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The insomnia worsened my state of mind.
The inability to move on my own without a walking frame or wheelchair shattered my self-worth.
I was nothing.
Fuck, if Neri could see me like this?
It would kill her.
I was glad.
Glad she thought I was dead.
At least she remembered me strong and healthy and not this wasted, shattered man I’d become.
The only light in the sea of darkness was I hadn’t been taken back to the catacombs. I was given the room where I’d healed in before. The king bed was lowered so I could swing my right leg to the floor and push upward without falling. The bathroom was modified, and the shower widened so I could wheel my frame beneath the water and not run the risk of slipping.
All razors, nail files, knives, and pointy instruments were removed from my vicinity.
Cem never asked if I was suicidal, but I supposed he sensed it. It didn’t take a genius to see the emptiness inside me or the corroding hatred in my eyes.
He visited me often. He showed me reports on his businesses. He educated me like a normal teacher would his student and told me things I would never be permitted to tell another.
Every lesson trapped me tighter into his world, ensuring I could never leave.
Not alive anyway.
His rich, deep voice was eerily calming as he explained how tourist women were targeted around Europe and the Middle East. They were taken when an opportunity exposed itself, then each woman was shipped to one of Cem’s holding facilities. There, they were tagged like livestock, assessed for quality, and sold to specific buyers.
I tuned out when he spoke of those trades.
I blurred my eyes when he pushed photos beneath my nose of successful sales and repeat customers.
He held nothing back.
I knew he had twelve estates in Turkey, two in England, one in Germany, and a top-secret bolthole in Sicily. He visited me late one night when I stared at the TV, willing the nonsense on the screen to erase the madness in my head, and showed me pictures of his homes.
He promised we would go one day.
He would take me to each of them, and I could choose one for myself.
I let white noise fill my ears.
I closed my eyes and sank into the deep.
I shut down—
“Efendim?”
I flinched at the young doctor calling me his master.
“Do you wish to stand? This is just a prototype. Eventually, a high-tech one with a foot matching your natural one will be cast. This is just so you can learn how to walk again. Your father has given strict instructions that you are to get strong as quickly as possible.”
I didn’t care.
I’d lost all will to survive.
“Come on.” The young doctor grinned. “It’s been months since your surgery. Your body is ready to wear one of these.”
I growled under my breath.
Just because my physical body had healed didn’t mean my mind wasn’t still in fucking pieces.
This doctor was pissing me off.
Where was Cem’s personal physician? The one who’d hacked off my leg? I hadn’t seen him in a while. Perhaps Cem had fired him for taking my leg and every shred of my self-worth.
I was worthless to him now. How could you train up a son when he would rather be dead?
“Get up,” the doctor urged, placing the despised walking frame in front of me. “We need to start your rehab.”
I stood but only because he hauled me upright. I swayed, and my teeth crunched together at the godawful pressure from the prosthetic wedging far too tightly against my stump. No amount of gel pads and cushioning could soothe the grinding ache.
The leather straps on my quad dug into my flesh, and the contraption around my knee bit like tiny beasts.
“That’s it. Try putting your full weight into the limb. Trust it. It can hold you, I promise.”
Clenching my jaw even tighter, I did the opposite. I let my right leg take my full weight, my nostrils flaring at the claustrophobia clawing to rip the offending fake leg off and hurl it through the window.
Get it off.
Get it the fuck off!
Sweat ran down my back, and I was moments away from snapping when Cem strode through my bedroom door, nodding at the four guards stationed there. “Aslan!” He clapped his hands as if this was a happy day and I was the prodigal son. “You look better.” His eyes went to the wooden limb socketed at the bottom of my stump. “Ah, you’re up and walking. Even better news!”
Phantom pain shot through my confused nervous system, and I swore I had a cramp in the arch of my missing foot. My big toe itched. My calf muscle twitched.
All things that couldn’t possibly exist because that part of my body was now most likely fed to Cem’s Rottweilers that patrolled outside my barred and locked window.
