea beyond us—slid to me. “How do they
com­pare to the ones you have seen?” Such a care­ful­ly craft­ed ques­tion.
I said dul­ly, “Every­thing in Pry­thi­an is love­ly, when com­pared to the
mor­tal realm.”
“And is being immor­tal love­li­er than being human?”
I could feel everyone’s atten­tion on us, even as Rhys engaged Cres­sei­da
and Var­i­an in bland, edged dis­cus­sion about the sta­tus of their fish mar­kets.
So I looked the High Lord of Sum­mer up and down, as he had exam­ined
me, brazen­ly and with­out a shred of polite­ness, and then said, “You tell
me.”
Tarquin’s eyes crin­kled. “You are a pearl. Though I knew that the day
you threw that bone at Ama­ran­tha and splat­tered mud on her favorite
dress.”
I shut out the mem­o­ries, the blind ter­ror of that first tri­al.
What did he make of that tug between us—did he real­ize it was his own
pow­er, or think it was a bond of its own, some sort of strange allure?
And if I had to steal from him … per­haps that meant get­ting clos­er. “I do
not remem­ber you being quite so hand­some Under the Moun­tain. The
sun­light and sea suit you.”
A less­er male might have preened. But Tar­quin knew better—knew that I
had been with Tam­lin, and was now with Rhys, and had now been brought
here. Per­haps he thought me no bet­ter than Ianthe. “How, exact­ly, do you fit
with­in Rhysand’s court?”
A direct ques­tion, after such round­about ones—to no doubt get me on
uneven foot­ing.
It almost worked—I near­ly admit­ted, “I don’t know,” but Rhys said from
the table, as if he’d heard every word, “Feyre is a mem­ber of my Inner
Cir­cle. And is my Emis­sary to the Mor­tal Lands.”
Cres­sei­da, seat­ed beside him, said, “Do you have much con­tact with the
mor­tal realm?”
I took that as an invi­ta­tion to sit—and get away from the too-heavy stare
of Tar­quin. A seat had been left open for me at Amren’s side, across from
Rhys.
The High Lord of the Night Court sniffed at his wine—white, sparkling
—and I won­dered if he was try­ing to piss them off by imply­ing they’d
poi­soned it as he said, “I pre­fer to be pre­pared for every poten­tial sit­u­a­tion.
And, giv­en that Hybern seems set on mak­ing them­selves a nui­sance,
strik­ing up a con­ver­sa­tion with the humans might be in our best inter­est.”
Var­i­an drew his focus away from Amren long enough to say rough­ly, “So
it’s been con­firmed, then? Hybern is ready­ing for war.”
“They’re done ready­ing,” Rhys drawled, at last sip­ping from his wine.
Amren didn’t touch her plate, though she pushed things around as she
always did. I won­dered what—who—she’d eat while here. Var­i­an seemed
like a good guess. “War is immi­nent.”
“Yes, you men­tioned that in your let­ter,” Tar­quin said, claim­ing the seat
at the head of the table between Rhys and Amren. A bold move, to sit­u­ate
him­self between two such pow­er­ful beings. Arrogance—or an attempt at
friend­ship? Tarquin’s gaze again drift­ed to me before focus­ing on Rhys.
“And you know that against Hybern, we will fight. We lost enough good
peo­ple Under the Moun­tain. I have no inter­est in being slaves again. But if
you are here to ask me to fight in anoth­er war, Rhysand—”
“That is not a pos­si­bil­i­ty,” Rhys smooth­ly cut in, “and had not even
entered my mind.”
My glim­mer of con­fu­sion must have shown, because Cres­sei­da crooned
to me, “High Lords have gone to war for less, you know. Doing it over such
an unusu­al female would be noth­ing unex­pect­ed.”
Which was like­ly why they had accept­ed this invi­ta­tion, favor or no. To
feel us out.
If—if Tam­lin went to war to get me back. No. No, that wouldn’t be an
option.
I’d writ­ten to him, told him to stay away. And he wasn’t fool­ish enough
to start a war he could not win. Not when he wouldn’t be fight­ing oth­er
High Fae, but Illyr­i­an war­riors, led by Cass­ian and Azriel. It would be
slaugh­ter.
So I said, bored and flat and dull, “Try not to look too excit­ed, princess.
The High Lord of Spring has no plans to go to war with the Night Court.”
“And are you in con­tact with Tam­lin, then?” A sac­cha­rine smile.
My next words were qui­et, slow, and I decid­ed I did not mind steal­ing
from them, not one bit. “There are things that are pub­lic knowl­edge, and
things that are not. My rela­tion­ship with him is well known. Its cur­rent
stand­ing, how­ev­er, is none of your con­cern. Or any­one else’s. But I do
know Tam­lin, and I know that there will be no inter­nal war between courts
—at least not over me, or my deci­sions.”
“What a relief, then,” Cres­sei­da said, sip­ping from her white wine before
crack­ing a large crab claw, pink and white and orange. “To know we are not
har­bor­ing a stolen bride—and that we need not both­er return­ing her to her
mas­ter, as the law demands. And as any wise per­son might do, to keep
trou­ble from their doorstep.”
Amren had gone utter­ly still.
“I left of my own free will,” I said. “And no one is my mas­ter.”
Cres­sei­da shrugged. “Think that all you want, lady, but the law is the law.
You are—were his bride. Swear­ing feal­ty to anoth­er High Lord does not
change that. So it is a very good thing that he respects your deci­sions.
Oth­er­wise, all it would take would be one let­ter from him to Tar­quin,
request­ing your return, and we would have to obey. Or risk war our­selves.”
Rhysand sighed. “You are always a joy, Cres­sei­da.”
Var­i­an said, “Care­ful, High Lord. My sis­ter speaks the truth.”
Tar­quin laid a hand on the pale table. “Rhysand is our guest—his
courtiers are our guests. And we will treat them as such. We will treat them,
Cres­sei­da, as we treat peo­ple who saved our necks when all it would have
tak­en was one word from them for us to be very, very dead.”
Tar­quin stud­ied me and Rhysand—whose face was glo­ri­ous­ly
dis­in­ter­est­ed. The High Lord of Sum­mer shook his head and said to Rhys,
“We have more to dis­cuss lat­er, you and I. Tonight, I’m throw­ing a par­ty for
you all on my plea­sure barge in the bay. After that, you’re free to roam in
this city wher­ev­er you wish. You will for­give its princess if she is pro­tec­tive

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

T HE NIGHT OF THE ACADEMY Awards, Rex and I sat next to each
oth­er, hold­ing hands, allow­ing every­one a glimpse of the roman­tic
mar­riage we were ped­dling around town.
