“Enjoying the show, asshole?”
Middle fingers extended. Both of them. I hold the pose until my arms shake from the effort.
Then I reach under the pillow.
The caliper gleams in the evening light. I hold it up so the camera can see. Sohecan see.
“I’m going to use this on you.” My voice is steady. Cold. “First chance I get.”
Somewhere, he’s watching. Probably smiling that patient, knowing smile. Probably waiting for me to break.
But I’m still fighting. Stillmyself.
I lie back on the silk sheets, caliper clutched in one hand, both middle fingers raised at the camera.
Sleep comes for me before I can lower them.
The lens watches.
10
VIOLET
The caliper is still in my hand when I wake.
My fingers are cramped around it, locked in a death grip that takes actual effort to break. I pry them open one by one, knuckles aching, joints stiff from hours of clutching metal while I slept. The pointed ends have left deep red grooves in my palm, half-moon indentations that throb when I flex my hand.
Good. At least something still works.
I try to sit up but the room tilts and spins, then goes black at the edges like someone’s pulling a hood over my head. Grabbing the headboard for support I freeze, waiting for my vision to clear, waiting for the floor to stop moving.
Breathing feels like hard work now, each inhale shallow and uneven. My stomach stopped growling yesterday. Or the day before. Now it’s just a slow, gnawing emptiness that feels less like hunger and more like my insides are eating themselves. Dissolving from the center out.
The light through the windows says morning, but the hours keep slipping away from me. I fall asleep in the afternoon and wake in the dark. Fall asleep in the dark and wake to gray dawn. Time has become unreliable, warped by the fog that’s settled over everything.
I thought I was being dramatic. Thought I was proving a point, making a statement, winning some tiny battle in a war I’m clearly losing.
Now I know the truth.
I’m close to doing permanent damage. The kind that doesn’t heal. The kind that leaves marks on your organs, your brain, your heart.
I can’t kill him if I can’t even stand up. This isn’t a protest anymore. It’s suicide. And I’m not ready to die. Not yet. Not until I’ve drawn blood.
The lock clicks.
I don’t move. Can’t, really. I’m still half-propped against the headboard, my body a collection of aches and tremors that doesn’t feel like mine anymore.
He steps through the door. Immaculate, as always. Charcoal suit, pristine white shirt, not a hair out of place. He looks like he just walked out of a magazine spread while I’m lying here in the same henley I’ve worn for a week, greasy hair plastered to my skull, smelling like something that crawled into a corner to die.
“Dinner is at eight.” His voice is calm. Pleasant. “You’ll be ready.” Not a question. “Will you need help getting dressed?” he asks, his voice too careful, not mocking, not a power play, like he’s holding himself back from more.
I open my mouth to tell him to fuck off. What comes out is a rasp that barely qualifies as speech.
“I can dress my own damn self.”
Even those six words exhaust me. My chest heaves like I just ran a marathon.
He doesn’t argue. Just studies me with those dark eyes, his gaze moving over every inch of me. The pallor of my skin, the tremor in my hands, the way I’m breathing too fast and too shallow, like my lungs have forgotten how to work.
