I let the sheet fall back into place, the white fabric settling over her still face, erasing her once more.
“Where is Grace?” My voice is flat, betraying nothing of the rapid calculations firing in my brain.
“The basement holding cell, Master,” Clara says quietly. “She was hysterical. We had to sedate her initially to treat her injuries, but she’s been awake and screaming for hours.”
“We’ll put her in the blue guest suite. The one with the ocean view.” I say, turning away from the table.
Issac’s eyebrows lift a fraction of a millimetre. The blue suite is for honoured guests, all soft linens and panoramic views of the Pacific. It is not for pets, but he knows better than to question. “Yes, Master.”
“I’ll see her now,” I say, and lead the way back out, leaving Anya in her cold, silent room.
The basement is a different kind of cold. It’s the chill of concrete and purpose. The air smells of damp earth and antiseptic. The single bulb in the corridor flickers as we approach the reinforced door. Issac unlocks it, the bolt sliding back with a heavy, metallic clunk.
The scene inside is precisely what I expected, yet still a potent image. Grace is curled in a corner of the small cell on a thin, stained mattress. Her clothes are torn. Her face is a mosaic of bruises, one eye swollen shut, her lip split and crusted with blood. She’s shivering, but not from the cold. It’s the tremoring of an animal pushed past the point of exhaustion and terror.
When the door opens she flinches, pressing herself harder against the wall and a low, strange sounding whimper escapes her throat. Clearly her vocal chords are more fucked than ever.
She looks broken, but not yet shattered. There’s still a flicker of defiant consciousness in her one good eye - that flicker is what I need to extinguish.
“Get her up,” I command, my voice echoing in the small space.
Two attendants I hadn’t noticed step forward. Grace screams as they touch her, a raw, ragged sound that scrapes against the concrete walls. It’s the sound of a soul being flayed. They half-carry, half-drag her out of the cell and up the stairs. She struggles weakly, her cries dissolving into sobs.
I follow, a dispassionate observer. We move through the bright, sterile halls of the main house in a bizarre procession. The contrast is jarring. From a dungeon to a palace in thirty seconds. I watch Grace’s eye, the one that can see, as she’s taken into the blue suite. She seems confused by the soft lighting, the elegant furniture, the vast window showing nothing but the black expanse of the ocean and a sliver of moon on the water.
They lay her on the bed and I tell them to get out while she immediately curls into a foetal position; her body wracked with sobs that become more and more frantic.
“Pup,” I say, my voice cutting through her pitiful sounds. It’s not a shout. It’s calm, authoritative. She freezes for a second, her one good eye locking onto mine. The hatred there is a pure, hot flame. “Calm down.”
It’s not a request; it’s a command. A test.
She doesn’t obey. The scream that tears from her throat is primal; a sound of pure, unadulterated agony.
I shake my head slightly, holding my hand out for the prepared sedative.
“You need rest. A deep, dreamless sleep.” I state, approaching the bed with the syringe as Grace’s hysteria peaks. She thrashes, screaming Anya’s name along with a litany of curses and pleas directed at me, at the walls, at God himself.
Her arms flail, they lash out as I pin her down and jab the needle into her neck, and then the fight leaves her body almost instantly. The tension melts away,replaced by a leaden heaviness. Her eye closes. Within seconds, her breathing evens out into the deep, slow rhythm of drugged sleep.
Silence descends, broken only by the distant roar of the ocean and Grace’s soft, sedated breaths.
I lay her limbs out carefully. I hike the dress she’s wearing right up, and I take stock of the physical injuries covering her body. Most of them will heal without leaving any trace, so that is something. I ease her legs apart, staring at where she’s been brutalised the most. I can see the cuts, I can see the damage. Whatever they fucked her with has certainly left its mark. She’s lucky it didn’t rip out the piercing.
I give it a little flick for old times sake then cover her back up, pulling a blanket over her body to ensure she doesn’t catch a chill on top of everything else.
The question is, will this moment be enough, will Anya’s death be enough? Or do I have to kill more people to make this bitch finally break for me?
The first light of dawn is a thief. It doesn’t burst into the room with fanfare; it slips through the crack in the heavy velvet drapes, a pale, silent blade that steals the comforting cloak of sleep. It lays bare the room in all its gilded, suffocating glory; the sapphire-blue walls, the ornate furniture, the oppressive silence. It lays me bare.
I am curled on the bed, a threadbare island in a sea of luxury, my body a map of aches and blossoming bruises. The thin silk shift dress does nothing to ward off the chill, either from the air-conditioned room or from the ice that has taken root in my veins. For days now, this has been my existence.
The fight has left me.
It didn’t vanish in a dramatic blaze; it seeped out of me, drop by drop with every passing hour of isolation, every remembered sensation of their hands on me. Every echo of this awful place stripping me of my name, my past, myself.
And so, in the long, hollow hours of the night, a new, cold clarity has emerged. A single, stark choice; I have to align myself with Antonio.
The thought is a physical revulsion, a nausea that churns in my empty stomach, but it is the only thread I have to grasp. This open war, this refusal gets me nothing but more pain, more isolation, a slower breaking but a breaking all the same.