We both smiled polite­ly when we lost, clap­ping for the win­ners. I
was dis­ap­point­ed but not sur­prised. It seemed a lit­tle too good to be
true, the idea of Oscars for peo­ple like Rex and me, beau­ti­ful movie
stars try­ing to prove they had sub­stance. I got the dis­tinct impres­sion
that a lot of peo­ple want­ed us to stay in our lane. So we took it in stride
and then par­tied the night away, the two of us drink­ing and danc­ing
until the wee hours.
Celia wasn’t at the awards that year, and despite the fact that I
searched for her at every par­ty Rex and I went to, I didn’t lay eyes on
her. Instead, Rex and I paint­ed the town red.
At the William Mor­ris par­ty, I found Har­ry and dragged him into a
qui­et cor­ner, where the two of us sipped cham­pagne and talked about
how wealthy we were going to be.
You should know this about the rich: they always want to get rich­er.
It is nev­er bor­ing, get­ting your hands on more mon­ey.
When I was a child, try­ing to find some­thing to eat for din­ner
besides the old rice and dry beans in the kitchen, I would tell myself
that if I could just have a good meal every night, I’d be hap­py.
When I was at Sun­set Stu­dios, I told myself all I want­ed was a
man­sion.
When I got the man­sion, I told myself all I want­ed was two hous­es
and a team of help.
Here I was, just turned twen­ty-five, already real­iz­ing that no amount
would ever real­ly be enough.
Rex and I went home at around five in the morn­ing, the two of us
down­right drunk. As our car drove away, I searched my purse for keys
to the house, and Rex stood beside me breath­ing his sour gin breath
down my neck.
“My wife can’t find the keys!” Rex said, stum­bling ever so slight­ly.
“She’s try­ing very hard, but she can’t seem to find them.”
“Would you be qui­et?” I said. “Do you want to wake the neigh­bors?”
“What are they going to do?” Rex said, even loud­er than before.
“Kick us out of town? Is that what they will do, my pre­cious Eve­lyn?
Will they tell us we can’t live on Blue Jay Way any­more? Will they
make us move to Robin Dri­ve? Or Ori­ole Lane?”
I found the keys, put them in the door, and turned the knob. The
two of us fell inside. I said good night to Rex and went to my room.
I took off my dress alone, with­out any­one there to unzip the back of
it. The lone­li­ness of my mar­riage hit hard­er in that moment than it
ever had.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mir­ror and could see, in no
uncer­tain terms, that I was beau­ti­ful. But it didn’t mean any­one loved
me.
I stood in my slip and looked at my brassy blond hair and my dark
brown eyes and my straight, thick eye­brows. And I missed the woman
who should have been my wife. I missed Celia.
My mind reeled with the thought that she might be with John
Braver­man that very moment. I knew bet­ter than to believe any of it.
But I also feared that I didn’t know her the way I thought I did. Did she
love him? Had she for­got­ten me? Tears welled in my eyes as I thought
about her red hair that used to fan across my pil­lows.
“There, there,” Rex said from behind me. I turned around to see
him stand­ing in the door­way.
He had tak­en off his tux jack­et and undone his cuff links. His shirt
was half but­toned, his bow tie undone, hang­ing on either side of his
neck. It was the very sight that mil­lions of women across the nation
would have killed for.
“I thought you went to bed,” I said. “If I’d known you were up, I’d’ve
had you help me get my dress off.”
“I would have liked that.”
I waved him off. “What are you doing? Can’t sleep?”
“Haven’t tried.”
He walked far­ther into the room, clos­er to me.
“Well, try, then. It’s late. At this rate, the two of us will be asleep
until evening.”
“Think about it, Eve­lyn,” he said. The lights stream­ing in through
the win­dows lit his blond hair. His dim­ples glowed.
“Think about what?”
“Think about what it would be like.”
He moved clos­er to me and put his hand on my waist. He stood
behind me, his breath once again on my neck. It felt good to be
touched by him.
Movie stars are movie stars are movie stars. Sure, we all fade after a
while. We are human, full of flaws like any­one else. But we are the
cho­sen ones because we are extra­or­di­nary.
And there is noth­ing an extra­or­di­nary per­son likes more than
some­one else extra­or­di­nary.
“Rex.”
“Eve­lyn,” he said, whis­per­ing into my ear. “Just once. Shouldn’t
we?”
“No,” I said, “we shouldn’t.” But I was not whol­ly con­vinced of my
answer, and thus, nei­ther was Rex. “You should go back to your room
before we both do some­thing we’ll regret tomor­row.”
“Are you sure?” he said. “Your wish is my com­mand, but I’d like it
very much if you changed your wish.”
“I won’t change it,” I said.
“Think of it, though,” he said. He raised his hands high­er up my
tor­so, the silk of my slip the only thing between us. “Think of the way
I’d feel on top of you.”
I laughed. “I will not think about that. If I think about that, we’ll both
be sunk.”
“Think of the way we’d move togeth­er. The way we’d be slow at first
and then lose con­trol.”
“Does this work with oth­er women?”
“I’ve nev­er had to work this hard with oth­er women,” he said,
kiss­ing my neck.
I could have walked away from him. I could have slapped him right
across the face, and he would have tak­en it with a stiff upper lip and
left me alone. But I wasn’t ready for this part to be over. I liked being
tempt­ed. I liked know­ing I might make the wrong deci­sion.
And it would absolute­ly have been the wrong deci­sion. Because as
soon as I got out of that bed, Rex would for­get how bad­ly he’d worked
to get me. He’d remem­ber only that he’d had me.
And this wasn’t a typ­i­cal mar­riage. There was too much mon­ey on
the line.
I let him flick one side of my slip off. I let him run his hand
under­neath the neck­line of it.
“Oh, what it would be to lose myself in you,” he said. “To lie
under­neath you and watch you writhe on top of me.”
I almost did it. I almost ripped my own slip off and threw him onto
the bed.
But then he said, “C’mon, baby, you know you want to.”
And it became per­fect­ly clear just how many times Rex had tried
this before with count­less oth­er women.
Nev­er let any­one make you feel ordi­nary.
“Get out of here,” I said, though not unkind­ly.
“But—”
“No buts. Go on to bed.”
