The door swung shut. The bolts locked. The scent of his cologne remained, polluting the air.
I pressed my palms against the cool wall, forehead resting against the plaster, and forced myself to breathe.
Tank will come. Tank will find me.
I had to believe that. Had to hold onto it. Because if I stopped believing, Cross had already won.
By the fourth day—or what I believed was the fourth day, counting meals and sleep cycles as best I could—I'd memorized every inch of my prison.
Twelve steps from the bed to the door. Eight from the door to the bathroom. Six from the bathroom to the closet. The bathroom had a shower, a toilet, a sink—all bolted to the walls, nothing removable, nothing that could be fashioned into a weapon or a tool. The shower head was fixed in place. The mirror was polished metal, not glass.
The closet held clothes in my size—expensive, tasteful, tags removed to prevent any hint of where they'd been purchased. Button-down shirts in soft fabrics. Slacks that fit perfectly. Even underwear, selected with the intimate knowledge of someone who'd dressed me before, who'd undressed me before, who considered my body as much his property as the furniture.
The books on the shelf were all Cross's favorites: philosophy, poetry, the classics he'd insisted I read during our years together. Nietzsche. Dostoyevsky. Rilke. He used to quiz me on them, reward me when I answered correctly, punish me when I forgot.
He'd recreated our life. This room was a shrine to his delusion, every detail chosen to reinforce the narrative he'd constructed: that we'd been happy, that I'd belonged to him, that this was a homecoming rather than a kidnapping.
And then there was the other door. It was almost invisible—set flush into the wall beside the bathroom, painted the same cream color as the surrounding surface. No handle, no visible hinges. Most people would have missed it entirely. I'd noticed it on the first day, the faint rectangular outline betrayed by a hairline shadow where the paint didn't quite match.
I'd spent hours staring at it during the long silences between Cross's visits, wondering what was behind it. A corridor. A supply room. Another cell. Or something worse—something Cross was saving for when his patience ran out.
Nothing about this room was accidental. That door was there for a reason. I was still staring at it when the main door's bolts slid open without warning. No knock this time. The heavy steel swung inward and Cross stepped through, the corridor's harsh fluorescent light cutting into the room like a blade before the door sealed shut behind him, returning us to the soft, suffocating glow of the recessed fixtures.
His footsteps were measured, deliberate. He wasn't smiling. Something had shifted. The charming host was gone, replaced by something colder, more businesslike. He stood in the center of the room, hands clasped behind his back, studying me the way a surgeon studies a body on the table—clinical, detached, assessing where to cut.
"You look tired," he said. "Have you been sleeping?"
I hadn't. Not really. Fitful dozing, plagued by nightmares—Tank screaming my name, Kai bleeding out on a compound floor, Cross's hands on my body, touching, claiming,taking?—
"I brought you something."
He held up a photograph. I couldn't see it from where I sat. "Come here."
I didn't move.
"Tyler." His voice hardened, all pretense of warmth vanishing. "Come. Here."
Three years of conditioning pulled at me like strings on a puppet. I'd learned what happened when I disobeyed, when I hesitated, when I failed to give Cross exactly what he wanted the moment he wanted it. The muscle memory of submission was still there, buried deep, urging me to comply, to avoid the pain that defiance always brought.
But I wasn't that person anymore. Tank had helped me remember that. The club had helped me believe it.
I stayed where I was. Cross's expression flickered—annoyance, surprise, something darker underneath. Something hungry. Then he walked tome with deliberate steps and held the photograph in front of my face.
Tank. It was Tank, taken from a distance with a telephoto lens. He was standing outside the Phoenix compound, face gaunt with exhaustion and grief, dark circles under his eyes visible even in the grainy image. A bandage was wrapped around his shoulder—the wound from the warehouse, I realized, the one I'd seen him take while fighting to reach me.
He was alive. He'd made it out. He was hurt, but he was standing, he was breathing, he wasalive.
Something in my chest cracked open. Relief so intense it was almost pain flooded through me, followed immediately by a new fear—because if Cross had this photograph, Cross had people watching. Watching the compound. Watching Tank. Ready to strike whenever Cross gave the order.
"He looks terrible," Cross observed, studying my face with clinical interest. "I don't think he's been sleeping either. My sources tell me he barely eats. Spends all his time planning, arguing with Hawk about rescue operations that will never happen."
Rescue operations.
Tank was looking for me. Tank was trying to find me.
Hold on. Please hold on. I'm here. I'm alive.
"He's been asking about you." Cross tucked the photo into his pocket, denying me even that single image of the man I loved. "Threatening anyone who suggests you might not be coming back. Nearly put one of the prospects through a wall when he suggested focusing on rebuilding instead of rescue."
