For the first time since I woke in this hell, my path carries me closer to freedom instead of toward torture and confinement.
The hum of the ascent vibrates through the walls, a steady pulse that matches the frantic beat of my heart.
Then Dante’s voice cuts softly into the quiet. “When we reach the main floor, there are more guards,” he murmurs, the grit of command still threaded into the hush. “But they’re not aware of what happens below the surface. Play along accordingly.”
The words slither down my spine like ice. My body stays limp against Callum, my lashes pressed shut, but inside I’m coiledtightly. I can’t afford to falter, not when the wrong twitch of movement could unravel everything.
The elevator dings, sharp as a blade, and the doors slide open. Callum strides forward with me still draped in his arms.
“Bring a car around,” Dante snaps, his voice booming through wherever we are. “We need to get the boss’s favorite plaything to the hospital. Our fucking doctor was drunk off his ass when we called him to come treat her collapsed lung.”
I know exactly what it feels like to suffer through that particular injury and instantly begin to put a strained wheeze into my breaths, loud enough to be heard even by human ears.
“Get an SUV to the front entrance!” someone shouts, overlapping with another voice calling, “Do you need a driver?”
Dante barks out a laugh, dark and cruel, the sound scraping over my skin. “No. No one else will drive like their life depends on it like I will. It’ll be my head if my father finds out I let her die.”
The room falls to silence under his words, the air thick with obedience and fear.
The wordplaythingthreads down my spine. My stomach knots, rage sour on my tongue even as I keep my body slack in Callum’s arms.
What the fuck do these guards think is going on here if that’s just a casual thing to say?
Not one of them questions it. Not one of them dares.
The thought curdles in my stomach.
“SUV’s ready!” a voice calls, boots pounding across the floor.
Dante’s sharp bark of approval snaps the group into motion, “Let’s move!”
Callum adjusts me higher in his arms as we push forward in a swift jog. The air shifts as we near the doors, and the current of something not pushed from a ventilation system brushes across my face.
Wind.
It hits me sharp and cool, carrying the faint scents of wet asphalt. My chest seizes as I suck it in quietly, a greedy rush that almost makes me dizzy. It’s been so long since I felt anything unfiltered, anything that wasn’t laced with chemicals and blood and the stink of my own filth.
Hope flares, bright and dangerous, expanding in my ribs like it might lift me clear out of Callum’s arms.
My eyes burn with the tears gathering behind my lids.
The last time I felt wind was standing on the balcony of my motel room, the night air brushing across my skin as I thought about all the years of art school ahead of me, and all the choices that were still mine to make.
How naïve I was.
The memory tastes bitter now, acrid in the back of my throat. The woman I was then on the balcony didn’t understand the cost of breathing that air.
The woman breathing it in now knows all too well.
The SUV waits, its engine rumbling low, vibrating through the ground beneath Callum’s steps as he carries me closer.
I let my eyes stay shut, pressing my cheek to the rise of his chest, clinging to the illusion of my unconscious state. The creak of leather sighs beneath us as he lowers us onto a seat and I dare to open my eyes just enough to see Elias sliding in beside us with a muted thud as he pulls his door shut.
Outside, voices call out, muffled but clear enough to scrape through.
“Good luck!”
“Drive safe, Sir!”
