Sera's POV
I wake up to the sound of my phone exploding with notifications.
Not the gentle buzz of a few messages. The constant, violent vibration of hundreds of messages flooding in at once. It sounds like a swarm of angry bees is trapped in my pocket.
My eyes snap open. Silk sheets. Expensive furniture. Dante's suite.
Everything from last night crashes back—the roof, the pills, the boys saving me, the training, the deal.
And then Victoria recording us.
My hand shakes as I grab my phone from the nightstand. The screen is full of notifications from the school's social media app. Tags. Comments. Shares. All of them about me.
I click on the video Victoria posted.
There we are on the rooftop. Five hands stacked together. The Dark Angels looking at me like I matter. Like I'm one of them.
Victoria's caption makes my stomach turn: "BREAKING: The Dark Angels' newest plaything? Guess Sera really will do ANYTHING for attention. Even fake a suicide attempt. Desperate Pathetic AttentionSeeker"
The comments are worse.
"She's probably sleeping with all of them."
"I knew the suicide thing was fake. She just wanted attention."
"What a slut. Four guys at once?"
"The Dark Angels are just playing with her. Watch—they'll destroy her even worse now."
My chest gets tight. My breathing speeds up. After everything, after choosing to live, after thinking maybe things could be different—it's starting all over again.
"Sera?"
I look up. All four boys are awake now, watching me from different spots in the room. Dante sits in a chair by the window. Killian leans against the wall. Ezra stands near the door. Phoenix perches on the edge of the dresser.
They all look terrible. Dark circles under their eyes. Hair messy. Clothes wrinkled like they've been wearing them for days.
"Have you seen this?" I turn my phone toward them.
Dante's jaw tightens. Killian's hands curl into fists. Ezra's eyes go cold. Phoenix actually growls.
"We saw it an hour ago," Dante says quietly. "We've been trying to figure out how to tell you."
"Tell me?" I laugh, but it sounds broken. "Tell me that I'm still the school joke? That nothing's changed? That I should have just jumped last night because this was always going to be my life?"
"Don't say that." Killian pushes off the wall, moving toward me. "Don't ever say that."
"Why not?" I throw my phone onto the bed. "It's true. You said you'd help me. You said things would be different. But look—I'm still the victim. I'm still the girl everyone laughs at."
"Not for long," Phoenix says. His voice is different from his usual wild energy. Serious. Dark. "Victoria just made the biggest mistake of her life."
"He's right," Ezra adds. "She thinks she's won. But she just gave us the perfect reason to destroy her first."
I stare at them. "You're actually going to help me? This isn't some new game?"
The silence that follows is heavy.
Dante stands and walks over to me. He sits on the edge of the bed, close enough that I can see the guilt in his dark eyes.
"We need to tell you something," he says. "The truth about why we targeted you in the first place."
My heart pounds. "I already know. You're cruel. I was an easy target. You're rich and bored and I was—"
"Your father sold you to us," Dante interrupts.
The words don't make sense at first. "What?"
"Three years ago, your father came to my family with a business problem. He owed us money. A lot of money. He couldn't pay." Dante's voice is flat, emotionless, but his hands shake slightly. "My father doesn't forgive debts. He was going to destroy your father's business, take everything."
"I don't understand," I whisper.
"Your father made a deal," Ezra continues, his voice soft. "He said instead of money, he'd give us something else. Access to you. Entertainment. He told my father and Dante's father that we could do whatever we wanted to you at school. That you'd be our... stress relief."
The room spins. "No. No, that's not—my father wouldn't—"
"He did," Killian says, and his voice is filled with anger. Not at me. At himself. "He literally offered you up like a toy. Said we could break you however we wanted as long as we left his business alone."
I can't breathe. Can't think. My own father? The man who's supposed to protect me?
"At first, we thought it was just talk," Phoenix adds. "Rich people say crazy things in business deals. But then your father actually told you to stay away from us, right? Made it seem like he was protecting you?"