“Eve­lyn—”
“Rex, you’re drunk, and you’re con­fus­ing me for one of your many
girls, but I’m your wife,” I said, with all obvi­ous irony.
“Not even once?” he said. He seemed to sober up quick­ly, as if his
hood­ed eyes had been part of the act. I was nev­er real­ly sure with him.
You nev­er knew exact­ly where you stood with Rex North.
“Don’t try it again, Rex. It’s not going to hap­pen.”
He rolled his eyes and then kissed me on the cheek. “G’night,
Eve­lyn,” he said, and then he slipped out my door just as smooth­ly as
he’d come in.
  *  *  *  
THE NEXT DAY, I woke up to a ring­ing phone, deeply hun­gover and
mild­ly con­fused about where I was.
“Hel­lo?”
“Rise and shine, lit­tle bird.”
“Har­ry, what on earth?” The sun in my eyes felt like a burn.
“After you left the Fox par­ty last night, I had a very inter­est­ing
con­ver­sa­tion with Sam Pool.”
“What was a Para­mount exec doing at a Fox par­ty?”
“Try­ing to find you and me,” Har­ry said. “Well, and Rex.”
“To do what?”
“To sug­gest that Para­mount sign you and Rex to a three-pic­ture
deal.”
“What?”
“They want three movies, pro­duced by us, star­ring you and Rex.
Sam said to name a price.”
“Name a price?” When­ev­er I had too much to drink, I always woke
up the next morn­ing feel­ing as if I were under­wa­ter. Every­thing
looked mut­ed, sound­ed blur­ry. I need­ed to make sure I was fol­low­ing.
“What do you mean, name a price?”
“Do you want a mil­lion bucks for a pic­ture? I heard that’s what
Don’s get­ting for The Time Before. We could get that for you, too.”
Did I want to make as much mon­ey as Don? Of course I did. I
want­ed to get the pay­check and mail a copy of it to him with a pho­to of
my mid­dle fin­ger. But most­ly I want­ed the free­dom to do what­ev­er I
want­ed.
“No,” I said. “Nope. I’m not sign­ing some con­tract where they tell
me what movies to be in. You and I decide what movies I do. That’s it.”
“You aren’t lis­ten­ing.”
“I’m lis­ten­ing just fine,” I said, shift­ing my weight onto my shoul­der
and chang­ing the arm that was hold­ing the phone. I thought to myself,
I’m going to go for a swim today. I should tell Luisa to heat the pool.
“We choose the movies,” Har­ry said. “It’s a blind deal. What­ev­er
films you and Rex like Para­mount wants to buy. What­ev­er salary we
want.”
“All because of Anna Karen­i­na?”
“We’ve proven your name brings peo­ple into the the­ater. And if I’m
being entire­ly clear-eyed about this, I think Sam Pool wants to screw
over Ari Sul­li­van. I think he wants to take what Ari Sul­li­van threw away
and make gold out of it.”
“So I’m a pawn.”
“Everyone’s a pawn. Don’t go around tak­ing things per­son­al­ly now
when you nev­er have before.”
“Any movies we want?”
“Any­thing we want.”
“Have you told Rex?”
“Do you hon­est­ly think I would run a sin­gle thing by that cad before
run­ning it by you?”
“Oh, he is not a cad.”
“If you had been there to talk to Joy Nathan after he broke her
heart, you’d dis­agree.”
“Har­ry, he’s my hus­band.”
“Eve­lyn, no, he’s not.”
“Can’t you find some­thing to like about him?”
“Oh, there’s plen­ty to like about him. I love how much mon­ey he’s
made us, how much he will make us.”
“Well, he’s always done good by me.” I told him no, and he walked
out my door. Not every man would do that. Not every man had.
“That’s because you both want the same thing. You, of all peo­ple,
should know that you can’t tell a sin­gle thing about a person’s true
char­ac­ter if you both want the same thing. That’s like a dog and a cat
get­ting along because they both want to kill the mouse.”
“Well, I like him. And I want you to like him. Espe­cial­ly because if
we sign this deal, Rex and I will have to stay mar­ried quite a bit longer
than we orig­i­nal­ly thought. Which makes him my fam­i­ly. And you’re
my fam­i­ly. So you’re both fam­i­ly.”
“Plen­ty of peo­ple don’t like their fam­i­lies.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said.
“Let’s get Rex on board and sign this thing, OK? Get your agents
togeth­er to ham­mer out the deal. Let’s ask for the moon.”
“OK,” I said.
“Eve­lyn?” Har­ry said, before get­ting off the phone.

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

32
On the rare occa­sion that I went out—like to my agent and friend Cade’s house
for a din­ner party—the secu­ri­ty team would sweep through the house before I
arrived to make sure there was no alco­hol or any drugs, even Tylenol, there. No
one at the par­ty was allowed to drink until I left. The oth­er guests were all very
good sports about it, but I sensed that the sec­ond I left was when the real par­ty
start­ed.
When some­one want­ed to date me, the secu­ri­ty team who answered to my
father would run a back­ground check on him, make him sign an NDA, and even
have him sub­mit to a blood test. (And my father said I couldn’t see the
pho­tog­ra­ph­er I had been dat­ing ever again, too.)
Before a date, Robin would tell the man my med­ical and sex­u­al his­to­ry. To be
clear: this was before the �rst date. The whole thing was humil­i­at­ing, and I know
the insan­i­ty of this sys­tem kept me from �nding basic com­pan­ion­ship, hav­ing a
fun night out, or mak­ing new friends—let alone falling in love.
Think­ing back on the way my father was raised by June and the way I was
brought up by him, I had known from the jump that it would be an actu­al
night­mare to have him in charge. The thought of my father tak­ing over any
aspect of my life had �lled me with fear. But tak­ing over every­thing? It was just
the worst thing that could pos­si­bly ever hap­pen to my music, my career, and my
san­i­ty.
Pret­ty quick­ly, I called the weird-ass lawyer the court had appoint­ed for me and
asked him for help. Incred­i­bly, he was all I real­ly had—even though I hadn’t
cho­sen him. I had been told that I couldn’t hire any­one new, because my lawyer
had to be court-approved. Much lat­er, I would come to �nd out that was
bull­shit: I didn’t know for thir­teen years that I could’ve got­ten my own lawyer. I
felt that the court-appoint­ed lawyer didn’t seem eager to help me under­stand
what was going on, or to �ght for my rights.
