Chapter 16 Anna
Wrong. Everything was wrong.
My head felt like it had been split open and stuffed with cotton soaked in chemicals. The smell hit me next: sweet, cloying, artificial. It coated the back of my throat, making me gag.
Chloroform.
The word surfaced through the fog, dragging memory with it like an anchor.
The man in the maintenance uniform. His face was wrong, all wrong, but I'd been too slow to react.
The violent efficiency as he'd struck Martinez.
The cloth. Damp and suffocating. Daisy's scream, high and piercing, as my vision tunneled to black.
Daisy.
Panic sliced through the chemical haze. I tried to move and immediately wished I hadn't. Pain immediately shot through my wrists. They were wrenched behind my back, something hard and unforgiving biting into skin.
Zip ties.
I was on a floor. The chill of the cold concrete seeped through my clothes, into my bones. Despite feeling gummy and resistant, I forced my eyes open, and the world swam into nauseous focus.
A single bare bulb hung somewhere high above, casting weak yellow light that barely reached the floor.
A warehouse, maybe? Or a basement. The ceiling disappeared into shadow.
Massive support columns rose at intervals, their concrete surfaces stained with age and rust. Old rusty pipes snaked along walls too far away to reach.
The air tasted of old oil, metal, and damp brick walls.
No windows. No natural light. No way to tell if it was day or night.
And most terrifying: no sound from outside. No traffic. No voices. Just the hollow echo of my own breathing in a space too large to be anything but a tomb.
A small, muffled sound broke the silence.
Coming from somewhere behind me.
A sob.
My heart stopped. Then kicked into overdrive, hammering so hard against my ribcage I felt it’d crack open.
No. Please no. Please tell me he didn't—
I twisted my body, ignoring the fire in my shoulders as my bound arms protested. The movement was awkward, painful, but I didn't care. I needed to see. I needed to know.
A few feet away, pressed against one of those massive support columns like she was trying to disappear into it, was Daisy.
The relief that crashed through me was so powerful my vision grayed at the edges. Then I actually saw her, and the relief curdled into something colder.
Her small hands were bound behind her back, those tiny hands that drew pictures and held mine and traced letters in the air.
Zip-tied. Like mine. Her unicorn pajamas, the ones she'd been wearing when she went to bed safe in Jack's penthouse, were dirty and smudged with concrete dust. Her face was pale as paper, tear-streaked, her grey eyes wide with terror that made her look like a ghost of herself.
"Daisy." Her name came out broken, barely a whisper.
She flinched at the sound, small body jerking. Then recognition dawned in those terrified eyes. "Anna?" Her voice was so small, so broken, I felt it crack something inside my chest.
"I'm here, sweet pea. I'm right here."
I moved. Scooting across rough concrete was agony, every shift dragged my bound wrists, sent fresh pain shooting up my arms. But I didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Not until my back pressed against hers.
The contact was immediate and electric. A tiny circuit completing. Her small back against mine, her cold, trembling hands brushing against my bound wrists as she tried to reach for me even though neither of us could use our hands.
Warmth. Human contact. Proof that neither of us was alone.
I could feel the frantic beat of her heart through her thin pajamas. Too fast. Her breathing was quick, shallow, panicked. I forced myself to breathe deeper, slower, hoping she'd unconsciously match my rhythm the way she did when I read to her.
"Are you hurt?" My voice came out steadier than I felt.
A jerky headshake I felt more than saw. "My wrists hurt. And I'm scared."
God. The simple honesty of it. The trust that I would make it better because I always had done so before. In her room with nightmares. At the foundation with mean kids. At the kitchen table with backwards letters.
But I couldn't fix this. And that knowledge was terrifying me, of what could happen to her.
"I know, honey. I'm scared too." I leaned my head against hers, forcing calm into my voice. "But we're together. And we are going to be so, so brave. Your daddy is the smartest, strongest man I know. He's looking for us right now. He will find us."
I repeated it like a mantra, for her and for myself. Jack will find us. Jack will find us.
The sound of metal scraping metal shattered the moment.
A heavy, industrial door was opening somewhere above us.
Footsteps echoed down. The footsteps were casual and unhurried. The deliberate pace of someone who knew his prey was trapped and had nowhere to go.
