The uproar over the hospital room ended when Ashford Holdings used its influence to bury the story.

I got the shared room I had been promised.

Six beds. Crowded and loud.

Relatives shouted into their phones in the hallway. Babies cried. Machines beeped around the clock.

Every day, the System tried to talk me into finding some reason to care about this world.

[That nurse was so gentle when she gave you your shot.]

[Look how beautiful the sunshine is today.]

I gazed out at the gray rain and did not bother exposing the lie.

Two weeks later, the cast came off. I could walk with crutches.

The Ashfords sent a driver to collect me. There were no flowers and no family waiting downstairs.

The driver offered nothing more than a cool, "Miss Hale, your car is ready."

It was already dark when we reached the Ashford mansion.

Light spilled from every window, and the sound of a violin floated from the ballroom.

Tonight was my welcome party.

It was also the night the Ashfords would formally introduce their long-lost daughter to Manhattan society.

I entered slowly on my crutches.

Guests in couture and black tie stood in glittering clusters. When they saw me in a plain gray sweatsuit, every conversation faltered.

Meredith, wearing a wine-colored evening gown, was laughing over champagne with several Manhattan socialites. Her smile tightened for half a second when she saw me.

Then she crossed the room with practiced grace.

"Nora, why aren't you wearing the dress I picked out for you?"

The dress was a complicated confection of lace that required towering heels to hang properly. For someone fresh out of a cast, it might as well have been a torture device.

I did not answer. My attention shifted to Sloane.

She wore a custom white gown and stood surrounded by young socialites, delicate as a lily in bloom.

"Nora, you're home."

Sloane gathered her skirt and approached, her voice soft as water.

In full view of the room, she bowed her head deeply.

"What happened at the hospital was my fault. I never should have taken your private room, even if I was sick. I begged Mom and Dad to throw this party for you. I hope you can forgive me."

Whispers rose immediately around us.

"The long-lost daughter certainly thinks highly of herself. Sloane is practically begging, and she can't even manage a smile."

"I heard she threatened suicide to force Sloane out. You can take the girl out of a trailer park, but you can't take the trailer park out of the girl."

"The Ashfords are saints for letting her stay."

No one bothered lowering their voice.

They wore their cruelty as elegantly as their jewelry.

Theo came to my side and offered me a glass of juice.

"Sloane has done everything she can. If you keep sulking, you'll humiliate the entire family."

He leaned closer, lowering his voice so only I could hear.

"If you want to belong in this world, learn how to behave in public."

I stared at the golden juice.

Nausea surged through me.

The physical symptoms of my depression peaked all at once. My ears rang. Faces blurred and twisted around me.

Pressure. Suffocation. Revulsion.

I set the glass on a passing server's tray and turned toward the long dining table at the edge of the ballroom.

Steak knives gleamed beside the place settings.

I picked one up. The silver blade flashed beneath the chandeliers.

The whispers faded.

Meredith noticed first. Her brow tightened.

"Nora, what are you doing?"

Julian set down his glass, his eyes hardening.

"Put down the knife. We have guests. Do not turn tonight into another spectacle."

I faced them with the knife in my hand.

I did not scream or accuse anyone.

I calmly pushed up my left sleeve.

The original Nora had left a maze of scars there over countless desperate nights. Some were old, some new. Some were dark brown, others pale pink.

The sight silenced the room.

I gently rested the edge of the knife against the pulse in my wrist.

"Since all of you think I'm putting on a show," I said, watching the blood drain from Sloane's face, "I might as well give you a performance worth remembering."

The blade pressed down, drawing a thin, brilliant line of red.

Several guests screamed.

Julian moved faster than anyone else. He lunged across the room and clamped his hand around my wrist.

The veins stood out along the back of his hand as he tore the knife away.

"Have you lost your mind?"

His chest heaved with the effort of containing his rage.

The force of his grip threw me off balance. My crutch hit the floor with a heavy thud.

Meredith clutched her chest, gasping as if she might faint. Theo had already pulled Sloane into his arms, where she trembled against him.

"Nora Hale."

Julian stared at me. For the first time, something that looked like fear entered his eyes.

He buried it beneath control almost immediately.

"Take her upstairs," he ordered the frozen security guards. "Lock the door. No one lets her out without my permission."

The welcome party ended in disaster.

Two guards half carried, half dragged me to a bedroom on the third floor. The door locked from the outside.

For the next week, I remained a prisoner.

They removed every sharp object. They even wrapped the corners of the nightstand in padding. The windows were locked, opening only a few inches.

They called it protection.

It was imprisonment.

Julian also confiscated the antidepressants I had brought with me, insisting that taking medication without his supervision was making me unstable.

"You're not sick," he told me as he took the bottle. "You just need attention."

Going off the medication abruptly was agony.

I stopped sleeping. My head throbbed constantly. Despair swallowed me in black, relentless waves.

The System panicked.

[Hang on, Nora! You cannot die before the mission is complete!]

Curled on the carpet in the corner of the room, I watched cold moonlight spill through the window.

No.

I had to die.

Only the complete death of this body could free me from their suffocating control.

My chance came two weeks later.

It was Sloane's twentieth birthday. The Ashfords rented an entire estate for the celebration.

To make sure I could not cause trouble, Meredith stationed two private-duty nurses outside my door around the clock.

"Stay in your room and think about what you've done," she said through the door. "Once you understand that you cannot use suicide to manipulate this family, I'll let you out."

One by one, car engines started below.

They left.

I rose slowly from the carpet and opened the bottom drawer of the dresser.

Inside, fifty white pills lay in neat rows.

Every night, I had pretended to swallow my sleeping medication, then hidden the pills under my tongue and saved them.

Julian had smugly replaced my antidepressants with powerful sedatives. He thought they would keep me quiet.

He never realized he had handed me the perfect weapon.

I went into the bathroom and filled a glass with warm water.

The System sensed what I was doing. Its voice began to shake.

[Nora... what are you holding?]

[Don't do this! There are other ways. You only have to stay alive...]

I poured every pill into my mouth and forced them down with the water.

Bitterness coated my throat.

I returned to bed, lay flat on my back, and folded my hands over my stomach.

Peace at last.

The drugs took effect faster than I expected. My thoughts blurred. The System's alarms grew sharp, then distant.

[WARNING: VITALS CRASHING.]

[WARNING: TERMINATION PROTOCOL IMMINENT.]

I closed my eyes and felt my heartbeat slow.

Slower.

Slower.

Until there was nothing.

My final moment of awareness froze around the System's horrified electronic scream.

[Fuck! She actually did it!]

Death turned out to be less peaceful than I had expected. There was no tunnel. No light. No dead relatives waiting with open arms. There was the System screaming.

[HOST STATUS: DECEASED.]

[SECOND LIFE PROTOCOL ACTIVATED.]

[NEURAL RECONSTRUCTION: 0.3%.]

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