33. Lena
Lena
I wake into darkness.
For a few seconds I don’t know where I am, only that I can’t see and I can’t move properly and my heart is beating frantically.
The blindfold is tight enough that it presses at the corners of my eyes.
My wrists are bound behind me. My ankles too.
The surface under me is hard, not a bed, not anything familiar, and the air smells faintly of dust and something industrial.
Metal, maybe. Concrete. A place built for storage, not comfort.
Then memory comes back in one ugly rush.
I was asleep.
Warm, half turned into someone else’s body, deep enough under that I didn’t hear anything at first. Then I woke for one thin, unnatural second and saw a shape standing over the bed.
The guys didn’t move around me.
I opened my mouth.
A hand caught the back of my head and something wet pressed over my nose and mouth before I got any sound out. Chemical sweetness.
I remember trying to twist away, trying not to breathe, lungs burning, the shape above me turning into blur at the edges.
After that, nothing.
Now this.
My breathing starts to run from me and I force it down before it gets worse. In through my nose, shallow because I still don’t trust the air, out through my mouth. Again. Again.
Take stock.
That thought is the only useful one I have, so I cling to it.
I try to remember what happened after I was taken, but I have nothing. They must have given me something to knock me out. That part I understand, but the part before makes little sense.
How did they even get to me?
I was asleep in the middle of them, literally between bodies, hemmed in by heat and weight and the kind of closeness that should have made taking me impossible without waking all three men at once.
Someone did not just slip in and get lucky.
Someone knew where we were. Someone knew the room, the layout, maybe even how exhausted we’d be, how deeply we’d sleep after everything.
A cold realization moves through me.
We were set up.
The blindfold makes everything worse because I can’t do what I always do, can’t scan, can’t count exits, can’t look for doors or windows or faces.
So I do it the other way. Body first. I flex my fingers.
My hands aren’t numb. Good. Shoulders ache but not badly.
My mouth tastes stale and chemical and fear.
I’m not naked.
The thought helps in the smallest, ugliest way. Enough to lower the panic by one inch. Enough to keep me from spiraling completely.
The room is quiet enough that I can hear my own pulse.
Then movement.
Not close at first. Just a shift somewhere to my left. A floorboard or a shoe scraping. Someone is here. Of course someone is here. They didn’t tie me up and leave me like luggage.
I swallow. When I speak, my voice comes out rough. “You didn’t gag me.”
No answer.
That surprises me enough to cover the fear for a second.
“I’m just saying,” I go on, because silence is worse, because if I stop talking then all I have is the blindfold and the ropes and whatever this person wants from me. “Feels like an oversight.”
Still nothing.
I wet my lips. My mouth is dry enough it barely helps.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say, trying for steady and hearing the cracks anyway. “Whatever you think this is, whatever you were told, I’m not worth the trouble.”
A step closer this time. I turn my head toward the sound automatically, even though the blindfold makes it useless.
“If this is about money, I don’t have any,” I say. “If it’s about information, I don’t know anything useful. If it’s personal, you’ve got the wrong girl.” My voice shakes on that last word.
I hate it.
“Please,” I say, quieter now. “Please just tell me what’s going on.”
Nothing.
The silence starts to feel deliberate.
That thought sends a fresh cold wave through me. So I change tactics.
“Look,” I say, trying to keep my breathing even, trying to sound human instead of terrified, “I don’t know what kind of day you’re having, but this seems like a lot. Maybe we can reset.”
The words sound ridiculous the second they leave my mouth, but I keep going anyway.
“I won’t scream. I won’t do anything stupid. Just… take the blindfold off. Talk to me.”
I hear another small movement. Closer again. Right near me now. I can smell something on him. Smoke, maybe. Sweat. Soap. Male.
My skin goes cold all over. “Please,” I say again.
No answer.
“You don’t have to be this person,” I say softly. “Whatever happened to you, whatever somebody asked you to do, you can still stop.”
The words hang there, stupid and hopeful.
I hear his breathing now. Slow. He doesn’t give a flying fuck about me. And what was I expecting? A miracle? Miracles don’t exist in real life.
“Okay,” I say, and my voice gets sharper without my permission. “Then at least be smart about it. You took me from men who are going to come looking. They’re not just going to let this go.”
That gets me something.
Not words. A shift in the air. Attention.
I keep going because now I know he’s listening. “They will find me,” I say. “And when they do, whatever you’re being paid is not going to be enough.”
The man grunts.
I resist the urge to smile. Yes, at least I got something out of him.
I lift my chin under the blindfold like I can still make eye contact through it. “So if I were you, I’d be thinking very hard about whether this ends with me walking out or with them breaking every door between here and wherever you’re dumb enough to be standing.”
I barely get one breath to prepare before a hand catches my jaw and a slap cracks across my face hard enough to snap my head sideways.
Pain blooms hot and immediate.
For one awful second the room tilts under me. My cheek throbs. My eyes water under the blindfold. Every bit of anger I’d managed to summon goes thin and frightened at the edges because now there is proof of a body, proof of force, proof that this person can reach me whenever they want.
A man’s voice comes low and close to my ear. “You’ll learn soon enough,” he hisses, “what real violence feels like.”
Every muscle in me locks, and I stop breathing for a second altogether.
His breath is warm against my skin. He’s close enough that I can smell him now, soap, sweat, something metallic, and the intimacy of that frightens me more than the slap did. This is not random. This is not clumsy. He wants me to hear him. Wants me to feel exactly how near he is.
My mouth has gone dry again.
I don’t say anything now. I can’t.
Because fear has finally arrived in full, the cold, trapped certainty of knowing I am tied to a chair in the dark with a man who just promised to teach me something terrible, and for the first time since waking up, I believe completely that he means it.