My breath crystallized in the air. I'd stopped shivering an hour ago. I knew it was a bad sign, but I was too tired to care. My muscles were sore already and I didn't want to have to shiver anymore.

The lights lanced through the streets, burning my eyes. I searched the windows, looking for any store open at three AM. It was getting harder to see, letters were fuzzier and the words didn't make much sense. Where am I? 

I wasn't even sure which direction I had run. Maybe I was close to Chinatown. Maybe there'd be an open restaurant there. Or anyone at all, before I froze to death. 

"Going somewhere?" My stomach bottomed out. "I thought your dad gave you a curfew."

My feet sunk into the concrete sidewalk and refused to move. "What are you doing here?" I wanted to ask, but it came out a hoarse whisper.

He took a few steps out of the shadow of a building. "What am I doing here?" I could the smirk in his voice. "This is my property."

My breath hitched. I wasn't even close to Chinatown.

Now my feet moved. One lurching step backward.

"Oh I see," he took three more steps closer. "You're lost."

I tried to turn and run and made it a masterful two steps before he had my arm. He jerked me back and I screamed. Finally, instinct kicked in, and I expended all of my energy into one punch to the chest. He didn't even flinch.

"Relax, I'm not going to kill you." He grumbled, catching my wrist. "Just uses you as leverage."

I was shaking. My whole body now convulsing, with fear and maybe fever. My stomach was heaving, but there wasn't even bile left to throw up. His grip on my elbow was a lightning fire, and I knew I was too weak to break it. I couldn't escape. Not twice.

"God are you drunk?" His voice was scorn as he dragged into a storefront light. My legs didn't cooperate and I fell into him, just as quickly shoving myself off. My mind was screaming for him to stop touching me, but the hold on my elbow was as unmoving as Mount Rushmore.

I shied away from the light, head down shoulders pulled up to my ears. "Look at me." I turned as far away as his grip would let me.

He grumbled something, grabbed my other shoulder and roughly spun me to face him. I shrieked and for the first time looked in his face. He was angry and triumphant.

I pulled against his hold. Knees locked, muscles stiff.

"Are you seriously out without your jacket? It's twelve degrees." As if on cue, I coughed. A kind of hacking cough that made you think you were releasing your organs.

When the fit ended he was still. "What's that?"

I dared to look him in the eyes. He was squinting at my neck. I wanted nothing more than to run. Keep running. Run until the city turned to desert and deserts turned to oceans.

"Let me go." It was more plea than demand. He wasn't listening.

He pulled me closer to the light. "Please, Jace." Tears broke my voice.

"Look at me." He commanded. I didn't.

He pulled my chin up with thumb and forefinger. I was crying. God, why do people cry? Tears with no purpose, no use.

"Did someone choke you?" He almost sounded angry. They're always angry.

I couldn't answer. I didn't know what the right one was this time.

Before I could think, he swept my feet out from under me and hoisted me up. I shrieked again and my numb fingers scrambled for purchase and stability.

He shoved me into the passenger seat of a car. And drove away.

Kidnapped. I'd never truly considered the possibility. It always seemed like something that happened to other people. Not me.

Yet here I was, too weak to do anything other than be afraid.

I shrunk into the seat, curling in on myself and pulling as far away as possible. I was pathetic, but I couldn't fight the instinct. I silently-desperately- prayed to a god I didn't believe in. I would give anything for all of this to end.

At least the tears had stopped and my legs weren't burning anymore.

His hand moved and I nearly jumped through the window. He paid me one hard look before flipping on the heater.

Warm, warm, warm. The air was life and death and I wanted it all.

The pain that came between the hot air and my frozen skin, was welcomed. The feeling of strength reentering my body was a gift.

Lights buzzed and disappeared like fireflies. Jace was going way faster than any New York speed limit. The rev of the engine was a low vibration in the air.

I weighed the risk of speaking with the benefit of a possible answer. How much worse could I make it anyway?

