No face. No identity. Just blank stone.
Whoever brought me here didn’t just want to take me.This isn’t a holding cell. It’s a cage. A long-term one.
I shift again, slower this time, and that’s when I feel it—a hard tug at my ankle. I glance down. There’s a shackle around my right leg, cold against my skin, a chain bolted to the wall. Not long, maybe just enough to reach the bed and the toilet.
I swallow the panic rising in my throat.
The door creaks open.
Light spills in behind a figure—tall, broad. A silhouette in the frame. The stench hits first: stale tobacco, sweat, something else. Something human and wrong.
He steps in. Calm. Like he’s done this before.
The light catches his face, and my heart drops.
Henry.
The man from that terrible date. The one I told Elijah about—the night that started everything between us. The one I thought I’d never see again.
His voice is low, rough, like gravel and rot when he says,“Took you long enough.”
I press harder into the wall. My heart’s trying to escape my chest.
“Why am I here? What do you want from me?” I manage, my voice cracked and small.
He takes a few more steps, the door easing shut behind him with a final, heavy click. The bulb flickers again, catching the scar slicing across his brow, the gray stubble on his jaw, and those cold eyes that don’t blink enough.
I don’t remember that scar. Did he have it that night?
“You ask a lot of questions,” he says, crouching just out of reach. “For someone who should be grateful she’s still breathing.”
I swallow hard, forcing myself to think past the fear.
Elijah. Mia. They’ll notice I’m gone. Mia will see the empty office. Elijah will know. They’ll look for me.
Elijah will come.
“You’re going to do something for me, Ava.”
The sound of my name in his mouth makes my skin crawl.
“And if I don’t?” I whisper.
He tilts his head, a smile barely there.
“Then this little room will start to feel like home.”
And that's when I realize, deep inside, this isn’t the beginning.
My stomach flips. I want to scream, but I don’t. Not yet. Not while he’s this calm. That’s what he wants—fear, begging, a scene he can control.
“I need you to behave,” he says. “Be a good girl, and everything’ll be fine. Nobody has to get hurt.”
I freeze.
Something sharp and primal rises in my chest.
“Don’t call me that,” I say through clenched teeth. He laughs, deep and slow, like I just told the punchline of a joke only he understands.