My moth­er, who is best friends with the gov­er­nor of Louisiana, could have
put me on the phone with him, and he would have told me I could get my own
lawyer. But she kept it a secret; instead, she got a lawyer for her­self just so she
could get o� on �ght­ing with my dad, like she did when I was younger.
At var­i­ous times I pushed back, espe­cial­ly when my father took away access to
my cell phone. I would be smug­gled a pri­vate phone and try to break free. But
they always caught me.
And here’s the sad, hon­est truth: after every­thing I had been through, I
didn’t have a lot of �ght left in me. I was tired, and I was scared, too. After being
held down on a gur­ney, I knew they could restrain my body any time they
want­ed to. They could’ve tried to kill me, I thought. I start­ed to won­der if they
did want to kill me.
So when my father said, “I call the shots,” I thought, This is too much for me.
But I didn’t see a way out. So I felt my spir­it retreat, and I went on autopi­lot. If I
play along, sure­ly they’ll see how good I am and they will let me go.
And so I went along with it.
After I’d mar­ried Kevin and had my kids, Feli­cia was still there a lit­tle bit; I had
always adored her, but once I stopped tour­ing and start­ed work­ing less, we fell
out of touch. There was some talk of Felicia’s com­ing back on board for the
Cir­cus Tour, but some­how I nev­er did have her as my assis­tant again. I lat­er
learned that my dad told her I didn’t want her to work for me any­more. But I
nev­er said that. If I had known she want­ed to do some­thing for me, I nev­er
would have told her no. With­out my knowl­edge, my father was keep­ing her from
me.
I nev­er saw some of my real­ly close friends ever again—still haven’t, to this
day. It made me shut down psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly even more than I had before.
My par­ents had some old friends from home come vis­it me to make me feel
bet­ter.
“No, thanks,” I said.
I mean, I loved them to death, but they had kids now, and they’d moved on
with their lives. Their com­ing to see me felt more like sym­pa­thy than like a social
call. Help is good, but not if it’s not asked for. Not if it doesn’t feel like it’s a
choice.
It’s di�cult for me to revis­it this dark­est chap­ter of my life and to think about
what might have been di�erent if I’d pushed back hard­er then. I don’t at all like
to think about that, not what­so­ev­er. I can’t a�ord to, hon­est­ly. I’ve been
through too much.
And, when the con­ser­va­tor­ship hap­pened, it was true that I had been
par­ty­ing. My body couldn’t phys­i­cal­ly take that any­more. It was time to calm
down. But I went from par­ty­ing a lot to being a total monk. Under the
con­ser­va­tor­ship, I didn’t do any­thing.
One day I was with the pho­tog­ra­ph­er, dri­ving my car fast, liv­ing so much.
And then all of a sud­den I was alone, doing noth­ing at all, not even always
allowed access to my own cell phone. It was night and day.
In my old life I’d had free­dom: the free­dom to make my own deci­sions, to set
my own agen­da, to wake up and decide how I want­ed to spend the day. Even the
hard days were my hard days. Once I gave up the �ght, in my new life, I would
wake up each morn­ing and ask one ques­tion: “What are we doing?”
And then I would do what I was told.
When I was alone at night, I would try to �nd inspi­ra­tion in beau­ti­ful or
trans­port­ing music, movies, books—anything to help blot out the hor­ror of this
arrange­ment. Just as I had when I was a lit­tle girl, I’d look for oth­er worlds to
escape into.
It seemed like every request went through my father and Robin. They
decid­ed where I went and with who. Under Robin’s direc­tion, secu­ri­ty guards
hand­ed me prepack­aged envelopes of meds and watched me take them. They
put parental con­trols on my iPhone. Every­thing was scru­ti­nized and con­trolled.
Every­thing.
I would go to sleep ear­ly. And then I would wake up and do what they told
me again. And again. And again. It was like Ground­hog Day.
I did that for thir­teen years.
If you’re ask­ing why I went along with it, there’s one very good rea­son. I did it
for my kids.
Because I played by the rules, I was reunit­ed with my boys.
It was an ecsta­t­ic expe­ri­ence get­ting to hold them again. When they fell asleep
next to me that �rst night we had back togeth­er, I felt whole for the �rst time in
months. I just stared at them sleep­ing and felt so, so lucky.
To see them as much as pos­si­ble, I did every­thing I could to appease Kevin. I
paid his legal bills, plus child sup­port, plus thou­sands more a month so the kids
could come along with me on the Cir­cus Tour. With­in the same short peri­od of
time, I appeared on Good Morn­ing Amer­i­ca, did the Christ­mas-tree light­ing in
Los Ange­les, shot a seg­ment for Ellen, and toured through Europe and
Aus­tralia. But again, the ques­tion was nag­ging at me—if I was so sick that I
couldn’t make my own deci­sions, why did they think it was �ne for me to be out
there smil­ing and wav­ing and singing and danc­ing in a mil­lion time zones a
week?
I’ll tell you one good rea­son.
The Cir­cus Tour grossed more than $130 mil­lion.
Lou Taylor’s com­pa­ny, Tri Star, got 5 per­cent. And I learned, after the
con­ser­va­tor­ship, that even when I was on hia­tus in 2019 and mon­ey wasn’t
com­ing in, my father paid them an extra min­i­mum “�at fee,” so they were paid
hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars more.
My father got a per­cent­age, too, plus, through­out the con­ser­va­tor­ship, about
$16,000 a month, more than he’d ever made before. He pro�ted heav­i­ly from
the con­ser­va­tor­ship, becom­ing a mul­ti­mil­lion­aire.
My free­dom in exchange for naps with my children—it was a trade I was
will­ing to make. There is noth­ing I love more—nothing more impor­tant to me

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

CHAPTER 32
“He’d been over­served,” Patri­cia said breath­less­ly into the tele­phone
receiv­er, eyes wide, voice full of aston­ished inno­cence. “And he was
doing how men do at a par­ty, talk­ing big, show­ing off. I didn’t mean
to get so far away from my hus­band, but he just kept sort of push­ing
me far­ther and far­ther away.”
Patri­cia stopped and swal­lowed, caught up in her own
per­for­mance. She pulled Francine’s driver’s license out of her pock­et
and turned it over in her hand. She heard Mrs. Greene lis­ten­ing hard
on the oth­er end of the line.