I stared out the window. Practically molded to the door. "Where are you taking me?"

One heartbeat too long. One moment of silence and I was almost in tears again.

"The hospital."

My muscles had frozen again. Anxiety, and confusion battle for control over my adrenaline. I don't want to breathe anymore.

One sharp turn and the car jerks to a stop, throwing me against my seatbelt. My chest catches fire and a cold heat flees through my body.

Jace is saying something into a phone. Italian I think.

He steps out of the car and I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Does he expect me to follow him? Does he want me to stay? Should I run? I wouldn't make it far. Maybe I'd get lucky. I've never gotten lucky.

The door opens and I nearly fall out. Someone grabs my arms. He's wearing a short whit elab coat. He squints at me, studying me. Scrubbing away my skin with his gaze to excavate my secrets.

"Isn't she Harrens daughter?"

I pull all the way back and trip into the car seat behind me.

He's not looking at me any more. "Jace. What did you do?"

"You're a doctor. Shouldn't you be fixing people without asking questions?"

"I'm a resident, and HIPAA doesnt' actually extend this far. Also if you forgot I'm your straight thinking brother."

"Dante." I could feel the familiar energy in the air. The one that preceded a fight. Blood, violence. "Just do it."

He turned back to me. "Fine, but if you restart a feud, that's on you and I'm moving to Barcelona."

He beckoned for me to get out of the car. I quickly played with the idea of not moving, but the consequences weren't something I thought I could survive right now.

One carefully steadied step after the next, pulled me forward. I didn't want to get any closer to anyone at all.

With one side eye at Jace I followed the man ace into the sliding doors of the hospital. He takes me to an empty room makes me sit on a table. It feels open, exposed, steril and raw.

It's an out of body experience, I can see myself watching from a distance, not actually present in the moment. My body controlled by puppet strings.

He starts with a few basic questions. I answer with generic and vauge responses. When he finally sees my neck his hands freeze for just a moment too long. The rest of the time he only speaks to ask questions, poking, bandaging, assessing and treating.

He made me take off my shirt. For a moment I had to remember that doctors ask this all the time. I hoped he still held himself to professional standards, even if it was illegal. I was very gerateful for my sports bra.

I hadn't gotten a good look at the bruises before. It was more than I had expected.

I keep count of his diagnosis; Fractured wrist, two cracked ribs, bruising to accompany them, a grade 2 concussion, a significant bruising around my neck and likely bronchitis from the cold.

He handed me a handful of pills and I wasted no time throwing them back. I hadn't had painkillers for a month.

Dante left me in the room. I put my shirt back on and pulled my knees to my chest and let the painkillers numb the nerves, cloud my vision. The haze was preferable to the sharp clairty of pain. I wanted my brain to stop its pointless spinning. Pointless breaking between one uncontrollable situation and another. I didn't want to have to exist as a human anymore. I'd become a ghost anyway.

I'd almost fallen asleep when the door opened again. Jace this time. The one not bound by the pretense of a professional code.

He watched me and I watched the floor. "What happened?"

Heat flushed my cheeks. Shame, fear, humiliation. "It was my fault."

"Who?"

My lips glued together.

He stepped closer. "Who?"

I clenched my hands to stop the trembling.

"Who did it to you?"

There is glass in my chest. My vision is fractured.

"Was it your father?"

My muscles, tendons, joints, and skin are marble. I should deny it, It would be smart to deny it, but the words can't pass my constricted throat.

He watches me, casually predatorial as if his upper hand in the situation doesn't mean anything. One day, I promise myself.

"Let's go. Jace said you can't stay here."

My obedient feet followed him back to the car. He put me in the front seat again. I wondered if it was easier to keep an eye on me there. I certainly felt more exposed.

The sky was beginning to blush with dawn when he pulled up to a penthouse. His house, I remember. I'd seen it once before. Before my father had been framed for his sister's death. Before the war, before....