Empty.
The red light above the camera is dark.
My breath stutters, chest clenching. For the first time since he locked me here, the eye that watched me night and day is gone.
Something inside me snaps awake.
I push myself up, every scar tugging, every bruise screaming, but I don’t care. My gaze locks on the door—the door he swore would only open when I said it.
And then I hear it.
The click.
The lock disengages.
The sound rattles through me louder than any scream, louder than any thrust, louder than every vow he’s carved into me.
The door swings an inch. Just enough to taunt. Just enough to tempt.
I stumble to my feet, glass crunching under my toes, blood smearing the floor. My hand hovers over the handle, trembling,shaking. My heart is a drum, every beat a war between hate and hunger.
Is it a trap?
Of course it is.
But it’s also a door. And it’s open.
My throat burns, my voice rasping out before I can stop it:
“Hook?”
No answer.
Just the yawning dark beyond the crack in the door.
I press my palm flat to the wood, every scar on my chest screaming, every cut burning, every bruise humming with memory.
He wanted me to believe forever was a cage.
But what if forever waits on the other side?
I push.
The door groans.
And the cage breathes open.
The air beyond the door is colder, thinner, like it hasn’t been touched in years. It brushes my skin, raising every scar, making me shiver.
I step across the threshold barefoot, glass and blood trailing behind me like breadcrumbs. The floor outside is smooth, clean, unmarked—wrong.
The hallway stretches narrow and dark, lit only by a single bulb that flickers overhead. Shadows crawl along the walls like they’re alive.
I take another step.
And another.
Every nerve in my body screams trap, but my chest feels cracked open, lungs greedy for air that isn’t thick with him. My heart stutters with something I haven’t felt in forever. Almost—hope.
