CHAPTER THIRTEEN - DINAH

The world had been spinning for as long as Dinah Alcott could remember. It wasn’t the world around her, though—it was her mind, a carousel of thoughts she couldn’t escape, a tight knot she couldn’t untangle. The worst part? She had gotten used to it. Used to the spinning, the hunger for the candy, the gnawing void that only more could fill—more information, more power, more control.

And then, there was Coil. She should have hated him. She did, didn’t she? He’d twisted her, used her as his puppet, making her do things she couldn’t even recognize herself doing. But when it all started—when the candy kicked in—nothing mattered but the need for more. Everything he told her made sense. He made sense.

Until the day he didn’t.

She hadn’t seen it coming—Contessa, she would learn her name was.

Not that she expected anyone to come for her. She was Coil’s. His weapon. His tool. The one who could help him manipulate the future with all his planning, all his careful steps. The one thing that he believed could guarantee his victory.

But he was wrong.

She wasn’t really his. He’d never understood how far she could be pushed, how far everything would unravel.

She didn’t hear the confrontation between Coil and Contessa. She didn’t witness Coil, the man who had controlled her, brought to his knees by someone who saw everything—someone who didn’t play by his rules. By the time she sensed something had shifted, the pieces had already fallen.

She saw Contessa out of the corner of her eye—a flicker of movement, a shadow against the dim light. For a moment, she thought it was a trick of her mind, a hallucination caused by the spinning thoughts that tormented her. But then she felt it: the change in the air, the sudden shift in the room.

“He’s dead,” Contessa said, her voice void of emotion. It wasn’t a question. It was fact.

Dinah’s body stiffened. She didn’t react right away—not because she didn’t care, but because she didn’t know how to feel. Coil had been her anchor, her sole tether to the world that made sense. Without him, everything felt uncertain.

“Dead?” Dinah repeated, her voice hollow. She blinked rapidly, as if doing so would help her process the reality of it. All the planning, all the scheming, had been for nothing. It was over, just like that.

Dead.

Contessa didn’t need to say more. The finality of her words hung in the air, thick and heavy, enveloping Dinah in a profound sense of disconnection. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so alone. She had been shackled by Coil’s influence for so long that the idea of being untethered, of existing outside of his reach, was both terrifying and exhilarating.

Dinah turned to Contessa. The woman didn’t look at her the way Coil did, as if she were just a tool. She looked at Dinah with something different—something that felt like understanding. Maybe even compassion.

“You’re free,” Contessa said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “No more games. No more manipulation.”

Dinah stared at her, a thousand conflicting emotions flashing behind her eyes. Free. The word tasted strange in her mouth. What did it even mean? She had been free once, before all this. But now? She wasn’t sure she remembered what it felt like.

Without Coil, without the endless cycles of manipulation, who was she? Who could she be?

She wasn’t sure.

She wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

For the first time in a long while, the hunger for the candy wasn’t at the forefront of her thoughts. It had always been there, gnawing at her, but now there was something else. A void. A place where her sense of self had once been, swallowed by Coil’s control and drug dependency.

“What now?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

Contessa studied her for a moment, then stepped closer. “You decide. You have the power to choose what comes next.”

Dinah’s heart hammered in her chest. Choose. She had been so wrapped in the idea of fulfilling someone else’s vision, so deep in the candy’s grip, that the idea of real freedom—of choice—felt like a luxury she didn’t deserve.

But maybe, just maybe, it was hers to claim.

“What do you want, Dinah?” Contessa’s voice was steady, but there was warmth in it now, as if she understood the weight of this moment.

“I…” Dinah trailed off, staring at her trembling hands. Not from fear, but from the weight of everything that had led her here. The knowledge that her life had been shaped by forces beyond her control.

“Just… help me figure this out,” she said finally. She wasn’t asking for revenge. She wasn’t asking for anyone to save her. She wasn’t asking to go back to the way things were. She didn’t even know if she could. She just needed help. The world she had been part of no longer made sense, and she needed to find a new way forward—one that wasn’t tied to addiction, to manipulation, to Coil.

Contessa nodded, almost imperceptibly. “We’ll start from here,” she said simply.

And for the first time in a long while, Dinah felt a flicker of hope.

The world hadn’t stopped spinning yet. But now, it was hers to navigate.