Metal stairs rang with each step. Descending from shadows I couldn't see into, approaching with the inevitability of an inescapable demise.
Daisy's breathing stopped entirely. Her small back went rigid against mine.
"It's okay," I whispered, the lie tasting like copper. "I've got you. No matter what happens, I've got you."
The footsteps reached the bottom, then stopped.
Almost immediately, Carter stepped into the weak circle of light.
He looked different. Prison had stripped away the corporate lawyer polish I remembered. He was leaner, harder, like something had been burned away, leaving only essentials. His hair was cut military-short. He wore dark tactical pants and a black jacket. Practical. Planned.
But his eyes. They were the same.
That cruel, calculating blue that had never held human warmth. Only interest. Assessment. The eyes of someone studying specimens under glass, watching how they'd react to stimulus.
He was looking at us like that now. Like we were an experiment. Like Daisy's terror and my bound wrists were data points in some equation only he understood.
"You're awake," he said, his voice unnervingly calm, almost pleasant. Like we'd just arrived at a dinner party. "Good. I was starting to think I'd miscalculated the dose."
"Let her go." The words burst from me before he'd finished speaking, desperation overriding any plan or strategy.
"Carter, please. Please. She's just a child.
She's five years old. She has nothing to do with this, with us, with any of it.
Let me call someone to come get her. I'll give you whatever you want.
I'll stay. I'll—I'll do anything. Just let her go. Please, I'm begging you—"
My voice cracked on the last word, and broke completely. Tears I didn't remember streamed down my face, hot against my cold cheeks.
Behind me, I felt Daisy trembling. Felt her trying to press closer, trying to make herself smaller, trying to disappear into me.
He gripped his wrists, a gesture I remembered, one he used to make when considering contract clauses or my failures. Thoughtful manipulation.
"But she has everything to do with this, Anna." He moved closer, just to the edge of the light.
"See, I've had twenty months to think. Twenty months in a cell, watching my career burn, my reputation destroyed, my entire life dismantled. You know what I realized?"
He crouched down, bringing himself to eye level. Not with me, but with Daisy.
"Justice isn't about equal punishment. It's about equal pain. Jack Spencer took my future. So I will take his. Simple math."
His cold, dead eyes fixed on Daisy's terrified face.
"She is his heart. The center. Everything he does, every breath he takes, is for her. And you—" He glanced at me. "You've become part of that, haven't you? Part of his little makeshift family. His second chance."
The way he said "second chance" made it sound like a disease.
"So, taking you both? That's not just revenge, Anna. That's poetry."
Something snapped inside me. Maybe it was the way he was looking at Daisy, assessing her, like he'd assessed me a thousand times before deciding how best to hurt me. Maybe it was hearing him call an innocent person’s pain "poetry.
" Maybe it was two years of carrying the weight of that night, of Elena's death, of my silence.
The words exploded out before I could stop them.
"You killed his wife!"
The sound echoed in the vast space, raw and accusatory. Even Daisy went still behind me, shocked into silence by the fury in my voice.
"You killed her, Carter. You were drunk and angry and driving like a maniac because I asked—because I dared to ask you to slow down. You hit a woman who was just running. An innocent woman. A mother. A wife. A teacher who spent her life helping children."
My voice broke, but I pushed through.
"And you drove away. You threatened me. You made me complicit in her death because I was too terrified to speak. You destroyed everything. Her family, her work, her future. You did that. Not Jack. You."
The calm vanished like someone had flipped a switch.
In two strides, he was on me. I saw his hand coming, but couldn't move, couldn't dodge, bound and helpless. The back of his hand connected with my cheek with a crack that echoed off the concrete walls.
The pain was bright and immediate, white-hot across my face. My head snapped to the side. I tasted copper, the blood from my split lip mixing with the chemical residue still coating my mouth.
Behind me, Daisy cried out. A sharp, terrified sound that hurt worse than the slap.
"I had an accident!" Carter snarled, his face inches from mine, his breath was hot and sour.
Spittle hit my face as he shouted. "A tragic, regrettable accident.
But Jack Spencer, that self-righteous, controlling bastard, he went and turned it into a crusade.
He used his money, his power, his connections to hunt me like an animal. "
He grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him. His fingers dug into bruised flesh.