---- Chapter 4 Harper Griffin POV: Adler' s disappointment was a gift. It was the final, severing cut of a bond | had clung to for far too long. | wanted him to see me as the villain. | wanted him to hate me, because his hatred was a clean break, a cauterized wound. His pity, his condescending affection-that was a slow-bleeding poison. He spared a single, fleeting glance at my mangled hand, the one he had watched Juliana' s carelessness destroy just days before, and his eyes held nothing. No remorse, no concern. Just cold, empty space. He turned his back on me completely, kneeling beside the hysterical Juliana. "Jules, are you hurt? Let me see," he murmured, his voice thick with a tenderness that was a physical blow to my gut. He gently wiped a tear from her cheek, his touch infinitely careful. Then he rose, his face hardening as he looked at me, a crumpled mess on the floor. "You need to think about what you've done." With that, he grabbed my good arm, hauled me to my feet, and dragged me out of the room. He shoved me toward the basement stairs. The heavy wooden door slammed shut behind me, the bolt sliding home with a deafening finality. ---- "You're not coming out until you're my obedient little Harper again," he called through the door. His words were a bitter echo of a life | no longer wanted. "Obedient." The girl who smiled when she wanted to scream, who accepted cruelty as a substitute for love. That girl was dead, buried under the rubble of his precious photo wall. Darkness enveloped me. The air was thick with the smell of damp earth and decay. | was trapped. The pain in my hand was a throbbing, relentless fire, and a deeper ache settled in my chest as | slid down the rough wall to the cold, concrete floor. Days bled into one another in that subterranean prison. My only companions were the rats and roaches that skittered in the shadows, creatures | soon found myself fighting for the stale crusts of bread and murky water someone would shove through a slot in the door once a day. Pain became my clock. | would drift in and out of consciousness, the agony in my hand and ribs a constant, screaming presence. My phone, miraculously still in my pocket with a sliver of battery left, became my calendar. | watched the date tick closer to the day my divorce agreement would be legally finalized. It was my only hope, a tiny pinprick of light in the crushing dark. On the fourth day, as | was succumbing to a fevered haze, | heard a faint scratching sound. A rhythmic tapping coming from the wall behind a stack of old, mildewed crates. At first, ---- | thought it was the rats. But it was too deliberate, too patterned. Dragging my broken body across the floor, | pushed aside a heavy crate. Behind it, the stone was loose. | pulled it away, revealing a dark, narrow passage. The tapping grew louder, more insistent. Driven by a desperate curiosity, | crawled into the darkness. The tunnel was tight, smelling of dust and forgotten things. At the end, a faint light shone from under a makeshift wooden door. | pushed it open and fell into a small, hidden room. And my world ended for the second time. Two figures were huddled on a filthy mattress in the corner. They were skeletal, their hair long and matted with grime, their eyes hollowed out by unimaginable suffering. They were ghosts. They were my parents. "Mom? Dad?" The word was a choked, disbelieving whisper. It couldn't be. They were dead. They had died in a private plane crash three years ago, a tragedy that had sent me spiraling into Adler' s waiting arms. My mother looked up, her eyes slowly focusing on my face. Recognition dawned, followed by a wave of heart-wrenching anguish. "Harper... my baby..." she rasped, her voice rough from disuse. ---- My father just stared blankly, rocking back and forth, muttering nonsensical words to himself. His brilliant mind, the mind that had designed award-winning skyscrapers, was gone. Shattered. | scrambled to them, my own pain forgotten, and wrapped my arms around their frail bodies. They were real. They were alive. And they were in hell. "What happened?" | sobbed, my tears soaking into my mother ' sthin, ragged dress. "They told me you were dead." "He did this," my mother whispered, her voice trembling with a mixture of terror and rage. She pointed a skeletal finger toward the ceiling. "Adler. He staged the crash. He's kept us here... for years." The blood in my veins turned to ice. "Why?" | asked, the single word containing a universe of horror. "His mother," she spat, the name like poison on her tongue. "She convinced him. She said our family was a stain on his reputation. That with us gone, he would have complete control over you... and the Griffin Trust. He's been draining it, Harper. Selling off our company assets, piece by piece." Every word was a hammer blow, shattering the last vestiges of my naive past. The abuse, the miscarriages, the cruelty... it wasn't just narcissism. It was a calculated, monstrous plan. ---- He hadn't just broken my heart; he had systematically destroyed my entire world. A rage unlike anything | had ever known erupted inside me. It was a white-hot, purifying fire. It burned away the tears, the pain, the fear. All that remained was a cold, hard diamond of Purpose. He would not get away with this. | helped my mother get my father to his feet. We stumbled back through the tunnel, into the main basement. As we emerged, | noticed something | hadn't before. The main basement door was slightly ajar. Not locked. Just pushed shut He had left me a way out. A crumb of mercy. A final, arrogant assumption that | would crawl out, broken and defeated, and return to him. That this "punishment" would be enough to make me his obedient doll once more. He had no idea who he had just unleashed We climbed the stairs, blinking in the sudden light. My phone buzzed in my pocket, the final bit of its battery dying as a text message appeared on the screen. It was from my lawyer. "The divorce is final. You are officially Harper Griffin again." | looked at my broken parents, at the sunlight streaming ---- through the window, a symbol of a freedom | would fight for with my last breath. My lawyer' s number was the first one | called on the house phone. "Keaton," | said, my voice dangerously calm. "Change of plans. A divorce isn't enough." | took a deep, steadying breath. "| want him in prison for the rest of his life."