1
Destiny
The cool steel against my back has long since warmed, a false comfort through the thin cotton of my shirt. My pulse races in silence, a frantic rhythm that does nothing to quiet the clench of my stomach or the desert-dry ache in my throat. Not even forcing my knees closer to my chest helps.
Dehydration will claim me first, I’ve decided—a crueler death than starvation.
Between my fingers, I roll the nail I came across only a couple of hours ago. Three inches of rust flakes onto my skin. Back and forth, the only promise this metal hell has given me. I found it abandoned in a crook of the container, a small, sharp betrayal of my captors.
I am not alone. Other women are here. Some are already ghosts, their silence more piercing than any sob. Others are raw, their crying a grating whisper that scratches at the inside of my skull.
My own tears dried hours ago, leaving a salty, brittle mask on my skin. They didn’t just take us; they scoured us out, hollowed us for their convenience. Left us weak to remain obedient.
“Do you think anyone is coming for us?” a voice, blonde and tremulous, whispers to a brunette shadow.
A hot, sharp spike of fury lances through the numb exhaustion, so potent my vision wavers.
The only people coming are those who have paid for us.
Someone else murmurs about freedom, about running at the first chance they get.
A dry, cracked sound escapes my lips. It takes me a moment to recognize it as my own laugh. Run? To what? To where? The image that fuels the sluggish blood in my veins isn’t one of escape. It’s the visceral crunch of cartilage, the wet give as I drive this rusted nail into an eye socket.
Just one. I need to take just one of them with me. That is the only freedom I’ll accept.
They took everything in a matter of minutes. A single bullet for my mother. A slow, brutal beating for my father, his last breath a wet gurgle I still hear in the silence between everyone else’s whimpers.
All over a debt he couldn’t pay. When they couldn’t get their money back, they tookme.
My fist curls, the rusty edges of the nail biting deep into my palm. There’s no sting, just a dull, satisfying pressure. This minor, self-inflicted pain is the only thing I control. Right now, I’m clinging onto whatever control I can still have in this situation.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Gunshots. They’re close. The container erupts in a symphony of gasps and whimpers. I don’t breathe. My body goes wire-tight, every exhausted muscle coiling.
The door screeches open not long after, and the world turns to blinding white fire. A silhouette, broad and menacing, fills the frame.
“Everyone. Out.” The voice is a low, grinding sound of stone on stone. I feel the depth in the pit of my soul. My skin prickles instantly, like my body can sense the danger radiating from his voice alone.
The women scramble, a frantic river of limbs and fear flowing around the hulking figure. He doesn’t look at them. His gaze is a physical weight, scanning the dark. Another leather vest. Another monster.
I don’t move.
Fresh air, shockingly cold, hits my bare legs, raising every hair I have on my body. They took my pants, leaving me in this humiliating shred of a t-shirt, but the shame was incinerated hours ago, leaving only pure, concentrated rage. All to make sure I wasn’t hiding a weapon. Even my shoes and socks are gone.
When I remain rooted to the spot, the man—Hammer, another vest calls him through a panicked hiss on the side—lets out a low, warning sound that seems to vibrate through the steel beneath me. His boots are heavy strikes against the floor as he closes the distance.
My grip on the nail is like a vise, the point aimed and ready.
I have to tilt my chin up, way up, to get a good look, and I am utterly unprepared.
He towers over me, not just in height but in presence. He’s built on a different scale than the men I’ve seen, his shoulders blocking out the harsh overhead lights surrounding the docks. It’s an almost inhuman density of muscle and intent. A scowl is carved into his features, proof of years’ worth of rage.
But it’s not terror that ices my veins when my eyes finally meet his.
It’s something horrifyingly worse.
My breath catches. He’s… good looking. Not in a polished way, but like a storm-battered cliff face—all brutal, unforgiving lines kind of way. A silvery scar cuts through the skin under one eye, a flaw that somehow perfects the whole. His nose is crooked, clearly broken more than once, and it should turn me away. But it doesn’t. This is a man who doesn’t just get in fights; he ends them. And the proof is written all over him.
