Page 209 of Bound By Crimson

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This wasn’t a letter.

This wasn’t a plan.

It was a woman surviving with ink.

She turned to the final page.

The handwriting was rushed. Jagged.

The baby is almost here. I’m too tired to keep writing. But I needed to put this somewhere. Even if no one ever sees it.

If I don’t come back for this journal, maybe it’s because I escaped.

Or maybe I’m dead.

Either way, she won’t win. Not forever.

Lyric closed the book.

Her hands were shaking, but not from weakness.

She placed it gently back in its hiding place.

Not because she was done with it—but because she finally understood.

She planned to read it again from the beginning—in case she’d missed something. Maybe something that revealed who her father was. She still had so many unanswered questions.

One thing she did know—Eden hadn’t written for her.

Eden wrote because she had no one to turn to. Lyric knew that feeling—being isolated, unheard, a prisoner.

It had been over twenty years, and now Lyric was lying in the same room. Same bed. Same fear. Same hunger. Same helplessness.

Nothing had changed.

At least now, someone was listening—decades too late.

Chapter Seventy-Seven

Ten Tiny Toes

She hadn’t heard the lock click in three nights.

It wasn’t an accident.

They thought she couldn’t move.

Couldn’t walk.

Couldn’t run.

So they stopped locking the door.

She let them believe it.

By day, she stayed curled in bed. Blanketed in silence.

But at night, after the house fell into stillness, she listened.

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