They weighed me. Photographed me. Swabbed my mouth, ear, a healing cut at my knee, a deeper one on my heel. Fingers pried at my jaw, counting teeth. One man lifted my eyelids and spoke, bored, “Doll’s pupils dilate evenly to stimulus.” The camera flashed. “Scarring will mostly heal over, including her bullet wound.” He moved the wand down my spine and said, “Lovely.”
I looked up at the word and found Halden’s eyes through the glass. He looked at me that day in a way he hadn’t before. It was greed—there was always greed with men—but it wasn’t over me, not in the way it typically was. He didn’t want to fuck me. No. It’d been a greed of my market value. In his eyes, I could see that I was coal. A dark, relatively valuable thing. I could fuel his evil empire a little further into wealth, but Halden didn’t dolittle. If he could, and he would, find a way to press me down into a diamond, he knew I’d be just as invaluable as the rest of Creed.
To Viktor, I’d already been a diamond, but that was because a diamond to Viktor was one that sat pretty and shiny. It was something to be admired, sold, used.
To Halden, a diamond was coal made jagged and sharp, capable of cutting if the person handling the diamond didn’t use care.
And a Buyerneverused care.
I just remember looking in his eyes and seeing that he wasn’t done with me, that the pressing of coal into diamond hadn’t even begun. I was terrified. My legs shook, but I held his gaze, I lifted my chin, and I promised myself I wouldn’t look away. I would stare evil down, and it wouldknow me. It would know my pain. It would know it caused it.Itwould know it had been chosen by Arden Creed.
Halden woulddie. One day, our eyes would meet as they did that day, and he would see exactly what he created. I think he knew that was his end, too, and I think it inflated his ego that much more. He knew he had won a sacred piece of me—the piece that would choose peace; it was finally, fully dead.
“Doll,” he said, leaning toward the microphone outside the window. His mouth hooked, his eyes voidof empathy. “I want to be very clear. My clientele has no interest in something prim, proper, and quiet. Whatever your dear Viktor taught you to be, it's time to let go of it.”
He didn't wait for my answer. He just stood and disappeared into a shadowed hall, soldiers dragging me toward another.
They made me run first. Running, such a fucking simple thing, but after isolation and confinement for so long—months, it had to have been months—everything simple felt like dirt in a wound. They stuck me on a treadmill, Halden taking a seat in the balcony above. He held the remote, the only one that controlled the speed. The treadmill was built without a screen or buttons; it was a conveyor belt, I was the product, and Halden was the manufacturer. The speed ratcheted up inconsistently. If I finally kept pace, Halden pushed mefaster. If I found a way to sprint without my lungs bursting, he’d halt the entire belt.
I slammed down once, twice, a dozen, then hundreds of times. They’d never given me clothes, making me fall on raw skin. The belt chewed into me until I was a bloody mess. It made it worse, my blood slicking the entire treadmill.
“Enough. Clean the Doll and take her to Room 82,” Halden’s voice came from above, the belt lurching to a halt.
I hit on my stomach, my breath whooshing out. There wasn’t an inch of me that wasn’t torn. Black gloves dragged me through white, disoriented. Everything spun, everything hurt, but I saw it—another track of blood. A thick stain just to the left of where I was dragged, like someone else was just here being carried as I was between hells. It was the only way I saw Creed for the longest time—in stains. I began to wonder if that was why Halden had painted his facility white. I think he thought seeing each others’ marks across the compound would break us further, but where there was blood, there was life. They were alive. All of them. They were enduring, and I would, too.
Then: Room 82.
I hadn’t known it was the same room until I saw the mattress and the leather bindings. The only difference was the lack of Rafe Creed to save me, and the void of him hung like a heavy weight.
Hands threw me to the mattress, but they left me out of the bindings. The door to the room shut, and there was no light. Pitch black surrounded me as I laid back, spreading my arms and legs wide and closing my eyes. Was I scared? As sick as it sounds—no. I knew mattresses like those as any kid knows their childhood bedroom. It felt like coming home after a very long time away.
Then light slammed on without warning, searing my eyes open. The door clicked, and Halden filled the frame. For a breath, I thought that was it; he’d finally take the Doll as Viktor intended.
But he didn’t move toward me. He just stepped off to the side as soldiers brought in two pieces of furniture—a chair and a small wooden box. Halden settled into the chair without a word, the soldiers positioning it in the far corner. He kept his eyes on that small wooden box as they placed itnext to the mattress.
I sat up slowly, following his gaze to the box. I tucked my knees into my chest, leaning over and studying it. It was a simple wooden square. There was no latch or keyhole, but there was a line through its center as if the top could lift off.
“Go ahead,” Halden said.
My shoulders jumped at his voice, my eyes narrowing on him. With a heavy breath, I ripped the top of the box off and peered inside.
There, sitting alone in its center, was Viktor’s lighter. I recognized its worn silver frame andV.S.immediately, snatching it into my palm with a racing heart. I flicked open the top and hit the flame, watching it spark and spark before it finally caught. It danced in hello, and a small smile touched my mouth as I looked past it at Halden. The wordsthank youwere on the tip of my tongue, and I hated myself for the muscle memory of thanking evil.
Another box was brought in as I shut the lighter, gripping it tight and watching Halden carefully. My brows pulled together when his soldiers lifted the top off the second box and revealed the gun Viktor gifted me, the sameV.S.etched on its grip. I just sat there fora moment, my frown deep as the soldiers left us. Then I shifted slightly toward the gun. When Halden didn’t move, I grabbed the weapon and pointed it at him.
For the first time since I came to the compound, Halden’s lips stretched with a thin grin.
I tucked my index finger against the trigger, my jaw setting.
But the door opened again.
The smell of cologne hit before the click of their shoes. Men filed in, all dressed the same—dark suits, polished shoes, hair slicked or cut with care. Buyers.
The gun faltered in my grasp. I swung it toward them, fisting my lighter in my other hand. I backed up on the mattress, my torn skin staining the white top red.
Halden stood then. He met my eyes one more time, the faintest challenge in them, before he left. The door swung shut. The bolt came down.
One of the Buyers lifted his arm and touched his watch. “We’ve an hour,” he said. His eyes lifted lazily from the time to my confused face. Then he looked at the gun. Lips pressed, he undid the button of his jacket and crossed to me in three large strides. He knelt quickly, back handing the gun with afirm whack.
