I checked myself next—relief cutting through the panic when I realised I was still dressed. Skirt. Blouse. Tights. I shifted my feet and discovered one shoe was missing.
In the grand scheme of things, that barely registered.
I scanned the room again and caught a faint, blinking light in the corner. My stomach twisted.
Without thinking, I grabbed my remaining shoe and hurled it. It missed by a mile—but the act itself felt good.
Fuck him. And his camera. Creepy bastard.
My fingers pressed into my temples as my eyes landed on the bucket.
No matter the crime, no one deserved to be kept like this.
???
There was no sense of time—no way to tell if it was day or night. My thoughts spiralled between my parents and grandparents, imagining their anguish, and the colder possibility that he might leave me here to starve.
The bucket suggested otherwise, yet the absence of heat or food made me doubt my own logic.
The mattress was new. I could smell the plastic beneath it. The thin cotton sheet bore neat, parallel creases—unused. Even the blanket looked untouched, folded with care, but it wasn’t enough to cut through the cold.
Perhaps I was his first prisoner.
The thought settled heavily.
My father had uncovered fragments—disjointed connections that led nowhere solid. Blaidd Prothero was everywhere and nowhere. He knew people in nearly every industry, public and private. Deeply embedded in government institutions, yet always behind the scenes. No photographs. No interviews. A man who understood power well enough to avoid visibility.
Time dragged.
And then it clicked.
The camera.
Fuck.
He was waiting for me to break.
He was waiting for me to beg.
???
I shivered, rocked, and murmured the prayers my grandmother had taught me when I was young. In the silence, memories flooded in—unbidden, relentless. Perhaps it was because I believed this was where I would meet my end.
I had been blessed with an extraordinary family. Yes, they were nosy and opinionated, but growing up surrounded by my parents and grandparents, I’d been given more love and security than I could ever repay.
I was almost proud of myself for resisting the urge to raise my middle finger at the camera.
What I did not do was beg.
The bucket was what nearly broke me. The humiliation of it. The way my stomach twisted as I forced myself to use it. I hated myself for feeling grateful for the toilet paper afterward.
That shame curdled into anger.
Eventually, exhaustion claimed me. I slipped into a restless, fractured sleep, my head throbbing, my body aching. Just before my eyes finally closed, a low, soothing growl threaded through the darkness—unnerving and impossible—and then everything went quiet.
Chapter 13
Blaidd
