Fresh blood.
Humiliation burned hotter than the pain.
Just minutes before the raid, the masked man had pinned me to the marble slab he’d placed in the center of the warehouse like some sick altar.
My hands bound above my head. My legs restrained. My mouth gagged so tightly I could barely breathe.
The marble had been freezing beneath my back.
His body had been suffocating above me.
The drug had made him relentless.
Manic. Cruel.
Every second stretched into an eternity. Every movement deliberate. He had wanted it to hurt.
And it did.
Now every shift of my weight sent sharp, stabbing pain through my abdomen. A burning ache tore through my core with each trembling breath.
My thighs shook violently as I tried to stand.
The bleeding wouldn’t stop.
It wasn’t dramatic. Not a gush. Not enough to make anyone panic at first glance.
Just a slow, steady seep.
It soaked through the torn fabric of what remained of my gown, warm against my thighs, sticky as it dried in the night air.
Each step made me aware of it again—the pull of wet cloth against torn skin, the humiliating reminder of what had been done to me for a good two months here in this warehouse.
Eight weeks since I’d been taken.
Eight weeks of hell.
And the physical wounds—raw wrists, torn skin, fever-burned veins—were nothing compared to what those weeks had done to my mind.
Sleep had become the enemy long before tonight.
Whenever exhaustion dragged me under, he followed.
The mask.
Always the mask.
Black. Featureless. Inhuman.
It hovered over me in dreams, his laughter echoing in warped fragments through my damaged hearing aid. Even when there was silence, I heard him. Even when I was alone, I felt watched.
Sometimes I would stare at the warehouse wall for hours, dissociating, letting my mind float somewhere far above my body just to survive what was happening to it.
Other times I woke—if I could call it waking—convulsing in silent screams, throat straining around a voice that no longer existed.
I had stopped trusting shadows.
Stopped trusting touch.
