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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.
