He leans down, his teeth grazing my ear, his voice a distorted growl of triumph. “I bought you. I broke you. And I’m going to keep you in the dark until you forget what the sun looks like.”
He’s so convinced of his own godhood. He’s preening in the wreckage of his life, his ego expanding to fill the small, cramped space of the lift. He looks down at me, waiting for me to shatter, waiting for the final “no” to turn into a “yes.”
Then, the world dies.
The hum of the motor cuts out mid-note. The mechanical whine stops. The elevator jerks violently, throwing Felix’s weight hard against me as we stall between floors.
And then, the lights go out.
The darkness is absolute. It’s a thick, heavy velvet that swallows his face, swallows the shame, swallows the room.
“Fuck!” Felix screams, the sound ricocheting off the metal walls. “What? No! Fuck!”
He scrambles offme, his boots scuffing the floor as he fumbles for the control panel. I can hear his frantic, shallow breathing—the sound of a man who realised his cage has two sides. He’s slamming his fist against the buttons, the clack-clack-clack of the plastic the only sound in the suffocating black.
“The power… they cut the fucking power!” he shrieks, his voice rising into a thin, panicked wail.
In the dark, I don’t move. I lie there, naked and bruised on the cold metal, and I feel the first spark of clarity pierce through the cocaine haze.
The drug is still there, making my heart race, but the fear is gone. Because I know what the dark means. The dark is where the predators play. And Felix? He’s just a man with a check book.
I smile. It’s a slow, jagged thing, hidden by the shadows.
Above us, there’s a metallic groan. The sound of heavy, industrial steel being forced. Creeeeeak.
The outer doors on the floor above are being pried open. A sliver of light—not the sickly yellow of the estate, but the cold, clinical beam of a tactical flashlight—cuts through the gap in the elevator ceiling.
Two hands appear. Large, scarred, familiar hands. They grip the inner doors of the lift and slide them back with a terrifying, effortless strength.
The light floods in, blindingly bright.
I squint, my breath catching in my throat. There, framed against the opening at the top of the stalled car, is a silhouette I’d know in the afterlife.
Peter.
He’s covered in soot and blood, his tactical gear torn,his hair plastered to his forehead with rain and sweat. He looks like he’s climbed out of the centre of a volcano. He looks at me, and for a second, the murderous rage in his eyes vanishes, replaced by a look of such raw, aching relief that it hurts to watch.
He ignores Felix, who is cowering in the corner of the lift. He just looks at me, lying on the floor, and his face breaks into that lopsided, beautiful smile—dimples and all.
“Hello, darling,” he says, his voice a low, gravelly caress. “I believe you’re wearing my ring.”
Peter doesn’t wait for an answer. He doesn’t use the ladder. He drops through the opening like a falling star, a solid weight of vengeful muscle that hits the metal floor with a boom that echoes up the shaft.
Felix scrambles back, his hands out, his face a pale, sweating mask of terror. “Peter! Peter, wait—brother, listen to me?—”
The word brother hits the air like a spark in a gas-filled room.
Peter is on him before Felix can draw another breath. He doesn’t use his gun. He doesn’t even use a knife. He grabs Felix by the throat and slams him into the back wall of the elevator with enough force to dent the steel. The sound of Felix’s skull hitting the metal is wet and heavy.
“Brother?” Peter’s voice is a low, vibrating growl, a sound torn from the throat of something that isn’t human anymore. “You think you’re my brother? You touched her, Felix. You put a needle in her. You put your filthy, pathetic hands on my wife.”
Peter’s fist connects with Felix’s jaw. Crack.Bone splinters. Felix’s head snaps to the side, a spray of blood and a broken tooth hitting the elevator floor near my hand. Peter doesn’t stop. He isn’t hitting him to kill him; he’s hitting him to break him apart piece by piece.
He grabs Felix’s hand—the one that was just inside me—and pins it against the metal wall.
“You used these?” Peter asks, his eyes wide and leaking a terrifying, manic grief. “You used these to touch what belongs to me?”
With a sickening, methodical twist, Peter begins to snap Felix’s fingers back, one by one. The sound is like dry kindling breaking in a fire. Snap. Snap. Snap. Felix’s screams are high-pitched, echoing off the walls, filling the small space until it’s all I can hear.
