I stand from the mattress slowly and as quietly as I can without alarming them of my movement. I plan to make this seem as realistic of an escape as possible.
The soles of my feet press into the cold floor as I take each step toward the cracked doorway. The Louboutins I had on when I was initially kidnapped are now missing from my feet.
I’m hoping Dante put them up for safe keeping, but knowing him, he probably thrust them into the nearest dumpster.
He always complains about how much money I spend on clothes, even though it’s not his money I’m spending.
I pause a few feet from the door and tilt my head slightly, listening to whatever my hearing can pick up. Sure, I have to wear contacts to see better, but my hearing is ten out of ten.
Voices then filter through the narrow gap.
“I’m telling you,” Dante says quietly, “She’s lying.”
Finnic responds swiftly. “You don’t know that.”
I test the zip-ties again as I listen, rolling my wrists just enough to make my fingers tingle. They’re tight, but not impossible. If I pull my wrists hard enough away from each other, I’m sure the ties will snap.
Will it hurt like a bitch? Of course.
But my father didn’t raise a weakling.
I raise my wrists to my mouth and bite into the plastic of the zip-tie. If I can weaken the material enough, pulling them apart won’t be much of a problem.
After a few tries, the chewed on plastic is thinner than before. It should be thin enough to snap with enough pull, so I press the inner parts of my wrists together before I give it my all to tug them opposite of each other.
The first try doesn’t give, so I tug on the plastic again with my canine to try and dislodge more of the material.
I then try to force them apart again as I listen to the two bicker outside in the hallway.
A small, involuntary sound makes its way from my mouth as the plastic snaps, falling to the floor with a click-like noise.
My skin is red and damaged from the friction of trying to remove them multiple times.
A smile rises on my face, but as soon as it does, it falls when I notice the hallway has gone quiet.
Oh fuck, don’t tell me they heard me already?
I freeze in place for what seems like forever, but no footsteps move in this direction. Maybe they didn’t hear anything and I’m just being paranoid.
I then take another risky step to glance through the doorway.
The hallway is lit by a single buzzing fluorescent that blinks every few seconds as if it is about to light up for the last time.
Dante stands way at the end with his back to me, one hand already fishing a cigarette from his pocket. Finnic faces him, his posture absolutely rigid.
Dante told me before that the past year of working with Finnic had been agitating, to put it mildly. Finnic questions everything. He dissects every job, every call, as if there is always some moral equation to solve.
He apparently tries to justify people, letting strangers crawl into his head to rewrite the narrative. They tend to convince him that they are truly victims when they are just really good at lying.
He says that Finnic has a good heart, which is the main problem. He seems to only be effective whenthe violence makes sense to him. Usually when the target has hurt someone innocent first.
Outside of that, Finnic hesitates.
And in this line of work, hesitation is dangerous.
Dante starts, “Listen, kid.”
“I’m not a fucking child, Dante. You know that. I’ve been by your side for a while now and I know how this shit goes down.”
