Chapter Eighteen
Asher
She falls asleep sitting up.
It’s not quick. I don’t think she trusts anything enough to truly let go.
Her head tips back against the padded headboard, then forward again. Her breathing evens out slowly, like it needs permission.
Fuck.
It probably does.
I stay where I am. Far enough away that when she surfaces, she won’t feel someone looming. Close enough to steady her if her muscles give out again.
Her hands still tremble, even in sleep. The bruises along her collarbones and jaw have darkened in the past few hours. Brutal, repeated pressure–—probably over many days—designed to cause the maximum amount of pain. The kind of work that hurts without leaving permanent marks.
I’ve seen injuries like hers before—even caused some of them. But never this severe.
What they did to her wasn’t interrogation. It wasn’t punishment. Pain was incidental.
They were trying to erase someone who’d become inconvenient.
My attention shifts from the injuries to the person bearing them. To Raine herself. An odd sensation creeps into my thoughts, settling low in my gut. A stirring that almost feels like…attraction.
No. Shut it down. Now.
I try, but instead of going away, it resolves into something deeper. Respect. Maybe awe.
Even exhausted, broken, and temporarily still, she’s dangerous. Her body’s been stressed to its limit, but her mind is still strong. If she wanted to, she could end me. Not today. And not without cost. But the capacity is there.
She didn’t need rescuing.
She needed an opening.
I don’t know who signed off on erasing her. Who’s realized, by now, that she isn’t where they left her. How they intend to remedy that situation.
I do know they made a mistake targeting her.
And I don’t let mistakes like that stand.
Not anymore.
Raine
My head jerks.
Pain detonates along my spine. My vision grays. Sensation drops out of my arms, my legs, my face—everything at once, like a breaker flipping.
“Raine.” A man’s voice. Quiet and steady with a hint of concern. I latch onto it before the overload can take me completely. “You’re safe. You’re not back there.”
Asher.
One breath in. Four beats— No. My ribs won’t allow that many. I settle for three. Another three out.
It’s something.
“How long this time?” I ask. My voice is rough, but it holds.
“Twenty minutes.”
I don’t know what’s worse—that it was only twenty minutes, or that it helped at all.
He hasn’t moved from the chair. One ankle crossed over the opposite knee. Fingers relaxed on the padded arms.
Visible.
He remembered that I need to see his hands. Of course he did.
“I have broth,” he says. “Clear. No solids. If you want to try something more than electrolytes.”
My stomach tightens sharply. A confused, almost painful pull that doesn’t translate to anything I remember or recognize. I curl inward until my ribs protest, waiting for it to fade.
It doesn’t.
“I can’t hold anything,” I say quietly. “My hands…”
“Nerve compression.” He glances at my wrists, but his eyes quickly move back to my face. “The restraints were too tight.”
I nod. The memory is lodged so deep I’m not sure it’ll ever leave me. Metal biting into my skin until there was nothing left but pain.
“We don’t have to do this now,” he adds. “Or I can hold the mug. Like before.”
I need this. Whatever this is, whatever my body is telling me, I know I need it.
“Please.” The single word scrapes my throat raw.
He nods. “Okay. The kitchenette’s down the hall. I won’t be long. Five minutes at the most. You’ll hear me the whole time.”
I don’t want him to leave. I feel almost…safe with him here. But the idea of broth is making my mouth water.
Asher stands slowly, hands at his sides, and keeps his gaze on me until the last possible moment. His footsteps are heavy and measured. Easy to track as he moves down the hall.
The room feels larger now. My body doesn’t react—much. A subtle kick of my heart rate. The tremor in my hands worsens.
I listen, anchoring myself in the noise of another person. Cabinets. A spoon against ceramic. Water running. Normal sounds I haven’t heard in too long.
When he comes back, the smell reaches me first.
Real chicken. Warm and salty and rich.
“I’ll sit like before.” He waits for my nod, then approaches the bed. Sits exactly where he said he would. Not looming. Not retreating too far.
I track his hands and the steam curling from the mug. I want this badly enough my chest aches.
My fingers won’t listen to me. The tremor worsens, crawling up my arms.
“Easy,” he says. “You can guide me. Or tell me to stop.”
“No.” The word is thin and brittle. But it’s mine. I can do this. I need to do this.
I brace my fist against the side of the mug and tip it a fraction. The effort is enormous for something so small.
The first sip hits my tongue—hot, but not burning, familiar in a way my body accepts even if my mind doesn’t understand why.
After a few sips, my stomach cramps violently.
“Stop,” I choke out.
Asher stands, takes two steps back, and waits.
I sag against the pillow, breathing shallowly until the nausea eases a fraction.
Tears blur my vision, and I don’t fight them this time. I know why I’m crying.
Those four sips weren’t just calories.
They’re proof my body still recognizes what food is.
“It’s been too long since…” I swallow, unable to put the rest of the sentence into words.
“I know,” Asher says softly. “You can have more whenever you’re ready. No pressure.”
He sets the mug aside and returns to the chair. His hands rest briefly in his lap, then move back to the arms.
“Why were you there?” I ask after a moment. “Not for me. I know that.” My thoughts are starting to fracture again, but I can hold them together a little longer. I need to hear his answer.
“I was hired to extract someone else,” he says. “A man who pissed off the wrong people. But by the time I arrived, he’d been dead for almost twenty-four hours.”
“Why didn’t you leave?”
