What eats at me isn’t the pain. It’s the waiting, the not knowing. I don’t know how long they plan to keep me here, or what they expect me to be useful for. I know this world well enough to recognize leverage when I see it. I just don’t yet know where I fit into the calculation.
I draw in a slow breath and replay what’s already failed.
Defiance got me nowhere. He shut it down without raising his voice, without hesitation.
Trying to be clever didn’t work either. The flirting, the bait. He saw through it and laughed like it wasn’t even close to a threat.
That tells me something.
Whoever’s in charge isn’t reckless. He isn’t cruel for thesake of it, either. The restraints are tight, deliberate. The rules are clear. Everything about this place is controlled.
That means someone believes they’re untouchable.
I don’t have weapons or allies, but I know how men like this think when they believe the situation is already decided.
My heart hammers as I listen for movement beyond the door. They’ve gone too far to let me wait this out. Time isn’t on my side.
The decision settles heavily and cold in my chest. Survival first, everything else later.
I flex my fingers, forcing blood back into my hands, ignoring the ache in my wrists. Whatever he wants, I’ll make sure he feels in charge but gets more than he wants.
A door slams somewhere in the house, sharp enough to fracture the quiet.
My body reacts before my mind does. My shoulders tense as I listen.
Footsteps move down the hall toward me, each one landing with enough weight to tighten the air in the room.
I must have drifted for a moment, because the awareness of someone stopping outside the door snaps me fully awake. My hands are numb.
I shift without thinking. Leather bites into my skin, the straps tightening instantly, a sharp reminder of exactly how little control I have over my body.
I test them anyway. One hard pull. Nothing. The bed doesn’t even shudder. Pain blooms through my shoulders as I strain once more, then stop.
He’s standing there.
The pause stretches deliberately enough to raise the hair along my arms. I picture someone just beyond the threshold, deciding what comes next.
I steady my breathing and wait. The house settles intosilence, the kind that drags on without change. Nothing happens. No footsteps. No voices. No opening of the door.
The doorknob turns slowly, quietly enough that for a second I question whether it is real. Then there is a faint click. My pulse jumps in response. No one opens a door this carefully without a reason.
The door eases open just enough to let light spill into the room. A narrow strip cuts across my face, harsh after the darkness, forcing my eyes to react before I can turn away. I squeeze them shut and angle my head aside, but the damage is done.
The brightness leaves a dull ache behind my eyes.
The room settles back into sound, no longer deafening silence. The steady hum of the air system. A presence just beyond the door, close enough that I am aware of it even before anything moves.
I cannot see him, but the certainty that someone is there tightens my chest. My body locks except for my feet, where I roll my ankles to try to get blood flow back in my legs.
My pulse pounds in my ears, each beat wearing down my patience as much as increasing my fear. I swallow and force my breathing to steady. Panic will not help me, it never does.
The opening widens. A soft footfall follows as he shifts his weight and steps inside unhurriedly. More light floods the room, enough to bring clarity of the dresser and the window into focus.
My face remains turned away, but I know his attention is fixed on me.
I know this is the first man by the way he moves. The one who was here earlier, the one who handed me off without ceremony, like I’m a thing, not a person.
I turn to look at him to confirm my suspicion. It’s him.
