My nails scrape wood, searching for metal. Winters’s grip tightens, dragging me backward, and panic surges through me.
“What the fuck do you think you’re?—”
My fingertips connect with cold steel, and I curl them around the handle. The knife slides free from its magnetic holder, and the solidity of it in my palm floods me with power.
Winters hauls me away from the table, spins me around, and freezes when he spots the blade in my hand. For a split second, the years between us collapse.
I’m sixteen again, trapped under him in a dark cell, praying for someone to hear me scream.
I’m twenty-five, bleeding but no longer defenseless.
“You little shit!” He lunges for my wrist.
I swing the knife as best I can, and he jerks backward, avoiding the blade by centimeters, but his foot catches on the rug, throwing him off balance. I launch myself forward, tackling him to the ground.
We hit the hardwood floor with a thud thatknocks the wind from me. The knife clatters away, sliding across polished wood, and my heart stops as it spins out of reach.
Winters’s fist connects with my jaw, snapping my head back. Stars explode behind my eyelids, but I roll with the punch, using the momentum to pin his arm beneath my knee. His other hand flies toward my face, fingers hooked into claws, and I block it with my forearm.
“I’ll break you,” he snarls, spittle flecking his lips. “I’ll fucking break you.”
“Not this time.”
I slam my forehead into his nose, and cartilage crunches under the impact. Blood sprays across both our faces, filling my nostrils with its copper scent. The pain radiates from my skull outward, but adrenaline pushes it aside.
He bucks beneath me and almost dislodges me before I drive my forearm into his throat. His eyes bulge as he chokes, hands scrambling at my chest, nails raking through my shirt to score my skin.
The knife lies three feet away, a gleam of silver on the dark hardwood.
I lunge for it, but Winters’s hand latches onto my ankle, yanking me back. His thumb digs into thetendon at the back of my ankle, and waves of agony streak up my leg.
“You never learn,” he wheezes, blood bubbling between his lips. “Always thinking you can fight back.”
His weight flips me onto my back, and his knees pin my arms to the floor. Blood from his broken nose drips onto my cheeks and forehead, hot and sticky as he lowers his face toward mine.
“Lights out, Samuel.”
Those words snap something inside me. A dam breaks, and sixteen years of fear and rage pour through the cracks, drowning everything else.
With a roar that tears from the deepest part of my soul, I buck upward, twisting at the waist. The movement catches him by surprise, and he pitches to the side. I roll after him, broken ropes trailing from my torso, my body moving on pure instinct.
The knife handle meets my palm, as if it belongs there. As if it’s waited for this moment as long as I have.
Winters scrambles backward with the dawning realization that the power has shifted. That the boy he broke years ago isn’t the man before him now.
“Samuel—” He raises his hands placatingly. “Saint. Let’s talk about?—”
I drive the blade into his throat, burying it to the hilt.
His words cut off in a wet gurgle, and blood spurts between his fingers as his hands fly to his neck, trying to stanch the flow.
A sound escapes me, half sob, half laugh, as the life drains from his body. The same eyes that haunted my nightmares for years are now glazed over with the emptiness of death.
“You never fucking owned me.” I twist the knife once more before pulling it free.
Blood fountains from the wound, soaking his shirt and pooling on the floor beneath him. My hands, slick with red, tremble as I cut through the remaining ropes around my torso.
Then another scream jerks me back to the present.
