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Trent doesn’t touch her. Doesn’t flinch. Just stands there as she rages like a hurricane. Talk about an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.

He says something low, and fury takes over her face in deep reds before she turns and stomps up the stairs like a grounded teenager.

Taking a slow, deep breath has Oliver glancing back at me. What goes through his head as he watches her? He spends so much of his day like this. Observing from afar.

It rakes against my sanity because I hate how she reacts to him—defiant, sure, but not scared. Never scared. She still doesn’t understand.

She thinks we’re simply trying to control her. Take her freedom.

But this is about survival.

I turn away from the monitor before she appears in her room. Before seeing if she packs her bag willingly or if she makes Trent do it for her. Because he will.

I would.

Heading down to my car, I make the short trek home—to the converted industrial building the three of us transformed into a shared space. Each of us taking a floor as a condo, leaving the top and bottom floors to share.

It’s the safest place in the city with the steel-reinforced doors, the three different biometric locks, and the sublevel safe room, but especially with the three of us living there.

Now, it’s time to flip on every failsafe we’ve ever thought to build.

Motion sensors. Signal scramblers. Lockout traps. Power reroutes.

They’re all live now.

And if anyone so much as breathes the wrong way near Harper…

They’ll never make it out alive.

15

HARPER

Trent manhandles me all the way to my house. My silent pout in the car gets zero reactions out of him, and I have to remember that he’s not affected the same way my dad was with the silent treatment.

I’ll have to find different ways to pout—to punish him.

I’m out of the door the moment the car comes to a stop in front of my house, charging into the manor. Forget the bag and my phone, I simply want to lock him out, to keep him from thinking he has any say about my life. Any sway over my decisions.

He is not in control of me.

But as the door swings to close, his boot stops it. Trent’s hand catches the wood, and his stern features don’t change. I screech and stomp my foot.

He barges inside anyway, and my mom’s not even home to help me kick his overbearing ass out.

Entering without asking, he walks up to me with slow, deliberate steps, towering over me. God, these men love to do that. Love to highlight just how much bigger than me they are.

Sure, you’re big, Trent, but that doesn’t give you carte blanche to be a controlling asshole like this.

“Get out.” My voice warbles higher than I intend but fuck it. I stomp up to him.

“Go pack a bag.”

“No.”

His head tilts dangerously, and I’m scared to imagine what he’s planning. He takes another step into my space, closing the feet to inches.

The proximity drives heat through me. I know I should be scared, but I’m not. None of them would actually hurt me. Even if Trent wants to intimidate me into thinking so.