"Talk more," I managed to say.
He did.
The story came out in fragments. The easy drawl, the laid-back charm, the obsessive focus…it was gone. All gone. And what was underneath couldn't string together complete sentences.
"The only way out was to make it real," Milo said. His voice was a little steadier now, but barely. "Viktor was there in the room with us. Less than ten feet away. Watching everything. If your reactions weren't real. If you hesitated, if you responded to something I said wrong, if anything felt rehearsed—he would've seen it. And we'd both be dead right now." He paused. "Therewas no other way out." Another pause. "I'm so fucking sorry. There was no other way…" His voice faded away.
I lay there and absorbed this.
The bruises were real. The pain was real. There was no faking the fire in my ribcage or the nausea in my stomach or the way my face felt tight and swollen and hot, the bones aching, or the way my throat felt like I'd been screaming for hours, because I had. I'd screamed until my voice gave out and then I'd kept screaming in silence. I remembered it all clearly. Every plea. Every sob. Every time I called his name.
"A drug cocktail," he was saying. "Midazolam and fentanyl. It slowed your heart to almost nothing. Your breathing went invisible. To the camera—to Viktor—you looked dead."
That explained the taste in my mouth. "How did you get me out?"
"I had to leave them a body, and so I did."
I absorbed that information. Then, "They'll know it's not me…"
"No," he told me. "They won't. Raven Oakley is dead," he said quietly. “Little bird…" Once again, whatever he was about to say got stuck in his throat.
The words hung in the air between us. I let them settle. Let them sink into the mattress and the sheets and the dark, unfamiliar room that smelled like pine and antiseptic and the man who'd broken me to save me.
Raven Oakley is dead.
I waited for the grief to hit. The loss of my name, my apartment, my piano at The Silver Table, my memories of my father, thecoffee shop where the barista knew my order, even the sidewalk cracks I'd memorized step by step over two years of rebuilding a life in the dark…
All gone.
But the grief didn't come. Not yet. Something else came first.
Rage.
It hit like a wall of sound—sudden, deafening, and obliterating everything in its path. Chasing the pain and the confusion and the image in my mind of Viktor in that chair, smoking, watching, and Milo's fists and Milo's voice asking me questions he already knew the answers to while I?—
"You could have told me." The words tore out of my throat.
"No, I couldn't."
"You could have warned me. Given me something—a signal, a word, anything?—"
"Viktorwas in the room." His voice didn't waver. "If your reactions weren't real, he would have seen it. The man has watched people die more times than either of us can count. He knows what real fear looks like. He knows what real pain sounds like. And if anything—anything, Raven—had rung false, he would've put a bullet in both of us and called it a productive evening."
"So you let me think I was going to die."
"Yes."
"You let me beg. You let me scream your name. You let me call you a monster?—"
"Yes."
"While he sat there and watched."
"Yes."
Each yes landed like a blow. Not because they were cruel. Because they were honest. He wasn't defending himself. Wasn't softening it. Wasn't wrapping the truth in excuses or explanations.
He was giving me the facts. Here's what happened. Here's the blood. Here's the mess.
