Page 79 of Scaled Daddy's Secret Heir

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How she looked at me before the hatch closed—like I was both everything and nothing.

I use her face in the dark. Like prayer. Like fuel.

I whisper into the blackness when there’s nothing else to say:

Something mattered.

And that’s where I cling: to thematterof her escape.

To the belief that she lived.

To the hope that her future—whatever it holds—is worth enduring every second of this.

They come back again. Another interrogator. New faces. Fresh scripts. Sharper tools.

“Tell us the location of agent Trin,” he says.

“Ask her,” I murmur through blood-dry lips.

The man blinks.

I smile, toothless and feral.

“Not gonna happen,” I say.

He tries again—slow and methodical, like he thinks I’m an equation that just needs the right variables.

I give him silence.

Then laugh—soft, low, humorless.

Because there’s a truth even they can’t take from me:

They may control my body.

They may twist my name into propaganda.

But they will never getherfrom me.

Not while I still breathe.

I have nothing left to lose?—

Except hope.

And I’m not giving that up.

CHAPTER 26

LEAH

The scanner chirps one last time before I crush it beneath the heel of my boot.

It’s funny how certain sounds stick in your memory—little beeps and warnings that once meantidentityandaccessandbelonging, now reduced to nothing more than dead noise under steel.

I watch the light die.

And I don’t flinch.

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