I pinch my thigh hard through my dress, the pain a momentary spark that does nothing to clear the fog settling over my brain.
“Just a little longer,” I promise myself, my voice barely a thread of sound. “Just stay awake a little longer. He’s coming. He has to be coming.”
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The door bangs open like a gunshot, making me flinch so hard I nearly dislocate my wrist. Finn storms in, each boot strike against concrete a thunderclap in my tiny hell.
The sudden noise after hours of nothing but drips and my own voice is like having my eardrums scraped with rusty nails. He’s on his phone, face twisted with a rage so pure it practically glows beneath the single bulb.
“I don’t care what they’re saying,” he snarls into the phone, not even glancing at me. “Deal with it. No, not tomorrow. Now.” His voice is tight, controlled fury threading through each word. “What part of ‘clean it up’ was unclear? And you’re telling me—”
He stops abruptly, finally registering the sound of my hoarse humming. I hadn’t even realized I was still making noise, the melody of myFinn can eat a rancid socksong apparently still playing on repeat somewhere in my brain.
His eyes snap to mine, cold and flat as a snake’s. “I’ll call you back.” With those words, he hangs up. “Shut the fuck up,” he commands, each word precise as a blade.
I blink at him, struggling to process the sudden presence of another human after so long alone with Adam’s corpse. My lips are moving, I realize, still forming silent lyrics.
“Did you hear me?” Finn takes two steps closer, looming over me. The light catches the edges of his silhouette, turning him into something more shadow than man. “I said shut the fuck up.”
“The water’s spelling your name,” I whisper, voice barely audible. “D-i-c-k-h-e-a-d. Drip by drip. Isn’t that neat?”
His face contorts with disbelief, then rage. In one fluid motion, he’s beside me, fingers tangling in my hair, yanking my head back until my throat is exposed. Pain explodes across my scalp, bright and clarifying.
“I have tried being patient,” he hisses, his breath hot against my face, smelling of coffee and mint. Such a normal smell for such a monster. “I have tried being professional. But I swear to God, if I hear one more word out of you—”
“One more word,” I croak, unable to stop myself. Why the hell am I like this?
His grip tightens, tears springing to my eyes. “You think this is funny? You think this is a game?” He pulls harder, forcing me tolook directly into his eyes. “I will cut out your tongue and make you eat it. Do you understand me?”
Something inside me snaps—a tether to sanity, perhaps—and laughter bubbles up from my raw throat. It’s not brave laughter. Hell, it’s not even defiant laughter. This is the sound of something broken, a high, fractured giggle that doesn’t even sound like it’s coming from me.
I laugh because it’s all so absurd—me cuffed to a table with a corpse for company, this man who killed his own brother threatening to torture me. I laugh because I’m terrified and exhausted and my brain has simply run out of appropriate responses.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Finn breathes, his grip on my hair loosening slightly in confusion.
The laughter keeps coming, tears streaming down my face now, my body shaking with it. I can’t stop. It hurts—God, it hurts my throat so badly—but I can’t make it stop.
“You’ve lost your mind,” he scoffs, and there’s something new in his voice. Uncertainty, perhaps. He didn’t expect this. He wanted fear, tears, and begging. Not whatever broken thing I’ve become.
“Adam’s still staring,” I gasp between bursts of manic laughter. “He thinks you’re rude too.”
Finn’s gaze flicks to his brother’s body, and something flashes across his face too quickly to read. He releases my hair with a shove and moves toward the door, each step vibrating with barely contained violence.
At the threshold, he pauses, turning back with one last venomous glare. “He’s not coming for you,” Finn says, voice flat and certain. “Your precious Matteo doesn’t even care to look. He’s too busy burning the city down without caring if you were in any of the buildings.”
With that, he’s gone, the door swingingalmostshut behind him. I strain my ears, waiting for it to close completely and for the lock to click, but it doesn’t come. Either he forgot in his anger, or he’s so confident in my helplessness that he doesn’t think it matters.
The silence that follows feels like a physical pressure on my eardrums after the thunderstorm of his presence. My laughter dies as suddenly as it came, leaving me hollow and trembling.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The water continues its maddening rhythm, but now there’s something else—the sound of Finn’s footsteps moving down the corridor, growing fainter with each second. My breath comes in ragged gasps, my heartbeat gradually slowing from its panicked gallop.
“He forgot to lock it,” I whisper to Adam, voice barely audible even to my own ears. “He forgot to lock the door.”
Or maybe it’s a trap. Another cruel game to give me hope before snatching it away. But Finn’s rage had seemed genuine, his disgust at my behavior real enough to make him careless.
I stare at the door, slightly ajar, a sliver of darkness beyond it offering the first possibility of escape I’ve had since waking up in this nightmare.
