No one expecting more from him than he was willing to give.
But freedom had a cost.
Parties blurred into mornings. Drugs stopped being occasional and started being necessary. One bad night turned into a headline—photos leaked, names mentioned, sponsors quietly pulling back.
Contracts didn’t vanish all at once.
They thinned.
Calls stopped coming. Jobs slowed. The same industry that loved him for being reckless lost interest the moment he became inconvenient.
Tattoo shops were different.
Ink didn’t ask questions. It didn’t care about scandals or background checks. Artists saw his body as a canvas, his presence as currency. He started hanging around more learning the rhythm, the culture, the unspoken hierarchy.
That’s when he heard her name.
Not from gossip.
From respect.
Becca.
The artist everyone was watching. The one magazines whispered about before they featured her. The woman whose work didn’t just sit on skin—it transformed it.
They said she was disciplined. Focused. Building something real.
Everything Izzy wasn’t.
And for the first time, he didn’t want to borrow someone else’s momentum.
He wanted to be part of it.
He told himself she was different. That being close to someone like her might steady him. Balance him. Keephim from tipping back into the chaos he could already feel circling.
For a while, he believed it.
But habits don’t disappear just because you want them to.
And long before Becca became a consequence, someone else noticed Izzy slipping through the cracks.
Jenna.
She didn’t save him.
Didn’t stop the fall.
She simply stepped into the space where his control was already weakening—and waited.
8
Becca
The first thing I feel is the pounding—not the cold, not the silence, but the pounding in my skull like something is trying to break free from the inside. I try to move and can't. Metal bites into my wrists, cold and sharp and unforgiving. Cuffs. My arms feel like they've been torn from their sockets, and my shoulders scream when I shift even an inch. My thighs ache. My ribs stab with every breath. My tongue drags across dry teeth and I taste iron—blood. There's dried blood on my face.
I force my eyes open. At first everything is blurred, light smearing across darkness. Then slowly, shapes form. Concrete. Rust. A single hanging industrial bulb swaying slightly overhead, casting a sick yellow glow that flickers just enough to make shadows twitch. Warehouse. Cold seeps into my skin like it belongs there, and water drips somewhere in the distance—slow, methodical, like a clock counting down. I inhale carefully, taking in the smell of oil, mold, metal, dust.
I'm upright. Tied to a chair. My wrists are cuffed behind me, tight enough that I can feel my pulse throbbing against steel. My ankles are secured to the legs of thechair. I test the metal again, just to be sure. It doesn't give. I swallow and force myself to think, to focus, to understand where I am and what's happening.
