She groaned, but this time the sound carried relief. Emotion. That fragile thing she tried to hide under bravado.
“Your stance is off. Show me again.” She rolled her eyes but obeyed, resetting her feet. “Good. Now tighten your core. Punch through, not at.”
She struck again. Stronger. More controlled.
“Better.”
“You’re impossible,” she complained.
“And you’re predictable.”
She snorted then hit the bag again. Sharp, focused, fierce. Agitated, I sat up. Pain crept through my ribs, and I exhaled through my teeth.
Alessia noticed instantly. “Lie down.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding again.”
I glanced at the bandages. “It’s nothing.”
Eyes on fire, she crossed her arms. “Lie down or I swear I’ll call the doctor and hold you down while he injects you with morphine.”
I smirked. “You could try.”
“Oh, I would succeed.”
I didn’t doubt it, which annoyed me enough to comply. I stretched out on again, wincing as a sharp jab cut through my side. Alessia moved to kneel beside me, her gaze a hawk-eyed scan underpinned by a mixture of affection and fury.
“What did they do to you?”
My jaw tightened. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
She didn’t push further, stood, and returned to the training mat. But there was difference in her movements now, harsher, weighted. As if what happened to me was now fueling her punches, they were aimed at the men who hurt me. At the world that kept trying to take me from her. At fate and fear perhaps.
I closed my eyes, letting the rhythm of her strikes echo in my bones. Every hit reminded me I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t done. Not yet.
Sleep took me with a slow, dragging pull that started in my limbs and worked inward until even my thoughts felt heavy. The bed under me was hard and uneven, the warehouse air cool enough to feel fresh, and I heard Alessia, the faint scrape of her shoes on the training mat, an ordinary sound tethering me to the present. My body ached in a dozen places, the stitched cuts tugging every time I breathed too deeply.
I told myself I would only close my eyes for a minute, just long enough to take the edge off the exhaustion pressing down on me.
When I opened them again, I was somewhere else.
There was no moment of transition, no sense of having traveled. One blink and the warehouse ceiling was gone. In its place hung a single light above me, bright and clinical, buzzing faintly. The air felt warmer here, thick and stale, the kind that clung to the back of your throat. For a second I simply lay still,confused by the wrongness of it, trying to fit this room into memory.
The chair under me registered next. Solid. Metal. The seat too wide, the back tall. My shoulders and legs were pulled tight, resting at angles that didn’t feel natural. There was pressure at my wrists and ankles, not quite pain, just enough to remind me that moving wasn’t an option. My pulse began to climb.
I knew this place.
Not exactly as it had been before. Something about it had shifted, almost a familiar house rearranged while you were gone. The walls looked cleaner, the stains on the floor in different shapes. The light above me droned louder than I remembered, flickering every few seconds as if it couldn’t decide whether to die or not. The smell of disinfectant crept up my nose, leaving in its wake a sharp, burning sting.
But it was all close enough that my skin prickled with recognition.
I tested my hands. The restraints held firm. Leather, tight but not cutting off circulation. My throat felt dry, tongue thick, like I’d been unconscious for hours. I swallowed and the sound echoed loudly in the quiet room.