He pauses, eyes churning with something…
dangerous. “When I pulled his file, I didn’t like what I saw.
The timing was wrong. Too many escalations too close together.
” He shakes his head slightly. “I wondered if it was a pattern. Started digging around. That’s when I found your records.
Your vitals hadn’t flatlined yet. But they were close. ”
“You decided to play hero.”
One corner of his mouth lifts, barely. “I’m not a hero. Never have been. You didn’t need rescuing. You needed those damn restraints off. That’s all I did. You handled the rest.”
Something in me loosens. Just a little.
“If you’re not a hero,” I ask, my words starting to slur, “what are you?”
“I clean up problems. A fixer, if you want the technical term. Extractions. Digital incursions. On rare occasions, I remove someone from the board before they destroy someone else.”
I nod—carefully.
“I don’t work cheap,” he adds. “But I don’t take jobs I can’t live with. No amount of money can clear a conscience.”
I file that away for later, when my thoughts aren’t so slow and slippery.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“For the next little while?” He leans forward. “You eat when you can. You rest. We deal with what needs dealing with. Nothing happens without your consent.”
“And after that?”
His voice firms, just slightly. “You decide what you want. And whether you want my help with it.”
Want. Not need.
“That’s not how this usually goes,” I say.
“Nothing about this is usual.”
The truth of his words would pull a laugh free if I were still capable of laughing.
“No. It isn’t.”
I lie back against the pillows and immediately regret it. The moment I stop bracing, everything slips.
The room is almost completely silent. Silence is…dangerous.
Heat builds in my stomach too quickly, spreading in a way that’s wrong before I can figure out why.
My heart thumps hard, out of rhythm.
I blink. My wrists feel untethered without weight. The skin there hums, oversensitive, and the rest of me is rough. Gritty. My hands twitch uselessly against the blanket.
Don’t move. They’ll come.
I can’t get enough air. My breathing stutters, skips, starts again with no pattern.
My legs jerk. Small, sharp misfires I can’t control.
No. Stop.
I try to catalog what I know.
Bed.
Warmth.
Nothing else comes.
My pulse keeps climbing, anticipating pain. I’m terrified when there isn’t any.
I turn my head too fast. The room tilts. Nausea surges, sharp enough that a tiny whimper breaks free.
“Raine.”
It takes a minute.
Asher
His smooth, deep voice cuts through the edges of my panic. Real in a way nothing else can be.
“You’re safe. You’re not back there.”
He keeps talking, not filling the space as much as shaping it. I can’t make sense of the words. I focus on the cadence. The low, reassuring tone.
“You’re in a bed. In one of my safe houses. No one’s touching you. No one’s going to touch you. I’m staying right here. And if you look, you can see my hands.”
The nausea crests instead of breaking. Heat floods my face, then drains just as fast, leaving me hollowed out and shaky.
My hands curl. My jaw locks hard enough my teeth ache.
“Talk to me,” Asher says quietly. “What’s the worst part right now? Body or mind?”
My chest reacts before I can decide. Every question could be a trap. But…he hasn’t moved. He’s still in the chair.
“Body,” I manage. “My hands. And—” I swallow. “My stomach. It feels…wrong.”
“Okay. Hands first. Put them flat on the blanket. Feel the fabric. Notice what’s there.” The chair doesn’t creak. He’s perfectly still. Nothing changes in the room but his attention.
My fingers twitch again, weak and useless, nerves firing without permission. Fire licks at my palms, but when it fades away, the cold seeps back in.
“I can’t make them stop,” I whisper.
“You don’t need to. No one’s going to hurt you for moving. Or feeling.”
Another wave hits, lower this time. My stomach tightens, hollow and clenched all at once. I breathe carefully. Not too deep. If I give in, I’ll lose the broth. And that might destroy whatever part of me I have left.
“That wrong feeling,” Asher says. “Pain or pressure?”
Thoughts come too slowly. I’m supposed to answer. If I don’t… Another small whimper, and I force a single word free. “Pressure.”
“Okay,” he says. “Don’t fight it. Just tell me if it gets worse.”
My stomach tightens hard enough to steal my breath. I curl without meaning to—pain slices through my shoulders, and I go very still.
Too much.
My vision fuzzes at the edges.
“Easy.” Asher hasn’t moved. Same place. Same distance. “Breathe through it.”
The pressure doesn’t stop. My throat tightens. I can’t get enough air to explain.
“Worse,” I whisper.
“Shift your focus.” In my periphery, he leans forward a fraction. But his hands stay still, his voice steady. “Can you feel the mattress under your heels?”
The question surprises me enough, I manage a deeper breath. “Yes.”
“Good. Press them down gently. Just enough to notice.”
I do. The movement sends a jolt up my calves, uncomfortable but grounding. The pressure in my stomach wavers, then loosens a fraction.
Asher leans back in the chair. “Better?”
I nod. Speaking is just out of reach.
“Was it the broth?” he asks.
The question floats for a moment before I catch it.
“Yes.”
His eyes soften. “Your body has to remember it’s allowed to want.”
Heat spikes behind my eyes. Tears spill without warning, hot and embarrassing.
“Wanting is…dangerous.”
“It was,” Asher says. No argument. No softening what happened to me. “It isn’t anymore.” He keeps his voice low and steady, still talking even as my thoughts smear at the edges. “You can rest. I’m right here.”
I let my eyes close. Breathe. Let the moment pass without bracing for the next one.