“When he kind of got me over in a cor­ner,” she con­tin­ued, “he told
me, real low so no one else could hear, that years ago he’d got­ten
angry at the woman who did for him. She’d stolen some mon­ey, I
think, I wasn’t real clear on that point, Detec­tive. But he said he
‘fixed her.’ I def­i­nite­ly remem­ber that. Well, I didn’t under­stand what
he meant at first and I said I’d have to ask her about it when I saw
her again, and he said I wouldn’t be see­ing her again, unless I went
up in his attic and looked inside his suit­cas­es. Well, I couldn’t help it,
it just sound­ed so absurd, and I laughed. I don’t need to tell you how
men get when you laugh at them. His face turned red, and he
reached into his wal­let and pulled out some­thing and stuck it in my
face and said if he was lying then how did I explain that. And,
Detec­tive, that’s when I got scared. Because it was Francine’s driver’s
license. I mean, who car­ries around a thing like that? If he hadn’t
hurt her, then where did he get it?” She paused, as if lis­ten­ing. “Oh,
yes, sir. He put it right back in there. He’d had so much to drink he
might not even remem­ber show­ing it to me.”
She stopped and wait­ed.
“You think that’ll work?” Mrs. Greene asked.
“They don’t have to get a war­rant or any­thing like that. All they
have to do is stop by his house and ask to look inside his wal­let. He’ll
have no clue it’s in there, so of course he’ll show them. Once they see
it, they’ll ask for per­mis­sion to search his attic, he’ll refuse, they’ll
leave some­one with him while they go get a war­rant, and then they’ll
find Francine.”
“When?” Mrs. Greene asked.
“The Scrug­gs are hav­ing an oys­ter roast this com­ing Sat­ur­day out
at their farm,” Patri­cia said. “It’s six days away but it will be crowd­ed,
it will be pub­lic, peo­ple will be drink­ing. It’s our best chance.”
Patri­cia didn’t know how she’d get into his wallet—she didn’t even
know if he car­ried one—but she’d keep her eyes open and stay on her
toes. Kitty’s oys­ter roast start­ed at 1:30. If she got it into his wal­let
ear­ly enough, she could call the police that after­noon; they could
even come to the oys­ter roast and ask to see inside his wal­let there,
and this could all be over in less than a week.
“A lot could go wrong,” Mrs. Greene said.
“We’re run­ning out of time,” Patri­cia said.
It was already the end of the month. That night was Hal­loween.
—
The door­bell start­ed ring­ing around four on Hal­loween evening, and
Patri­cia oohed and ahhed over an end­less stream of Aladdins and
Jas­mines and Teenage Mutant Nin­ja Tur­tles, and fairies in tutus
with wings bounc­ing up and down on their backs.
She had fun-sized But­terfin­gers and small box­es of Sun-Maid
raisins for the chil­dren, and Jack Daniel’s for their fathers, who stood
behind them, red Solo cups in hand. It was an Old Vil­lage tra­di­tion:
moms stayed home and gave out can­dy on Hal­loween while dads
took the kids trick-or-treat­ing. Every­one kept a bot­tle of some­thing
behind their front door to top off what­ev­er the dads were drink­ing.
The dads got pro­gres­sive­ly loud­er and hap­pi­er as the shad­ows got
longer and the sun went down on the Old Vil­lage.
Carter wasn’t among them. When Patri­cia had asked Korey if she
want­ed to go trick-or-treat­ing she’d been treat­ed to a with­er­ing glare
and a sin­gle con­temp­tu­ous snort. Blue said trick-or-treat­ing was for
babies so, Carter said, if nei­ther of his chil­dren want­ed him to take
them, he’d go right from the air­port to his office and get ahead on
some work for Mon­day.
Around sev­en, Blue came down­stairs, opened the dog food cab­i­net,
and took out a paper shop­ping bag.
“Are you going trick-or-treat­ing?” Patri­cia asked.
“Sure,” he said.
“Where’s your cos­tume?” she asked, try­ing to reach him.
“I’m a ser­i­al killer,” he said.
“Don’t you want to be some­thing more fun?” she asked. “We could
put some­thing togeth­er in just a few min­utes.”
He turned and walked out of the den.
“Be back by ten,” she called as the front door slammed.
She had just run out of But­terfin­gers and giv­en the first box of
raisins to a deeply dis­ap­point­ed Beav­is and Butthead when the
phone rang.
“Camp­bell res­i­dence,” she said.
No one answered. She fig­ured it was a prank call and was about to
hang up when some­one inhaled, wet and sticky, and a ruined voice
said:
“…I didn’t…”
“Hel­lo?” Patri­cia said. “This is the Camp­bell res­i­dence?”
“I didn’t…,” the voice said again, dazed, and Patri­cia real­ized it was
a woman.
“If you don’t tell me who this is, I’m going to hang up,” she said.
“I didn’t…” the woman repeat­ed. “…I didn’t make a sound…”
“Slick?” Patri­cia asked.
“I didn’t make a sound…I didn’t make a sound…I didn’t make a
sound,” Slick bab­bled.
“What’s going on?” Patri­cia asked.
Slick hadn’t called—not to apol­o­gize for aban­don­ing her, not to see
if she was all right—and that was all the evi­dence Patri­cia need­ed to
know that Slick had told James Har­ris she was break­ing into his
house. Slick was why he had come home ear­ly. As far as she was
con­cerned, Slick could go hang.
Then Slick began to cry.
“Slick?” Patri­cia asked. “What’s wrong?”
“…I didn’t make a sound…” Slick whis­pered over and over, and
goose­flesh crawled up Patricia’s arms.
“Stop it,” she said. “You’re scar­ing me.”
“I didn’t,” Slick moaned. “I didn’t…”
“Where are you?” Patri­cia asked. “Are you at home? Do you need
help?”
Patri­cia couldn’t hear Slick wheez­ing into the ear­piece any­more.
She hung up and dialed her back and got a busy sig­nal. She thought
about not doing any­thing, but she couldn’t. Slick’s voice had scared
her, and some­thing dark stirred in her gut. She grabbed her purse
and found Korey on the sun porch, eyes glued to the TV, which was
show­ing a com­mer­cial for Bounce Gen­tle Breeze dry­er sheets.
“I have to run out to Kitty’s,” Patri­cia said, and real­ized that lies
came eas­i­er the more she told them. “Can you get the door?”
“Mm,” Korey said, not turn­ing around.
Patri­cia sup­posed that was yes in sev­en­teen-year-old lan­guage.
