Chapter 28

The room spun, a kaleidoscope of emotions swirling within me. Fear, cold and sharp, clawed at my throat. Jason's insistence on this audition felt like a twisted game, a cruel joke in the face of the unknown danger I was feeling from that red ring. But caught in the undertow of his influence, I found myself unable to resist.
I looked down at the script in my hand. Its words blurring before my eyes. The scene in my hand was about the woman falling in love with the male lead, but she’s forced to kill him. The character doesn’t succeed as she ends up dead within a few minutes of the story and mostly serves as part of the male lead’s backstory. The unsettling tension that thrummed between Jason and me. The internal struggle, the battle between love and duty, was a stark reflection of the turmoil raging within me.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed aside my anxieties. It was a chance to get out of my contract with Sebastian’s company. I stepped onto the makeshift stage, the harsh lights mimicking the relentless scrutiny of the unknown, the line between fiction and reality blurred.
There was no co-star to share the scene. Instead, I faced a vast emptiness, relying solely on my imagination to breathe life into the character. I felt oddly connected to the story. I thought of Sebastian and my feelings for him and how much I’d suffered at his hands. A bone-deep fear, resonated with a disturbing familiarity. My voice trembled as I delivered the lines, each word laced with a raw vulnerability that surprised even me.
“I didn’t… mean for it to be like this…”
Tears welled up in my eyes, blurring the already indistinct figure in my mind's eye with Sebastian. he smiled at me. I could see the deadly secret glinting on his right hand – the fiery red ring from earlier. 
With each tear that escaped, I fell further into it. I remembered those men who kidnapped me. 
“You weren’t supposed to be like this!”
The fear that gnawed at me and gripped my own heart. And the red ring, a constant presence in my mind, felt like a physical weight, a symbol of the danger that loomed. 
“But I don’t have a choice. It’s you… It’s you or me, and I’ve come to far to die like this…”
I raised my hand as if I was holding a gun. Letting my hand shake as my vision blurred. 
“Goodbye…”
Someone closed something with a loud snap, like a gunshot, and I crumpled to the ground. My body trembling with a mixture of exhaustion and a primal fear that had nothing to do with the script. Silence stretched on, thick and suffocating. I blinked through the darkness of my memories and the fear. 
Had I convinced them? Had I played the part well enough? Or had I simply revealed too much of my own anxieties, my own burgeoning fear of what had happened to me? It felt like they knew. it felt possible. 
Jason suddenly felt like a point of terror. 
Exhaustion clung to me like a second skin, a cloak woven from the raw emotions I'd poured into the scene. My heart hammered a frantic tattoo against my ribs.
Suddenly, someone made a sound. I turned, looking at the panel. They looked impressed. Mark was grinning. 
"Wow," he said, his gaze fixed on me. "That was… intense. You really disappeared into the role. The tears, the fear… it was all very believable."
I caught the glint of the blood red ring and another jolt of fear went through them. It felt almost as if the ring was made of my own blood. I knew that was impossible, but it felt like that.
Relief washed over me, warm and welcome. I hadn't botched it. A shy smile spread across my face. "Thank you," I managed, my voice hoarse from the emotional strain.
I cleared my throat and stood. Then, I noticed that Bennet had come back. She stood beside Jason and seemed less impressed. She clapped politely, a tight smile plastered on her face. Then, leaning towards Jason, she murmured something in a low voice, her perfectly sculpted eyebrows raised in a question. Their conversation was brief, punctuated by Jason's low chuckle. He glanced at me for a fleeting moment, a hint of amusement dancing in his eyes.
Suddenly, the man approached me. His hands moving together. Then, in a gesture that seemed to defy both logic and my recent anxieties, he pulled the ring from his finger and offered it to me. 
A gasp rippled through the room. Bennett's smile faltered, replaced by a look of shock that mirrored my own. Before anyone could react, he grabbed my hand. His hand was so cold and he slipped it onto my finger. 
"For you, my dear," he said, his voice dripping with a mock formality. "A little token of appreciation."
I was frozen in place. Terrified and uncertain. I looked over at Jason for some sort of answer, but I couldn’t read his expression. He pulled away from me and went back outside. I felt like a deer caught in headlights, mouth agape, unable to formulate a single word. The ring felt heavy and cold, but I didn’t want to take it off. It felt dangerous to take it off. 
Speechless, I got off the platform. The weight of the red ring made my body stiff. 
What did it all mean? What did Jason want from me? Would he tell me what was going on? 
Did Mark know? 
I felt ill, like I shouldn’t have come here, but maybe that was just because I’d never gotten anything so nice before. 
I looked down at the ring and noted the G engraved in the band. 
G… for Giovanni?
Quinton’s brand maybe?
Suddenly, the ring felt blindingly hot, like it would burn me, so I hurried out, looking for somewhere to go that I could take the ring off in private.