I listen.
Are they still here?
I strain to hear past the ringing in my ears, past Adela's quiet, broken counting. Footsteps in the hallway? The creak of floorboards? Breathing that doesn't belong to us?
Nothing.
Just silence and her voice.
They're gone.
But I don't relax. This was bullshit.
Theo wanted her to make the connection to the masks and understand that whoever hurt Cody is now coming for her.
What I didn't expect was how far he'd take it.
I shift slightly, testing my body. My ribs scream in protest. They’re definitely bruised. My stomach feels like it's been used as a punching bag. Which, technically, it has.
Theo didn't look at me once while he kicked me.
That was deliberate.
I turn my head carefully and see her.
She’s still tied to the chair. Still facing her desk where the laptop sat — where it's now conspicuously absent.
But she's not hysterical. That's what unsettles me.
I expected screaming. Crying. The complete breakdown of the fragile girl who called me over because she couldn't handle being alone.
Instead, she's quiet. Eerily quiet.
Her counting has stopped.
I can see her profile in the dim light filtering through the window — the tape still covering her mouth, the zip ties cutting into her wrists. But it's her eyes that make something twist uncomfortably in my chest.
They look empty.
Not scared. Not panicked.
Empty.
Something in her has shifted. I can see it even from here, even in the dark. Like whatever foundation was holding her together has finally crumbled completely.
I didn't account for that shift. Didn't plan for what she'd become after watching those videos.
I process what happened through the filter of what I knew versus what just occurred.
I knew Theo might move soon. He'd been getting restless, talking about "escalating the timeline." But I didn't know when. Didn't know it would be tonight.
I agreed to scare her.
I didn't agree to this.
The bathroom footage wasn't part of any conversation we'd had. That was Theo going rogue, taking this beyond scare tactics into something else entirely. Something more visceral. More personal.
More cruel.
