So I let the resistance drain out of my body.
Not all of it. Never truly. Just enough to fake surrender.
Loosening my shoulders beneath him, my head turns slightly in his hand. Letting my breath come ragged and uneven, I make myself go still the way prey goes still when it understands there is no point in wasting energy before the teeth sink in. Men like him know the difference between terror and collapse because they spend their lives manufacturing both. He feels it immediately.
“There you are,” he says softly.
Nausea climbs hard into my throat, but I keep my body limp.
Silas makes another sound from the floor, a wrecked little gasp that shreds something in me all over again.
The Handler leans down closer, his mouth near my temple now.
“He can hear you, you know,” he murmurs. “Some part of him can. That’s the pretty thing about this. He’ll die listening to you beg.”
Rage flashes white behind my eyes so hard it almost blows the whole thing apart before I can get hold of it.
Not yet.
Not yet.
The tremor that goes through me gets read exactly the way I need it to. His hand glides down my back, slower now, triumphant.
"That’s right,” he says. “Let him watch you soften.” His breath warms my ear. “Maybe if you’re sweet, I’ll let him die looking at something pretty.”
On the floor, Silas’s fingers twitch against the carpet.
Alive.
Still here.
Still fighting.
One chance. That is all this is going to take. One opening. One stupid bit of confidence on his part. One second where he thinks he has won enough to get careless.
My face turns a fraction in his grip. Nothing obvious. Nothing sharp enough to read as intention. Just enough to bring the side of his throat into clearer view. Just enough to catch the pulse there, thick and steady beneath skin that has grown soft with age and arrogance. The line of it shows above his collar when he bends over me. He is too pleased with himself to protect it.
“Good girl,” he murmurs.
His hand slides over my hip.
Every part of me revolts so violently it almost feels like I am trying to climb out of my own skin.
“Always knew you’d come around,” he says. “Girls like you always do. All that fighting, all that shaking, all that hate.” His fingers tighten. “Underneath it, same as your mother. Just needed the right hand on your neck.”
No.
Not fear now.
Not grief.
Something much colder.
Something so absolute it clears the room of everything else.
Hatred has a strange purity when it reaches a certain point. It stops feeling wild. Stops feeling loud. It becomes precise. Clean. Functional. The motel room sharpens around me under it. The scrape of carpet against my cheek. The stale rot in the air. The pressure of his body. The warm leak of blood from Silas’s side soaking into the floor. The hideous pauses between Silas’s breaths. The pulse in the Handler’s throat, beating there with smug, stupid confidence as if his body has never once had to imagine a world where it could be opened.
That is when I understand exactly what I am.