The Old Vil­lage streets were packed with a parade of kids and
par­ents, and Patri­cia wove through them too slow­ly. The fathers
looked pleas­ant­ly loaded, their steps get­ting heav­ier, their dips into
the can­dy bags becom­ing more fre­quent. She couldn’t imag­ine what
had hap­pened to Slick. She need­ed to get to her house. She crawled
through the crowds at fif­teen miles per hour, pass­ing James Harris’s
house with its two jack‑o’-lanterns flick­er­ing on the front porch, then
turned up McCants and hit the brakes.
The Cantwells lived on the cor­ner of Pitt and McCants, and every
Hal­loween they filled their front yard with fake corpses hang­ing from
the trees, Sty­ro­foam head­stones, and skele­tons wired to their
shrub­beries. Every half hour, Mr. Cantwell emerged from the cof­fin
on the front porch dressed as Drac­u­la, and the fam­i­ly per­formed a
ten-minute show. The Wolf­man grabbed at the kids in front; the
Mum­my stum­bled toward lit­tle girls who ran away shriek­ing; Mrs.
Cantwell, wear­ing a fake warty nose, stirred her caul­dron full of dry
ice and offered peo­ple ladles of edi­ble green slime and gum­my
worms. It end­ed with all of them danc­ing to “The Mon­ster Mash”
fol­lowed by mass can­dy dis­tri­b­u­tion.
The crowd around their house spilled off the side­walk and blocked
the street. Patricia’s face twitched. Was it just Slick? What about the
rest of Slick’s fam­i­ly? Some­thing was wrong. She need­ed to go. She
took her foot off the brake and rolled onto the edge of the
Sim­mons­es’ front yard on the far side of McCants, flash­ing her lights
to make peo­ple clear the way. It took her five min­utes to get through
the inter­sec­tion, and then she picked up speed as she head­ed to
Cole­man Boule­vard, and hit fifty on John­nie Dodds. Even that wasn’t
fast enough.
She pulled into Creek­side and wove around trick-or-treaters as fast
as she dared. Both cars were parked in the Paleys’ dri­ve­way.
What­ev­er had hap­pened had hap­pened to the entire fam­i­ly. A
flick­er­ing white can­dle sat on a kitchen stool on the front porch. Next
to it sat a bowl of pam­phlets embla­zoned with orange type read­ing:
Trick? Yes. Treat? Only Through the Grace of God!
Patri­cia reached for the door­bell and stopped. What if it was James
Har­ris? What if he was still inside?
She tried the han­dle and the latch popped and the door swung
silent­ly open. Patri­cia took a breath and stepped inside. She closed
the door behind her and stood, eyes and ears strain­ing, lis­ten­ing for
any sign of life, look­ing for a sin­gle tell­tale detail: a drop of blood on
the hard­wood floor, a pic­ture knocked askew, a crack in one of the
dis­play cab­i­nets. Noth­ing. She crept down the front hall’s thick
run­ner and pushed open the door to the back addi­tion. Peo­ple
start­ed scream­ing.
Every mus­cle in Patricia’s body snapped into action. Her hands
flew up to pro­tect her face. She opened her mouth to scream. Then
the scream­ing dis­solved into laugh­ter and she looked past her hands
and saw Leland, LJ, their old­est, Greer, and Tiger sit­ting around the
long din­ner table halfway across the room, their backs to her, all
laugh­ing. Greer was the only one fac­ing Patri­cia.
She caught sight of Patri­cia and stopped laugh­ing. LJ and Tiger
spun around.
“Ohmy­gosh,” Greer said. “How’d you get in?”
A Monop­oly board sat in the mid­dle of the table. Slick wasn’t
there.
“Patri­cia?” Leland said, stand­ing, gen­uine­ly baf­fled, try­ing to
smile.
“Don’t get up,” she said. “Slick called and I thought she was home.”
“She’s upstairs,” Leland said.
“I’ll just pop right up,” Patri­cia said. “Keep play­ing.”
She left the room before they could say any­thing and went up the
car­pet­ed stairs fast. In the upstairs hall she didn’t have a clue which
way to go. The door to the mas­ter bed­room sat ajar. The bed­room
light was off but the mas­ter bath­room light was on. Patri­cia walked
in.
“Slick?” she called soft­ly.
The show­er cur­tain rat­tled and Patri­cia looked down and saw Slick
lying in the tub, her lip­stick smeared, her mas­cara run­ning down her
face in trails, her hair stick­ing out in clumps. Her skirt had been torn
and she only wore one dan­gling sand dol­lar ear­ring.
Every­thing between them evap­o­rat­ed and Patri­cia knelt by the
bath­tub.
“What hap­pened?” she asked.
“I didn’t make a sound,” Slick rasped, eyes wide with pan­ic.
Her mouth moved sound­less­ly, strain­ing to form words. Her hands
opened and closed.
“Slick?” Patri­cia repeat­ed. “What hap­pened?”
“I didn’t…,” Slick began, then licked her lips and tried again. “I
didn’t make a sound.”
“We need to call the ambu­lance,” Patri­cia said, stand­ing up. “I’ll go
get Leland.”
“I…,” Slick said, and it trailed off to a whis­per. “I didn’t…”
Patri­cia walked to the bath­room door and heard hol­low flail­ing in
the tub behind her, and then Slick rasped, “No!”
Patri­cia turned around. Slick gripped the edge of the tub with both
hands, knuck­les white, shak­ing her head, her sin­gle sand dol­lar
ear­ring flop­ping from side to side.
“They can’t know,” she said.
“You’re hurt,” Patri­cia said.
“They can’t know,” Slick repeat­ed.
“Slick!” Leland called from down­stairs. “Every­thing all right?”
Slick locked eyes with Patri­cia and slow­ly shook her head back and
forth. Patri­cia eased out into the bed­room, eyes still on Slick.
“We’re fine,” she called back.
“Slick?” Leland said, and from his voice Patri­cia could tell he was
com­ing up the stairs.
Slick shook her head hard­er. Patri­cia held out one hand, then
raced to the hall and head­ed off Leland at the top of the stairs.
“What’s hap­pen­ing?” he asked, stop­ping two steps below her.
“She’s ill,” Patri­cia said. “I’ll sit with her and make sure she’s okay.
She didn’t want to break up your par­ty.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Leland said. “You didn’t need to
come all this way. We’re right down­stairs.”
He tried to take a step but Patri­cia moved to block him.
“Leland,” she said, smil­ing. “Slick wants you to have fun with the
chil­dren tonight. It’s impor­tant to her that they have…Christian
asso­ci­a­tions with Hal­loween. Let me han­dle this.”
