The men behind me go very quiet.
I look at the screen and something in my chest — stops. Not breaks. Stops. Like a clock someone reached into and held still.
Cody put something in my bathroom –– one of his gifts. The ceramic ballerina he placed on my windowsill, then moved to the bathroom on the next visit. To watch over you, he'd said.
I think about every time I was alone in that room. Every private moment I believed was mine.
My chest heaves. The fabric in my mouth feels like it’s suffocating now. I gasp for air, watching myself. The tears rush out of my eyes again as I blink, not believing what I’m seeing.
"You really didn't know," the voice says behind me. Not mocking. Almost — curious.
I don't answer. I'm not sure I could speak if I tried.
The screen goes dark. The guy closes the laptop.
Then silence falls in the room.
Behind me, I hear movement — feet, the drag of something heavy, the door. Then nothing.
I sit tied to the chair in the dark for a long time. Long enough that I think they might have left Beckett. Long enough that I stop trying to calculate what to do next and exist in the wreckage of what I now know.
He didn't just cheat.
He recorded me. He filed me away alongside everything else he collected.
He curated me.
Chapter 15: Beckett
Pain.
That's the first thing that registers when consciousness drags me back to the surface. Sharp, radiating pain that starts in my ribs and spreads like wildfire through every nerve ending.
Metallic. My mouth tastes metallic.
Blood.
I try to move my jaw and immediately regret it. My lip is split and swollen. When I run my tongue along my teeth, I taste copper and feel the tender, pulpy flesh where they connected their fists to my face.
My ears are ringing with a high-pitched whine that makes it hard to focus on anything else.
But then I hear her.
Her voice, distant and trembling, cutting through the disorientation.
"Forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven—"
Counting.
She's counting.
The realization cuts through the fog in my brain with startling clarity.
He told her to count.
I force my eyes open, blinking against the darkness. The room swims into focus slowly — shapes and shadows that gradually solidify into Adela's bare dorm room.
I don't move yet. Strategy before action. Always.
