In the chaos, my fingers find the grip of a gun at his belt. Muscle memory kicks in. No hesitation. No mercy.
One shot.
I don’t even flinch as I pull the trigger. A spray. A collapse. A scream.
Still blind. But Dante’s training comes back like instinct.
Disoriented, dragged, blacked out—he made me train for all of it. Blindfolded drills down manor hallways. Firearms under pressure. Hit, stab, run, hide.
But there’s one thing I wasn’t ready for.
The sting of a syringe.
It’s so fast I don’t even hear the hiss until it’s too late.
A sudden warmth floods my thigh, and the world pulls away from me. I collapse, face-first into gravel. I fight it… God, I try. But the numbness creeps in, and everything disappears.
* * *
When I wake, it’s worse.
I ache. My body stiff, stretched unnaturally. Limbs parted, wrists pulled taut above me. Ankles bound wide. The bite of steel and leather cuffs against raw skin.
I peel my eyes open, vision blurry and light too bright. Everything sterile and cold. The buzzing of artificial light is making my skull feel like it’s cracking open, causing me to wince, but I force my eyes open to keep looking.
Two towering wooden pillars rise beside me, my wrists and ankles shackled to each.
My coat is gone. So are my shoes. But thankfully, my top and shorts are still on—at least, what’s left of them.
The floor is concrete. Cold and unforgiving. A cage surrounds me—metal bars, thick and rust-dotted. One way in. One way out.
I lift my head, barely, and my neck screams for me to stop, my muscles fire and fail. I try to turn toward the sound of footsteps. My eyes fight the weight of sedation, lids dragging.
“Now, who did you piss off?”
The voice is deep. Rough. Curious. Coming from someone close to me on my right side.
I try to speak, but my lips are stuck together. My tongue is sandpaper. My body slumps forward, breath shallow.
I try to remember it. Was he one of the men from before? Or is this someone new? Someone worse?
I can’t get my head to turn towards the sound, all I can see is just beyond the cage, making out the outline of boots—expensive ones—and a pair of dark eyes behind the bars.
Then everything fades.
Chapter 23
Aurelia
“Yeah, I know, she’s insanely attractive.”
“Dude, she’s strapped to a pole.”
“Never stopped me.”
Their muffled laughter bounces around the walls, too loud, too smug. My stomach turns in disgust. I don’t even need to see their faces to know what kind of men they are: the type that mistake powerlessness for invitation. The type that thinks a restrained woman is entertainment.
A door creaks. Their boots scuff against the floor, lazy, careless. Then the heavy gate slams shut, metal on metal, the kind of sound that rattles through your bones.
