My heart begins a frantic, stuttering rhythm against my ribs, a trapped bird desperate to escape.
Don’t say it.If you say it, it exists in this room. If you say it, he’ll see you differently.
My fingers dig into the skin of my shins, my knuckles turning white.
The silence of the room, that was peaceful, now feels like it’s pressing in on me, mocking the scream stuck in my throat. I can feel the cold of that floor, the smell of damp concrete and old fear, rising up to meet me. My breath hitches, coming in shallow, jagged gasps that I can’t seem to stop.
Then, I feel him move.
Enzo doesn’t reach out to me. He doesn't force a touch I'm not ready for. He simply shifts, his weight settling more firmly on the mattress, and leans just slightly closer. He becomes an anchor in the storm of my rising panic. I can feel the heat radiating from him—solid, unwavering, and impossibly patient. It’s a quiet, gravitational pull that demands nothing but offers everything.
I close my eyes, and for a second, I don’t smell the basement. I smell him—sandalwood, rain, and something inherentlysafe.
He has always been mysafe.Always.
The thudding in my chest begins to slow. The walls of the room stop closing in. His presence is a shield, a promise that whatever ghosts I let out of the bag tonight, he isn’t going to run. He’s going to sit right here and help me watch them burn.
I take one long, shuddering breath, tasting the safety he’s giving me like it’s oxygen.
"But I think maybe I want to," I whisper, and this time, the words don't feel like stones. They feel like a release.
He doesn't say anything, doesn't push, just sits beside me and waits with that particular patience he has, the kind that feels like he'd sit here all night if that's what I needed.
I take a breath.
"They kept me hungry," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I expected, which is good because I need it steady for this. "Not starving. Just hungry enough that I couldn't think straight. Couldn't plan. Couldn't do anything except focus on the fact that my stomach hurt and I was cold and the room smelled like mold and rust."
His hand curls into a fist on his knee but he doesn't speak.
"They hit me." The words come faster now, like I've opened something and can't close it again until it's empty. "Not every day. Just enough to remind me that they could. Just enough tokeep me compliant." I press my forehead to my knees. "And they almost?—"
I stop.
The word sits in my throat like something with edges, something that will cut on the way out.
"They almost raped me," I say finally, flat and clean, because if I put any emotion in it, I won't be able to finish. "The second week. Declan wasn't there and two of his men decided they wanted to have some fun and I fought and I screamed and they held me down and—" My breath catches. "They didn't. Someone came in and stopped them. But they almost did and I can still?—"
I can still feel it. The hands. The weight. The cold floor under my back and the certainty that this was happening and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
"I've never had sex," I say into my knees, quieter now. "I'm twenty-two and I've never—because every time I even think about it, I'm back there on that floor and I can't breathe and I?—"
His hand finds my shoulder, warm and solid, and I feel myself come back into the room, into this moment, into the presence of him beside me.
"You're the only man whose touch I can stand," I say, and I turn my head to look at him, still pressed against my knees but my eyes finding his. "You're the only one who's ever touched me andnot made me want to run. I don't know what that means but I thought you should know."
He looks at me with something raw moving through his expression, something I've never seen there before, and then he slides off the bed and onto his knees on the floor in front of me.
His hands come up and cup my face, gentle and deliberate, his thumbs brushing my cheekbones.
"Look at me," he says quietly.
I look at him.
"You went through hell," he says, and his voice is rough at the edges, barely controlled. "You were thirteen years old and you went through something that would break most grown men and you came out the other side of it. You're still here. You're still standing. You're still fighting." His thumbs move against my skin, slow and careful. "I am so goddamn proud of you I don't have words for it."
Something breaks loose in my chest, something I've been holding closed for nine years.
The tears come fast and quiet, running down my face and over his hands, and I don't try to stop them because what would be the point, he's already seen everything else.
