That's how it started. Not with love. Not even lust.
With a leak, a betrayal, and a man who walked in like a warning label.
Killian Cross. My last mistake — or my only escape.
He didn't say a word.
Not when the car door slammed shut. Not when the engine purred to life. Not even when the tinted windows sealed us into silence like a coffin on wheels.
I stared at him.
He stared ahead.
Black button-down. Tactical fit. Sleeves rolled just enough to show veins that looked like they'd been carved from cold steel. A single scar, slashing down his jaw like it had been drawn there on purpose. Even his silence had weight — like a threat you hadn't earned yet.
"You're not Secret Service," I finally said, voice hoarse from crying or rage or maybe both.
His jaw ticked.
I leaned back, wiped under my eyes, and tried to keep my voice from shaking. "No earpiece. No badge. No name."
Still nothing.
"Am I supposed to feel safe with you?" I asked.
His voice dropped like gravel. "No."
That shut me up.
The car turned sharply, speeding away from the school. I didn't know where we were going, but I already knew what came next. I'd seen it before — the Thorne version of punishment. A polished cage. A silent prison. A smile-for-the-cameras kind of exile.
I shifted in my seat, pressing my palms against my thighs to keep them from twitching. I was still wearing my uniform skirt. Still had tear-streaked mascara down my cheeks. I must have looked pathetic.
Or maybe I looked like exactly what I was now — a scandal.
"How many clicks did it get?" I asked no one in particular. "The video. Or the picture. Or both."
Still nothing.
I exhaled sharply, pushed my hair out of my face, and stared out the window.
Aurelia blurred past — white stone buildings, embassy flags, chrome-glass towers trying to touch the sun. Cameras blinked on every streetlamp. My face was probably on every one of them now.
"Phoebe Thorne: Leaked, Laughed At, Locked Down."
It'd make a great headline. Carmen Fox was probably writing it already.
We pulled up to the South Gate of the Presidential Mansion.
Not the front.
The back. The one no one was supposed to use. The one they used when they were trying to hide something.
Two guards stood at attention, rifles against their chests. One of them glanced inside the car, did a double take, then opened the gate with a press of a finger.
The gates swallowed us whole.
I didn't speak again until the car stopped.
The moment the door opened, my phone was ripped from my hand.
Killian took it, handed it to a suit I didn't recognize, and stepped back without saying a word.
"Hey!" I snapped, reaching for it.
"You're off-grid now," the man said. "Indefinitely."
The front doors opened, and I was pushed inside before I could argue. I stumbled into the marble foyer of the Mansion like I'd been dropped on stage in the wrong play.
The walls were too white. Too clean. Too silent.
Every servant I passed looked at me like I was glass about to break. Or maybe like I already had.
I marched toward the hallway, trying to remember how to breathe.
And then I heard it.
His voice.
"Close the doors," President Elias Thorne said.
My father.
Of course he didn't come to the school. He didn't call. He didn't even send Grace. He waited for me to be brought to him like I was a package. Or a problem.
I walked into his private office.
He was standing behind his desk, not a single hair out of place, navy suit sharp enough to slice skin, hands clasped behind his back.
I didn't wait for him to speak.
"Do you want to ask if I'm okay?" I said.
"You're fine."
"Am I?"
"You're not bleeding," he said. "You're not dead. So yes. You're fine."
He didn't look at me. He looked past me. Like I was a shadow ruining the symmetry of the room.
He gestured toward a tablet on the desk. "Do you know how many media outlets ran the story within the first hour?"
I didn't answer.
"Seventeen," he said. "Seventeen platforms. In one hour. Your face. Your body. And my name. All over the world."
My mouth was dry.
"It wasn't my fault," I said.
His gaze finally snapped to mine. "You gave him the photo, Phoebe. You. No one forced your hand."
"I trusted him."
"That's not an excuse. That's a weakness."
I clenched my fists.
"I didn't come here to be scolded."
"No," he said, voice like a blade, "you came here because I sent for you. You don't get to decide your own movements anymore."
He walked around the desk, straightened the cuffs on his sleeve. Calm. Cold. Mechanical.
"You will not be returning to school," he continued. "You will not speak to the press. You will not log into social media. You will remain in this house under twenty-four-hour surveillance until I say otherwise."
"You're grounding me?"
He raised a brow. "You think this is punishment?"
I stared at him.
"This is damage control," he said. "You are a Thorne. You don't get to be messy."
I wanted to scream. I wanted to break something. Instead, I whispered, "So what am I allowed to be?"
"Silent," he said. "And safe."
An hour later, I was in my new prison.
The East Wing suite. Bigger than most apartments. Full of sunlight and zero warmth. Cameras in the corners. Windows that didn't open. A lock on the outside of the door.
No phone.
No laptop.
No voice.
I paced the room like a panther in a cage, too wired to sit, too furious to cry again.
This wasn't protection. This was suffocation with a prettier name.
I opened the closet. A new wardrobe — modest dresses. Nothing short, nothing tight. Nothing fun. Just polished girl-politician garbage.
I opened the drawer.
No pens.
No scissors.
Not even eyeliner.
A knock hit the door like a bullet.
I turned.
And then he stepped in.
Killian Cross.
My shadow.
"Room inspection," he said.
His voice was clipped. Flat. Emotionless.
He walked in without asking, eyes scanning every inch of the space.
He moved like a soldier. No wasted motion. Just pure precision. I hated how aware I was of the way his shirt fit across his back.
I folded my arms. "Do you usually barge into women's rooms uninvited?"
He didn't answer.
"Do you ever talk?" I snapped.
Still nothing.
He opened the bathroom door, scanned the medicine cabinet. Then he checked under the bed. Then the window. Then the drawer.
He paused.
Looked at me.
"Nothing sharp," he said.
"I wasn't going to hurt myself," I said.
His eyes didn't blink. "I wasn't worried about you."
It took me half a second to realize what he meant.
"You think I'd hurt someone else?"
Silence.
Something buzzed in my bloodstream. I walked toward him slowly.
"You're not here to protect me," I said. "You're here to protect the world from me."
Nothing.
I stood toe-to-toe with him now.
"So tell me, Grim," I whispered, "what exactly did my father promise you to babysit the national embarrassment?"
He didn't move.
I reached for his collar.
His jaw flexed.
"I bet it wasn't enough," I said. "Because this job? It's going to ruin you."
I leaned in.
He didn't stop me.
My mouth was almost at his ear when I whispered, "And if you think for a second you can control me..."
I stopped.
Let the air shift.
Then I said it:
"Kiss me… or kill me."
He moved.
Not toward me.
He stepped back. One step. Then two.
His voice was steel dipped in frost. "Don't play with things you don't understand, Miss Thorne."
I smiled, wicked and wild.
"You think I don't understand?" I said. "You've been trained to eliminate threats, right? I've been trained to become one."
He stared at me.
Then he turned, walked to the door, opened it.
Before he stepped out, he said, "I'll be outside your room. Don't try anything stupid."
The door clicked shut.
I waited three seconds.
Then I whispered to the empty room:
"Too late."
What Pheobe doesn't know? Killian just received a silent alert from West Wing Intel. Someone inside the mansion accessed her school locker remotely — and uploaded a second video.
Whoever's leaking these files isn't done.
And neither is she.