“I want to see how she is,” he said, slid­ing one hand up the
ban­is­ter, let­ting her know he was going to go right through her if
nec­es­sary.
“Leland.” She dropped her voice low. “It’s a female prob­lem.”
She wasn’t sure what a female prob­lem meant to Leland, but his
body sagged.
“All right,” he said. “But if she’s real­ly not well, you’ll tell me?”
“Of course,” Patri­cia said. “Go back to the kids.”
He turned and went back down­stairs. She wait­ed until he passed
into the addi­tion, and then sprint­ed back to the bath­room. Slick
hadn’t moved. Patri­cia knelt beside the tub, leaned for­ward, and got
her arms around Slick. She stood, pulling Slick up with her, amazed
at how weak her legs were. She helped her out of the tub, one foot at
a time.
“They can’t know,” Slick said.
“I didn’t say a word,” Patri­cia said.
She took off Slick’s one ear­ring and laid it on the bath­room
counter.
“The oth­er one’ll turn up,” she reas­sured her.
Patri­cia locked the bath­room door, then pulled Slick’s sweater over
her head and unfas­tened her brassiere. Slick’s breasts were small and
pale and the way she was hunched over, the way her ribs stuck out,
the way her breasts hung life­less, she remind­ed Patri­cia of a plucked
chick­en.
She sat Slick down on the toi­let and put her fin­gers in the waist of
her skirt. It was torn down the back so there was no need to unzip it.
The tear went right through the suede, not down the seam. Patri­cia
didn’t know what was strong enough to do that.
As she start­ed to pull off her skirt, Slick recoiled, pulling her hands
up over her groin.
“What’s wrong?” Patri­cia asked. “Slick, what’s wrong?”
Slick shook her head back and forth, and Patricia’s heart hitched.
She focused on keep­ing her voice steady and slow.
“Show me,” she insist­ed, but Slick shook her head faster. “Slick?”
“They can’t know,” Slick moaned.
She took Slick’s thin wrists and pulled them away. Slick resist­ed at
first, then went slack. Patri­cia pulled her skirt down. Slick’s panties
were torn. She pulled them off, lift­ing Slick’s but­tocks. Slick clamped
her thighs closed.
“Slick,” Patri­cia said, using her nurse’s voice. “I need to see.”
She pried Slick’s knees apart. At first, Patri­cia didn’t know what
was com­ing through Slick’s sparse, blond pubic hair, and then she
saw Slick’s abdom­i­nal mus­cles con­vulse and a run­nel of black jel­ly
oozed out of her vagi­na. It smelled rank, like some­thing lying rot­ten
on the side of the road in sum­mer. And it kept com­ing, an end­less
ooze of fetid slime pool­ing in a quiv­er­ing black pud­dle on the toi­let
seat lid.
“Slick?” Patri­cia asked. “What hap­pened?”
Slick met her eyes, tears trem­bling along her low­er lids, and she
looked so haunt­ed that Patri­cia leaned for­ward and embraced her.
Slick stayed stiff in her arms.
“I didn’t make a sound,” Slick insist­ed.
Patri­cia sprayed enough air fresh­en­er in the bath­room to make her
eyes burn, and then she ran the show­er. She took off her blouse and
helped Slick back into the tub, hold­ing her under the hot, strong
spray. She cleaned the make­up off Slick’s face with a wash­cloth,
rub­bing until Slick’s skin turned pink, then used as much soap as she
could to clean between Slick’s legs.
“Bear down,” she told Slick over the spray. “Like you’re going to
the bath­room.”
She saw the last remain­ing black drops fall into the water, stretch
into ten­drils, and swirl down the drain. She used an entire bot­tle of
St. Ives sham­poo to wash Slick’s hair, and when they were fin­ished
the bath­room smelled steamy and flo­ral. She dried her­self and put
her top back on while Slick stood naked and shiv­er­ing, and then she

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

32
I real­ly should’ve fuck­ing known it.
My head ached, and as I opened my eyes, it seemed like they might explode out of my skull. There
was a thick, heavy feel­ing in my stom­ach, and I turned my head to the side, sud­den­ly afraid I was
going to puke, but noth­ing hap­pened. I just coughed and retched and won­dered how the hell I didn’t
see this com­ing.
Bea was always too smart for this to be a per­ma­nent solu­tion. Hell, I was too smart for this to be
a per­ma­nent solu­tion. But that first night, I’d been freak­ing out and pan­ick­ing, and this had seemed …
okay, it had seemed insane even then, but I was impro­vis­ing. It’s what I’d always done, made things
up on the spot, adapt­ed to my cir­cum­stances.
Usu­al­ly it worked.
But this was Bea. This was my wife.
Of course it end­ed up like this, me on the floor, bleed­ing, miss­ing sev­er­al teeth—and Bea out
there, some­where, with Jane.
The thought caused a quick surge of pan­ic, and I tried to sit up, but that wasn’t hap­pen­ing. I
col­lapsed to the floor in the fetal posi­tion, star­ing blur­ri­ly at my own blood as some­where
down­stairs, my wife and my fiancée … what, called the cops? Shared a glass of cel­e­bra­to­ry
cham­pagne?
Christ, I hoped it was one of those options, because any­thing else scared the fuck out of me.
It’s not like I went to Hawaii with the express pur­pose of seduc­ing and mar­ry­ing Bea Mason. I hadn’t
known she’d be there—I’m not a stalk­er, for fuck’s sake. But I’d got­ten good at spot­ting oppor­tu­ni­ties
over the years, and that’s what see­ing Bea Mason on that beach was.
Not just an oppor­tu­ni­ty.
The oppor­tu­ni­ty.
I hadn’t known who she was, ini­tial­ly. I didn’t exact­ly keep up with the home décor indus­try, but
the girl I was trav­el­ing with, Char­lie, did.
“Holy shit,” she’d said as we’d been sit­ting by the pool.
I’d looked up from my phone to see a woman walk­ing by in a deep pur­ple one-piece, a flow­ered
sarong around her waist. She was pret­ty and petite, and even from a dis­tance, I caught the sparkle of
dia­monds in her ears, but I didn’t think any­thing about her real­ly war­rant­ed a “Holy shit.”
“What?” I’d asked, and Char­lie had thumped me with a rolled-up mag­a­zine.
“That’s Bea Mason,” she’d said, and when I’d just stared at her, she’d rolled her eyes and said,
“She owns South­ern Manors? It’s, like, huge? I got that ging­ham skirt you like so much from there.”
