When he finally pockets the scalpel and frees me from the shackles, I slump to the floor.
He knows I can’t attack him.Each inhale stretches the cuts across my torso, slick with blood and gaping open.Each exhale is an assault from within, my body demanding me to surrender.
I won’t.
I’ll live just to remember this.Every second.Every slice.Every flicker of sadistic pleasure in his eyes.
When the time comes, I’ll make him feel this pain.
All of it.
Tenfold.
Slowly.
“We’ll talk again soon.”He stands, wiping bloody hands on my ripped, discarded shirt.My only shirt.
“Can’t wait.”
The overhead light clicks off, and the door shuts, plunging me into darkness.Outside, the lock gives a final clunk.
He’s gone.
Regret slithers across the floor, pausing to sniff my wounds.
I release a breath, and it feels like I’m forcing air from a punctured lung.
My heart is a raging monster in my chest, stomping so violently I can feel it in my gums.It’s not fear.It’s not rage.It’s worse.It’s more dangerous and crushing.
Hope.
They’re alive.
Leo.Kody.Frankie.
They didn’t just survive.
They escaped Hoss.
The doctor showed me more news stories on his phone, torturing me with videos of them, grainy and low-resolution, but I saw their faces.
I felt them.
A rush of static hits my bloodstream, spasming my fingers.I wanted so badly to reach through the screen and touch them.
They survived the Arctic.Frankie and my brothers are free.
Except they’re not my brothers.
The truth came in pieces.Little incisions of information carved between swipes of the scalpel.
Leo is my cousin.
Kody is my uncle.
Denver, the man who raised us, the devil we all feared, is Leo’s father and my uncle.
And my sperm donor?
