Page 135 of The Beast

They put me in a room. A cell, really—concrete walls, no windows, a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling that flickers every few seconds like it might die at any moment. There’s a chair bolted to the floor and a bucket in the corner that I refuse to think about.

The men cut my zip-ties, at least. Small mercies. I rub my wrists, wincing at the raw skin, the sticky smear of blood. Then they leave, and the door locks behind them with a heavy metallic clunk that echoes in my chest like a death knell.

I stand in the middle of the room, trying to think. Trying to breathe. Trying not to fall apart.

Gabriel will come. I know he will. Harper will realize I’m gone. She’ll call Gabe. And then nothing on earth will stop him from finding me.

The question is whether I’ll still be alive when he does.

My father’s parting words echo in my mind. I suppose we’d better make sure he doesn’t find you.

Is he planning to kill me? Use me as a bargaining chip? Disappear to some country without an extradition treaty and drag me along as insurance?

I don’t know. And not knowing is almost worse than any of those options.

The silence is oppressive. Thick. The kind of silence that makes you hear your own heartbeat, your own breathing, the blood rushing through your own veins.

I strain to hear something—anything—from beyond the door. Voices. Footsteps. Some sign that the world still exists outside these four concrete walls.

Nothing.

I sink down against the wall and pull my knees to my chest. The concrete is cold through my clothes. The air tastes stale and damp, like something died in here a long time ago and no one ever bothered to remove the corpse.

Maybe that’s what I’ll become. A corpse no one bothers to remove.

Stop it.

I close my eyes and think about Gabriel.

He’ll come. I know he will.

I think about our first date, back when we were young and stupid and didn’t know how dark the world could get. He took me to a little Italian place in SoHo, and we talked for hours about art and family and dreams. He drove me home afterward, and when he kissed me goodnight, I felt like I was standing on the edge of something enormous. Something life-changing.

I was right. And even after everything, I still love him, and he still loves me.

Even after five years of believing I’d betrayed him. Even after the rage and the hatred and the beast that tried to consume him from the inside out.

He loves me.

And he’s coming for me.

I’m certain of it.

I just have to survive long enough to see it.

I wrap my arms around my knees, put my head down, and let myself cry. “Please,” I whisper into the darkness. “Please find me. Please.”

The flickering light doesn’t answer. The silence doesn’t break. But somewhere in my chest, in the place where fear and faith live side by side, I feel something warm. Something steady.

Gabriel is coming.

I just have to hold on.