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I can’t see any of them. But they’re here… somewhere close by…
I’m not the only one who’s been taken captive.
That sobering revelation makes the situation feel so much worse. Significantly bleaker as I’m prodded along as though part of an invisible assembly line. These people do this often; they have a streamlined process.
I’m one of many. Just another number in whatever system I’m being forced into.
Easy to get lost in. Easy to be buried in.
The gray woman never stops with the pushes and shoves. I’m draped in another robe, wrists bound once more in a ziptie, and then flanked by men that I’ve never seen before but are familiar. The men who escorted me in the elevator guide me into synced steps alongside them.
Finally able to see, I glance up and study their features.
Both are unremarkable. Dark hair and eyes, skin that needs more sunlight. Tall and broad and strong. Though anyone would be jostling me along as I fumble on weak knees and bare feet.
The mystery men shove me into yet another room and slam the door shut.
This one drastically different from the shower room.
A parlor of some sort, with maroon papered walls and an oak table and chairs anchored in the center. Other details pepper the room, like some vases made of what looks like expensive porcelain and portraits showing off black-and-white memories from the past, but none of these things matter to me.
I want answers. I want them now.
Wrists zip-tied together, I shuffle toward the table and chairs.
I’m in the custody of the Neptune Society. It’s the only thing that makes sense. They’d been hunting me down when Stitches and I escaped. Then when Dad showed up and saved me. They tracked us down and then ambushed me at the airport.
The numbness that’s become second nature won’t let up. For once I’m grateful. At least I can’t feel the true horror of what’s about to happen—what I’m certain, even if it’s only in the back of my mind, I’m being placed into.
It allows me to dissociate from myself and my feelings.
From the broken, aching heart in my chest.
The door opens and in strides a tall man with a slicked ponytail. His eyes are on me from the first step, the glint of familiarity that lives in them unnerving. He has a jagged scar on his cheek and long, spindly legs that allow him to cross the room in only a couple steps.
I recognize him immediately as the man in the airport elevator. The one who knocked me unconscious.
It seems the next time I’m blinking he’s clamping a hand down on my shoulder and shoving me down into a chair.
His touch.
It makes me jerk. My insides knot. My intuition blares its alarm bells.
I’ve never felt so disconcerted so immediately. The way my body tenses as its forced into the chair is no mistake.
This man is my enemy. I’m certain I hate him with every fiber of my being.
I’d know this even without our brief encounter in the airport elevator.
“You gave us a lot of trouble,” he says in a voice I’ve heard before. He leans close, his long body caging over me in my seat. “But it was always going to come down to this. You were stupid to think otherwise.”
He plants his hand down on the tabletop. His hand, flat on the oak surface, draws my gaze the second it’s within view. A cold chill ices through me and freezes me into the chair I’m sitting in.
Long, grimy fingers and chewed up nails. A sapphire-gemmed ring with a silver braided band.
The night that changed my life descends on me and takes me away for the millionth time. I’ve lived and relived it so often it shouldn’t affect me anymore. Yet this time is different, breathing the air he breathes, staring at the same hand that planted itself on the cold, dirty asphalt as he jammed himself inside me.
I’m going to be sick.