I had no idea what skirt she was talk­ing about, but I smiled and nod­ded. “Oh, right. So, she’s a big
deal?”
“To women, yeah,” Char­lie said, then wrin­kled her nose. “But I won­der why she’s stay­ing here?
This isn’t even the nicest resort on the island. If I had her mon­ey, I’d be at the Lanai.”
And that’s when Bea Mason sud­den­ly got a lot more inter­est­ing to me.
Char­lie had mon­ey. Lots of it. None of it was real­ly hers, I guess, more her family’s, but she was
still com­fort­ably loaded. Which meant that Bea Mason must have even more.
“It’s her com­pa­ny?” I asked, look­ing back at my phone, keep­ing my tone casu­al.
“Oh yeah,” Char­lie said as she reached to pick her daiquiri up off the near­by table. I could smell
the sug­ary straw­ber­ry scent of it from my chair. “She’s super inspir­ing. Built it up from this lit­tle
inter­net busi­ness to a mas­sive thing in like five years. Self-made mul­ti­mil­lion­aire. There was an
inter­view with her in For­tune that my dad sent to me, and I was like, ‘Goals.’”
I’d looked up from my phone then, and caught a glimpse of Bea walk­ing away.
It wasn’t just the mon­ey. The mon­ey was a big part of it, sure, but I liked that idea—that she’d
made some­thing out of noth­ing. And while Char­lie ordered anoth­er drink and went back to her
mag­a­zine, I’d done some googling.
The South­ern Manors web­site had been charm­ing, if a lit­tle cloy­ing, and the pic­tures of Bea had
proven that she was as attrac­tive as I’d guessed. Not in the same showy way Char­lie was, for­ev­er
Insta­gram ready, but in a sub­tler, classier way.
Learn­ing her net worth added a cer­tain sheen to things, too, of course.
Two hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars. That’s what Google said, although I knew those things weren’t
always accu­rate. Charlie’s dad was sup­posed to be worth fifty mil­lion, but most of that was tied up in
real estate and trusts. Char­lie was even on an allowance. A gen­er­ous one, def­i­nite­ly, but it wasn’t
exact­ly carte blanche.
“I’m gonna go up to the room for a bit,” I’d told her, stand­ing up from my chair and stretch­ing,
let­ting her gaze slide over my bare chest, my abs. I’d been up ear­ly to hit the gym, a chore, but a
nec­es­sary one.
“Want com­pa­ny?” she’d purred, and I’d been sure to grin at her, chuck­ing her under­neath her chin.
“No, because I’m gonna nap, and I won’t sleep if you’re around.”
She’d liked that, and caught my hand, press­ing a kiss to the tips of my fin­gers before shoo­ing me
off. “I’ll be up in a bit, then. Rest up.”
I’d gone back to the room, but I hadn’t napped. Instead, I’d thrown most of my things back in my
bag.
I was good with peo­ple, fig­ur­ing them out, pre­dict­ing what they’d do, and I had a hunch Char­lie
was on to some­thing with the Lanai. Bea Mason hadn’t stopped to sit at our pool, after all, just
walked through.
And I was right, I learned lat­er. She’d just been check­ing out our pool area because she was try­ing
to get an idea of what kind of bathing suit prints were pop­u­lar among, as she put it, “nor­mal women.”
Look­ing back, that prob­a­bly should’ve been a hint, too.
At the time, I just pat­ted myself on the back for guess­ing cor­rect­ly.
I wish I could say there was some spe­cial trick to doing the kinds of things I do, some kind of

The pro­vid­ed text con­tains Chap­ter 32 from The Ten­ant of Wild­fell Hall by Anne Bron­të. This chap­ter, titled “Com­par­isons: Infor­ma­tion Reject­ed,” delves into the social and per­son­al dynam­ics among the char­ac­ters, focus­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly on the rela­tion­ships and char­ac­ter growth.

The chap­ter opens with reflec­tions on Esther Har­grave, not­ing her devel­op­ment into a fine girl despite her con­strained social envi­ron­ment. The nar­ra­tive voice, pre­sum­ably Helen’s, express­es a deep bond with Esther, fear­ing for her future based on her own dis­il­lu­sion­ing expe­ri­ences with mar­riage and soci­etal expec­ta­tions.

The nar­ra­tive then shifts to a heart­felt con­ver­sa­tion in the gar­den between Helen and her friend Mil­i­cent, where they dis­cuss their children’s futures and the impor­tance of mar­ry­ing for love rather than wealth or sta­tus. Mil­i­cent con­fides her wor­ries about her sis­ter mar­ry­ing for the wrong rea­sons, urg­ing Helen to influ­ence Esther against such a deci­sion. This con­ver­sa­tion under­scores the theme of wom­en’s lim­it­ed choic­es and the impact of mar­riage on their well-being.

Next, the nar­ra­tive moves inside, where Helen encoun­ters Mr. Hat­ter­s­ley and lat­er, Mr. Har­grave. Hat­ter­s­ley reveals his affec­tion for his wife Mil­i­cent, albeit shown through a prob­lem­at­ic lens of dom­i­nance and sub­mis­sion, high­light­ing the com­plex­i­ties with­in mar­i­tal rela­tion­ships and the era’s gen­der dynam­ics. The fol­low­ing inter­ac­tion with Mr. Har­grave expos­es anoth­er lay­er of social inter­ac­tion, where he hints at pos­sess­ing sig­nif­i­cant but dis­tress­ful infor­ma­tion he wish­es to share with Helen, empha­siz­ing issues of trust, rep­u­ta­tion, and the bur­dens of know­ing poten­tial­ly harm­ful secrets.

Through­out the chap­ter, the dia­logue and inter­nal reflec­tions explore themes of love, mar­riage, gen­der roles, and the social expec­ta­tions placed upon indi­vid­u­als, espe­cial­ly women, in the 19th-cen­tu­ry British soci­ety. The char­ac­ters grap­ple with their desires, oblig­a­tions, and the soci­etal norms that dic­tate their lives, pro­vid­ing a rich tapes­try of emo­tion­al and moral com­plex­i­ties that are cen­tral to Bron­të’s work.

Over­all, this chap­ter paints a detailed pic­ture of the inter­per­son­al dynam­ics and soci­etal pres­sures with­in the sto­ry, offer­ing insights into char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and the­mat­ic depth that define *The Ten­ant of Wild­fell Hall*.