31. Ellie
ELLIE
I wake to softness.
It’s sickening. The mattress sinks under my weight, a plush give that feels like a trap designed to swallow me whole.
I stay frozen, eyes fixed on the ceiling, waiting for the bite of a needle or the cold, hard press of steel.
I breathe in slowly, counting the thuds of my heart against my ribs.
Lub-dub, one. Lub-dub, two. Lub-dub, three.
The air is too clean here. Pine and mountain rain. The smell is suffocating.
My mind wants to keep counting. I push the numbers back into the dark.
Sunlight cuts a golden line across the floor. Mountains through the window.
It’s a trick.
A prettier cage.
Grace is waiting for the hope to soften me before she starts the next session. The guys were just a dream.
I push myself up.
My muscles scream. My arms feel like bone with skin stretched over them. I don't know this body. Grace built it in that basement. It's hers, not mine.
A sound outside the door makes me freeze.
I stop breathing. The door opens. Kai.
He leans against the frame, his lip ring glinting in the morning light. He doesn't come into the room. He watches me like I'm a wounded animal he's trying not to spook.
"Mornin', Ellie." He drops a medical bag on the floor. "Brought some supplies. Figured you might be a bit more lucid today."
He keeps his hands visible where I can see them. The bag is open. I can see every vial, needle, and drug inside. He knows I'm looking for the trap.
Kai pulls a syringe from the bag. Clear fluid, the same as hers. My stomach turns over.
"Second dose of the reversal agent," he says, reading my face. "We have to keep the levels steady, or you'll start sliding back. Your brain's not done fighting it yet."
He pulled the IV line out while I was sleeping. I can feel where it was—a small, tender bruise in the crook of my arm. He finds the other arm now. The cold sting of the alcohol. Then the needle. I breathe through it.
"Better night?"
I look down. My hands are shaking.
"A little." I say, my voice still raspy.
The nightmares have been less intense, though Grace's voice still echo through my dreams. Her smile. The footage replays like an endless movie. Reed's endless assaults.
I press my hands against my temples. The pressure doesn't stop the memories, but it gives me something to push against.
"Want something for the headache?" Kai asks. "Nothing heavy. Jus’ some Tylenol to take the edge off."
The glass tumbler in his hand blurs. The warm morning light shifts, sharpening into the harsh, fluorescent hum of the basement until my skin starts to crawl.
For a heartbeat, Kai is gone. It’s Reed standing there.
Holding out a bowl. That smirk. "Pretty girl, you're making progress.
Soon you'll understand what needs to happen to women who protect killers. "
I shake my head. Hard. Trying to get Reed out.
Kai nods, not pushing.
"I left water on the nightstand for you. The seal on the bottle is intact. You can check it if you want."
I reach for the bottle, my fingers clumsy. I check the seal, holding it up to the light, turning it slowly, looking for the pin-prick of a needle. Grace used to do that. One tiny hole, and the water would taste metallic before the world went black.
The seal is intact.
I don't open it. I don't trust the water. I don't trust the bottle. I put it back on the wood and watch a bead of condensation trail down the plastic.
"How's Killian?"
"Finally crashed. He went seventy-two hours without sleep in the lead up to getting you out," Kai leans against the doorframe. "Gabe's outside. Jackson's still digging through Grace's files."
Grace is dead. Killian killed her. I know this. But she's still here. He couldn't kill the part of her that’s still in my head. In everything.
"I'll be down the hall," Kai says, pushing off the doorframe. "You need anythin’, just holler. Someone's always listening."
After he leaves, I sit in the quiet.
The room is beautiful. I can see that now. Massive windows with mountains beyond. Curtains pooling on the floor. A thick rug. There's even a window seat, the kind of reading nook that belongs in a different life, one where I could curl up with a book and watch the mountains.
Not like Grace's cells.
That's what makes it feel wrong. Comfort feels like a trap.
The bathroom is all stone and glass. A waterfall shower that looks like it belongs in a magazine. I used it yesterday, standing under the heat until my skin was raw, trying to scrub away the feel of the basement.
But some things don't wash off.
"You're clinging to the pain like it's a lifeline, Eleanor.
It's the only thing you have left." Grace's voice is a needle in my ear.
"Look at yourself. Do you think he sees a woman when he looks at you?
No, he sees a liability. A mess he has to clean up.
He pities you, Eleanor. How long do you think a man like Killian is going to keep a broken toy on his shelf? "
I press my hands hard against my ears to try and drown her out. Her voice won't fucking stop. It eats through every thought until I can't tell what's mine and what she planted.
I sit motionless in bed. The light shifts across the floor. Hours, maybe. I don't know. Every sound makes me flinch. A door, voices, wind. I'm waiting for boots in the hallway. For the cell room to come back.
The fear won't stop. But my body is giving out. I slide down into the bed, my eyes pushing shut against my will. I try to stay awake, to stay on guard, but I’m too weak to fight sleep.
The nightmare doesn't drag me under. It's already there, waiting.
I'm strapped to a chair facing a screen.
"I want to show you something, Ellie. Something I've been saving for when you were ready."
The screen flickers. Grainy surveillance footage from a camera hidden in a corner. The timestamp in the corner is fifteen years old.
A bedroom. Heavy velvet curtains the color of dried blood.
"I don't want to see anymore."
"Watch," Grace whispers. "Or I'll make you watch it a hundred times."
