The rest of the night felt surreal. My father and I rejoined the charity event, although it was stupid at that point to even call it by that name anymore, and he pretended that we had been happily reunited thanks to Marta’s insistence that I attend this evening’s event. Marta looked at him in complete and hysterical confusion as soon as she saw me on his arm.

I was pretty sure that she was hoping I would be dead by now. But she played along with it as though she had arranged the whole father-daughter reunion herself. I wondered what terrible things my father had done to Marta to make her so easily compliant. A seat was cleared for me to sit next to my father and I sat like an emotionless, soulless, shell of a human as I stared out at the people who whispered about me and pretended to smile.

I would have given anything to go back to the whispers that the kids in the halls at Goldshire used to do instead. I didn’t even listen anymore as the board members talked to my father and Marta about their ideas for upcoming events. All I could think about was Michael, Adam, and Julian, and hoping that they weren’t dead or dismembered back on the Lineage campus. When the evening had started to wind down, my father and Marta and I walked down to the street just before a black car pulled up in front of us.

“Get in,” my father said.

I obeyed, and then he and Marta slid into the seat on either side of me. As soon as the doors closed, the driver pulled away from the aquarium.

“I would have liked to have known about this before it happened there in front of everyone,” Marta complained to my father. “It was rather difficult to improvise when you put me on the spot like that.”

“I would have liked to have known that my daughter was still alive,” he said. “You told me that this would be taken care of before tonight. Imagine my surprise when I find her at my very own celebration.”

He had wanted me dead. My father thought I would already be dead by now.

Marta didn’t have a comeback for that. She sat silently for the rest of the ride. I wondered if she knew what he had done to her son, and I wondered if she even cared whether Michael lived or died. When the car pulled up to Lineage, we all got out. I stood there on the walkway in front of the main Lineage building, with my red silk dress covered in the blood from hugging the guys near the jellyfish exhibit, and I didn’t know what to do. Marta looked at me as if I were a stray animal, then she looked back at my father.

“Where’s she going to stay tonight?” she asked him.

“She can stay with the boys for a night. Maybe it will garner her allegiance a bit more for our discussions in the morning,” he answered.

“You’re not worried that she will try to escape again?”

My father made an obnoxious snorting noise at Marta. “What is she going to do, Marta? It’s not like she and three injured boys could get very far.”

Marta ducked her head and then reached for my father’s hand, which he then wrapped around hers.

Ewww.

“Let’s go,” he said as he pulled me alongside him.

Inside the main building, he called one of the guards over and instructed him to take me to the holding room. It sounded more like a prison than a school now. When I got there and the guard opened the door, I was relieved to see the three guys all there. They were all sitting on the ground and still shirtless, but very much alive. It looked like they had been trying to make a plan for something.

“Lisette!” Julian shouted as they all stood up and rushed over to me.

They each wrapped their arms around me until I was in the middle of one giant hug between them. I stood there for a minute and cried. When the guard slammed the door shut, the guys brought me to sit down on the floor with them.

And I studied their bruised and battered faces as they all spoke as quickly as possible.

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

“Not sure,” Michael asked. “The situation doesn’t look very good, to be honest.”

“Are they going to kill us?”

“No, I don’t think so. I think they have something else in store for us,” he said.

“Like what?” I asked as I looked around at each of them. It was pretty clear that none of us knew what fate awaited us.

We talked for a while, and then, out of sheer physical fatigue, we all started to fall asleep. I was still in the borrowed cocktail dress from the aquarium and had kicked off my shoes to curl up barefoot and cold in the thin silk fabric between Michael, Julian, and Adam. I lay between them and we all fell asleep in a heap together on the floor, not unlike a pack of wild animals in their den. I didn’t want to think about what the morning would bring. I only wanted to stay close to them.

In the morning, Michael and I were sent for while Adam and Julian stayed behind in the room. I didn’t like the feeling of being separated from them. I was put in a guarded room to shower and clean up and change into a fresh set of clothes that had been left on the table for me. I took my time in the shower and tried to get rid of the chill in my bones by standing beneath the hot falling water. When I was done, I put on the jeans and sweater and waited. While I waited, I braided my hair and tried not to think of all the awful things that could possibly happen to us here.

The door to the room opened, and Michael was ushered in to wait with me. It looked like he had been given a chance to clean up too.

“How are you holding up?” he asked me.

“I should be asking you that question,” I said. “You guys have had the shit beat out of you more times in the last few days than most people have in a lifetime.”

He sighed. “You’re not wrong.”

Michael reached out to hold my hand. He opened his mouth as if he were about to say something but then closed it again.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You were going to tell me how everything was going to be fine, and then you realized that it would be a lie. Am I right?”

He didn’t need to answer me; the look on his face was enough.

The door opened, and Marta appeared in the doorway.

“Mother,” Michael said as he walked quickly toward her. “You have to stop this. Tell Jack to let us go!”

“I can’t do that,” she said.

She almost looked a little sad, maybe even a touch remorseful, but I knew that couldn’t be right because Marta was an all-around horrible woman.

“What’s going to happen to us?” I asked.

A look of disdain coated her face when she looked at me. And she stared at me as if I were a rotten piece of fruit. “You are apparently going to be the new poster girl for Lineage. Your father would like you to present yourself as the beautiful new figurehead of our academy. The title is meaningless, of course, but simply a show to persuade trust from the community as we attempt to merge the two schools together.

“Like hell,” I said under my breath.”

“Careful,” she warned.

“And you,” Marta said as she turned to her son, “are going to take your place as the new overseeing Dean of Goldshire? That will ensure a smooth, transitionary process.”

I could tell that he wanted to echo my same sentiment, but he withheld and bit his tongue instead.

“What about Adam and Julian?” he asked instead.

“Adam will stay here and keep an eye on things with Lisette. Julian will go back with you to Goldshire and help you there. Both men have been strictly warned that if they don’t follow Jack’s directives, there will be hell to pay.”

“And by hell, I assume you mean—”

She tisked. “Let’s not play games, son. You all either do what you’re being instructed to do, or you’ll be killed.” Marta turned to leave. “Oh, and you won’t be seeing each other again until after the merger is complete. You leave in an hour, Michael.”

As soon as Marta had left the room, I started to beg Michael not to leave for Goldshire. But as much as he didn’t want to go either, there was nothing that either of us could do.