It’s rough. Familiar in a way that makes my stomach drop.
Ice shoots through my veins.
No.
No, no, no.
A man steps into my line of sight, moving enough for the light to catch his face.
He’s older than I remember. Thinner. Still sharp around the edges, but his eyes look tired. Bloodshot. His dark hair is greasy, sitting limp on his head.
Henry.
My mother’s addiction made flesh.
My chest tightens so fast I can barely breathe. Every instinct screams at me to run, to fight, to disappear, but I am trapped in this chair, staring at the man I buried years ago in my mind because it was the only way to survive.
“You’ve got her eyes,” he says, head tilting as he studies me. His gaze crawls over my face, my clothes, my restraints. “Always hated that about you.”
I swallow hard. My voice comes out shaking. “Where’s Sutton?”
He laughs softly, like I told a joke. “The other girl in the car? No here. This isn’t about her.”
That doesn’t help to settle my nerves.
“Why am I here?” I ask. “Why did you take me? My mother is dead. Buried.”
Henry pulls up another chair and sits across from me, slow and casual, like we’re about to have a conversation over coffee instead of in the middle of a warehouse straight from someone’s nightmares.
“Straight to business,” he says. “You always were like that. Too serious. Drove your mom crazy. Said it reminded her of your father.”
“Don’t talk about her,” I snap.
His smiles fades a flicker, but I see it.
“Oh, I’ll talk about Sadie all I want,” he says cooly. “She and I had a lot of unfinished business.”
My stomach churns. “You ruined her. Now she is dead because of you. If you had never gotten her addicted to?—”
Henry snorts. “That’s what she told you?”
I yank against the restraints again, rage flaring hot enough to cut through the fear. “You got her hooked. You drained her dry. You left me with nothing but a shell of a woman as a mother. Then she died because of the junk you hooked her on.”
Henry leans forward, elbow on his knees. His eyes lock onto mine, sharp and unblinking.
“Sadie was already broken when I met her,” he says. “I gave her a little something to help her forget how broken she really was.”
The words hit like a gut punch.
I shake my head. “You’re lying.”
“Am I?” He cocks his head. “She ever tell you what happened to get her where she was? What she did? What she was made to do?”
“Shut up.”
“All her life, she was pressured and then she finally became what they wanted and the moment it went downhill, they abandoned her. They kicked her out and she had you. She became desperate,” he continues, voice low and relentless. “And desperation makes people reckless.”
My chest heaves. Memories surge unbidden. Arguments through thin walls, disappearing money, my mother’s hands shaking when she thought I wasn’t looking. A red truck…
