My chest caves in at the mere thought of never hearing them again, of her voice going silent because I wasn’t there to protect her. The pressure is so sharp it feels like a fist closing around my ribs, squeezing until I can barely drag in a breath.
I drag a shaking hand over my mouth, pressing hard enough to leave an indent of my ring on my cheek. My vision blurs, then sharpens, snapping between memories and the pitch-black motorway speeding beneath us.
Just hold on, sweetheart. I’m coming.
I lean forward, forearms braced on my knees, staring at the dark windshield like I can will the SUV faster. The engine growls, tyres humming against the asphalt, streetlights streaking across the glass like frantic heartbeats.
Four hours.
Four hours while she’s somewhere in the dark, scared and alone.
Four hours where any second could be the second I am too late.
My hands curl into fists so tight my nails bite my palms.
“Matt,” Jonathan says from the front, low, cautious, like he’s afraid I’ll break in half. “Try to breathe.”
I don’t answer.
Because breathing feels impossible when the only thing I can picture is Lily bound, terrified, calling for me in a place where no one can hear her.
Except maybe the monsters who took her.
And if they lay a hand on her—if they even breathe wrong in her direction—I will burn Liverpool to the fucking ground.
“Just hold on,” I whisper again, barely audible over the engine. “I’m coming, sweetheart. I swear I’m coming.”
The city lights fade behind us.
The darkness ahead swallows the road whole.
And I cling to the sound of her voice in my head, because if I lose that, I lose everything.
Chapter 47
Idon’t sleep. Not properly. Not really. I drift in and out of fractured memories and waking nightmares, each one sharper than the last. The cell is too cold, too still, the kind of stillness that feels like it’s waiting to become something far worse.
I dream of water, of the beach. Abbie’s honeymoon, the sun on our skin, the laughter and champagne, and how it had felt like a quiet goodbye to any sliver of hope I’d had that Matt and I would ever work out. Then it shifts. The waves recede, and I’m in a chapel instead, watching Matt stand at the altar in a suit that should have been mine to admire. I see him lift the veil over Gianna’s head, slip the ring onto her finger, and the world lurches, nausea curdling in my stomach.
I wake with a gasp, heart hammering, lungs burning as I try desperately to slow my racing pulse.
The other girls are clustered around me, shadows in the dim light, each in various stages of waking. Their faces are blank, weary, but even through the exhaustion, I can see the shared fear, the unspoken question lingering in all of us—how long, and what next?
My body aches from the hard floor, from sitting too long, from every tense muscle I haven’t allowed to relax. My wrists tingle where I imagine I was bound yesterday. It’s an unwelcome reminder of how small and powerless I feel. How easy I was to trick. How fucking stupid I was.
I pace in the limited space, counting the cracks in the concrete wall, memorising the angles of shadows that stretch across the floor with the slow movement of the sun outside. The air is stale, carrying a faint metallic scent I can’t place. I’m not sure if it’s fear or blood or if I’ve just lost the ability to distinguish between the two.
I try to sleep again, pressing my cheek to the cold wall, hoping exhaustion will swallow me whole, but every time my eyes close, the memories claw back in sharper, faster. The chapel. Gianna. The beach. Matt’s face, that impossible mixture of warmth and betrayal, haunting me like a ghost I can’t exorcise.
From somewhere deeper in the cell, one of the other girls shifts, letting out a soft, broken moan. Instinct claws at me to reach for her—to offer even a scrap of comfort—but lifting my arms feels like dragging iron through mud. And wasting energy is a luxury I don’t have.
So I curl my hands into fists instead.
I squeeze until my nails cut crescents into my palms, until the tremor in my fingers steadies into something sharper. Something that keeps me from sinking into the cold on this floor.
Because if I hold on long enough—if I survive long enough—I’m going to use these hands.
On whoever did this to me.
