Page 151 of Hidden

I took that as a win. Nico would be focused on the outside, the perimeter, anywhere I might escape.

A sick thought came to me then that he might actually be amused if he caught me running around the house. As though I were simply a pawn in his sick game of catch and chase.

I pushed that thought to the side. Let him get some cheap thrill if he saw me scurrying around. Hopefully, I wouldn’t be here too much longer.

Slowly, carefully, I slipped into the corridor and pulled the door back into place behind me, making sure it didn’t latch too loudly. I kept close to the wall as I moved, my steps slow and deliberate, every muscle in my body wound too tight to allow for anything careless.

The storage room was halfway down the corridor on the left. I slipped inside and shut it gently behind me, then stood there for a second, letting my eyes adjust to the dimness.

Once they did, my gaze landed on the glass almost immediately.

A bottle neck, broken cleanly from the rest of it, glinted faintly from beneath a pile of rags, and I crouched down to retrieve it with careful fingers, testing the edge with my thumb just enough to know it would do exactly what I needed. My stomach turned at the thought, but I pushed it aside and looked around for something solid enough to use.

A broken bottle was the perfect weapon to slice open someone’s jugular. But that wasn’t me. And it would draw too much attention. It was too messy and violent.

There was, however, something else a glass bottle could do. Something I had once seen my dad do to one of his enemies.

I remembered the moment as clear as day, as though it had happened this very night. And, for once in my life, I would be exactly what my dad had intended.

I just needed to get to work.

I wrapped the glass in an old towel to muffle the sound as much as possible, then pressed down and began to grind.

It took longer than I expected. Longer than I wanted. The first few passes only broke the larger pieces into smaller jagged shards, and I had to keep going, using more pressure, more patience, more control than I really had left in me. The sound was faint, but to my ears it seemed deafening, every scrape of glass against concrete making me stop and listen for footsteps that never came.

I worked slowly, carefully, until what remained no longer looked like broken glass at all but something closer to coarse sugar, fine enough to disappear if no one was looking for it.

I stared at it for a second longer than I should have.

Because there was no pretending I didn’t know what this would do.

No pretending it was harmless or clever or some kind of victimless trick.

It was cruel, and it was ugly. And if it worked, it would buy me enough time to get out of here.

That was all that mattered.

I found a cracked plastic cup shoved at the back of one of the shelves and tipped the powder into it, making sure not to lose any of it as I stood. My hands were steady, which felt strange considering how violently everything inside me seemed to be moving. But perhaps that was what survival really was in the end. Not the absence of fear, but the ability to keep functioning whilst it hollowed you out.

When I stepped back into the corridor, I rounded a few corners and came across the guard I knew would be waiting at the top of the stairs.

He was slouched in a chair outside the basement door, one leg stretched out in front of him, his cut hanging open and his head tilted down toward the phone in his hand. A half-empty bottle of water sat on the floor by his boots, and for a second, I simply looked at him, taking in how ordinary he seemed. Not monstrous. Not visibly cruel. Just a man doing a job that happened to involve keeping women locked in a basement.

That, somehow, made it worse.

He glanced up when he noticed me, his expression shifting into irritation almost immediately. “What the fuck are you doing out?”

“I’m thirsty,” I said, keeping my voice quiet and flat, the way years of survival had taught me to. Not challenging. Not pleading. Firm enough to be noticed, but meek enough not to seem a threat.

His eyes narrowed. “And?”

I held up the cup slightly. “Can I have some water?”

He let out a sigh like I were inconveniencing him personally, then reached down for the bottle at his feet. “You always need something, don’t you?”

I didn’t answer.

He unscrewed the cap and tipped the bottle toward the cup in my hands, and I watched the water rise slowly, watched the fine glass cloud for the briefest second before dissolving into it completely. He didn’t notice. He didn’t even look. He was too busy trying to return to whatever had been on his screen.