A boy walks into the frame, maybe sixteen or seventeen. I'd recognize him anywhere. I know the way he holds himself, even that young.
A woman is on the bed. She's watching him with a look that makes my stomach turn.
She's leering at him, the same way Reed does to me.
She's an Order Original. A woman who sits on boards and shakes hands with senators.
The gold band on her thumb marks her rank.
High enough that no one would ever question what she does behind closed doors.
"His first mission," Grace whispers in my ear. "The Order trains them young. Teaches them that their bodies are weapons."
Killian's hands curl into fists on the screen. He doesn't move.
"You know what happens if you refuse." A male voice off-camera says coldly.
She cackles. "Don't worry, sweetheart. I'll be gentle."
The woman reaches for him. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t react at all. He just obeys.
He isn't even there. His gaze is fixed on a knot in the wood of the wall, his eyes flat and dead while she rides him.
She takes what she wants at her own pace, her hands braced on his chest, and his body stays hard beneath her because that's what they trained it to do.
When she's done with him, he finishes too.
Doesn't make a sound. Doesn't move. Just stares up while she climbs off and reaches for her robe.
She's still smirking. He's upright before she takes her second step.
He snaps her neck.
One twist. I can almost hear it through the screen.
Grace rewinds it. "He's been doing this his whole life, sex as mission. Intimacy as a weapon, Ellie. Fucking or killing, it’s the same to him. Do you think you’re special? You’re just another body he was taught to fuck and destroy."
I wake up and I’m already screaming.
I can't move, my skin is cold and slick with sweat. The sheets tangle around my legs like restraints as I kick to free myself, my heart hammering.
I go still. I lie there and wait for the screen to flicker back to life. For Grace to tell me which version of Killian is standing in the dark.
The door opens. I flinch, the wood of the headboard biting into my spine as I try to disappear into the wall.
It’s Killian.
He stops at the threshold. A shadow blocking the hall light. He doesn't move. I don't even hear him breathe. I watch his throat, waiting for the glitch. Waiting for his eyes to go flat and dead like the boy on the screen.
"Ellie." My name is a low, rough scrape of sound in the dark. "I heard you scream."
I can't catch my breath. I’m gasping, my lungs pulling for air that doesn’t exist. I'm drowning all over again.
He stays back, his hands open and empty at his sides. "Montana. You're in my house. It’s four in the morning. Grace is dead."
I stare at him. I’m looking for the boy on the screen. I need to know if the man who saved me is real, or if the man is just another weapon in his kit. One of him is a lie. I just don't know which one.
"Don't come in." The command cracks in the middle.
He nods. He doesn't look hurt, he looks resigned.
"I'm not leaving you in the dark, Ellie. Not tonight. I'll be in the hall. Right outside the door."
"I keep seeing her," I whisper. My hands are shaking so hard I have to tuck them under my arms. "Hearing her. She’s still in there, Killian."
"I know." His voice is a low vibration from the threshold. "She won't stop right away, Ellie. But I'm the one here. She’s dead. I’m the one you can hear. Listen to my voice. Focus on that."
Twenty-six days. Not enough time to destroy a person. Except... it was.
"Can you sit out there?" I say, gesturing to the hallway floor. "Just... stay where I can hear you."
"Sure thing." He lowers himself to the floor, back against the wall. I can see his legs stretched out in the hallway, not his face. It's easier this way.
"Talk to me," I say, settling back against the pillows, watching the doorway. "About anything. I need to hear something besides her voice."
He's quiet for a moment, then he starts talking.
His voice is a low, steady vibration. I'm not really listening to the words, just the sound of his voice.
Something about shell companies, the safe house and how he acquired it, names of men and places that don't mean anything to me anymore. I focus on the cadence and sound.
"I... I remember the sound," I say. "And you... shouting my name. It felt like I was watching a recording of someone else’s life. Like I wasn't even there."
I hear the scrape of his back against the wall as he shifts. A long, slow breath.
"I thought I'd lost you," he finally says. The pain in his voice is back. "I was right in front of you, but you were looking right through me. Your body was there, but you were gone."
"I was waiting." My voice is a whisper. "For the light to go out."
The memory is real. Something mine.
We sit in silence for a while. His breathing from the hallway is steady. Real.
"Would it help if I came in?" he asks.
The question surprises me.
My answer surprises me more.
"Yes."
I watch his shadow shift as he rises, then he appears in the doorway again. He waits, giving me time to change my mind. When I don't, he steps inside but stays near the door.
"The chair by the window," I say softly. "Can you sit there? Where I can see you."
He settles into the chair. It creaks under his weight. The light from the window catches his face. New lines around his eyes. A fresh scar on his temple. He looks exhausted.
He's changed since I last saw him clearly. Or maybe I'm the one who's changed.
Grace spent a month trying to make me afraid of him. But sitting here with him in the room, the fear is quieter than it should be. He's there. He’s real. He’s not the monster she tried to make him into.
"I won't let him find you," Killian says quietly. "Julian. He'll try, but I've hidden you too well."
"He'll come for you," I say. "For both of us."
"Let him fucking try." His mouth curves, but it's not a smile. It's colder than that.
We sit in silence for a while. I sink back into the pillows, my body finally giving up the fight to stay upright.
"Stay." I can barely keep my eyes open. "Don't leave me."
"I'm not going anywhere, Ellie."
I close my eyes. Maybe this is a trick. Maybe it's real. I'm too tired to tell the difference anymore. The dark takes me whether I let it or not.