I nod slowly. He did. Freshman year, he specifically told me to avoid the Dark Angels. Said they were dangerous. I thought he was being a concerned parent for once.
"He did that on purpose," Dante explains. "So you'd seem more... forbidden. More fun to chase. He set you up perfectly."
Tears burn my eyes. "So everything—every horrible thing you did to me—my father wanted it?"
"Yes," Dante says simply. "And we're not going to lie to you. We did it. We're guilty. We could have said no. We could have refused. But we didn't."
"Why?" The word comes out as a sob. "Why would you torture someone just because you could?"
Killian sits on my other side. "Because we're broken too."
And then they tell me everything.
Dante talks about his mother dying when he was eight. How she was killed by his father's enemies because they knew she was his weakness. How his father trained him to be cruel, to never show emotion, to see people as tools instead of humans. "Hurting you meant I was strong," he says. "It meant I wasn't weak like my mother."
Killian describes his father beating him bloody every time he showed kindness or mercy. How he learned to channel all his rage into controlled violence. "You were safe to hurt," he admits, and his voice cracks. "Because you wouldn't fight back hard enough to make me lose control. I could hurt you and still feel like I had power over my own rage."
Ezra explains being abandoned by his mother at six years old. Left at boarding school and never visited again. How he learned to manipulate people because controlling their emotions was the only way he could feel anything himself. "Destroying you mentally was the deepest connection I'd had with anyone in years," he whispers. "That terrifies me. That I only know how to connect through destruction."
Phoenix talks about parents who medicated him into numbness. Who wanted a perfect son and got a chaotic disaster instead. How he started dealing drugs and playing dangerous pranks because at least chaos made him feel alive. "I noticed you fading weeks before the roof," he says. "I watched you disappear piece by piece. And I kept hurting you because I didn't know how to help. I only knew how to destroy."
By the time they finish, we're all crying. Four broken boys and one shattered girl sitting in expensive silence.
"We're not asking you to forgive us," Dante says finally. "We don't deserve forgiveness. We deserve to burn in hell for what we did to you."
"But we want to help you burn everyone else first," Killian adds.
"Starting with your father," Ezra says darkly.
"And Victoria," Phoenix finishes. "And Trevor. And every single person who made your life hell."
I look at each of them. These boys who tortured me. These boys who saved me. These boys who are offering me revenge wrapped in their own guilt.
Something shifts inside my chest. Something dark and hungry wakes up.
"Okay," I say. "But I have conditions."
"Anything," they all say together.
"First, you don't lie to me. Ever again. I want the truth, even if it hurts."
They nod.
"Second, you teach me everything. Fighting, manipulation, strategy, chaos—all of it. I want to be dangerous."
"Done," Dante agrees.
"Third," I say, and my voice goes cold. "My father is mine. When the time comes, I destroy him. Not you. Me."
"He's yours," Killian promises.
"And fourth—" I stand up, facing all of them. "You don't get to save me anymore. I'm not some broken thing you rescued. I'm a weapon you're helping me sharpen. Understand?"
Pride flashes in Dante's eyes. "Understood."
Phoenix grins. "Our little angel's becoming a devil."
"Good," I say. "Because Victoria just declared war. And I'm going to show her what happens when you attack someone who has nothing left to lose."
My phone buzzes again. Another notification. I pick it up, ready to see more cruel comments.
But this time, it's a private message from an unknown number: "Sera Ashford. We need to talk. I have information about your mother's death. Information the Dark Angels don't know. Meet me at the old chapel in 20 minutes. Come alone. Your life depends on it."
The message includes a photo attachment. I open it.
My breath stops.
It's a picture of my mother on the day she died. But she's not in a car accident like my father always said.
She's standing in Dante's father's office, arguing with someone. And in the corner of the photo, barely visible—is my father, holding something in his hand.
Something that looks like a gun.