18. Lola
LOLA
The darkness is everywhere. I am floating in it. I am fading, fading , fading. I wonder if my mom is with me, here in this darkness. I wonder if I can join her.
But, my mother is not here. Only the endless cold. Skeletal creatures reach out from the void, grasping at me. I scream, but nobody hears. Only the dark answers, and its presence crushes me.
I run as if I am being hunted. There is no way out. This darkness is all I can see, all I can feel. I have become nothingness in this black, vast space.
The darkness shifts.
Not like light. Light doesn’t exist here.
It’s heavier than that. The void thickens, presses into my lungs, and I can’t tell if I’m breathing or if I’m just remembering what breathing feels like.
My legs move anyway. I run because running is the only thing my body knows how to do when it’s scared.
When it’s trapped. When it’s already too late.
The cold bites deeper. It doesn’t touch my skin. It goes under it. It seeps through my bones and turns them hollow.
Something skitters behind me. I don’t look back. I never look back.
I push forward, blind, hands out in front of me, fingers catching nothing but air. The darkness has no walls, yet somehow I still slam into one. My shoulder hits something solid, and pain blooms, real enough to make me gasp.
The void laughs. Not an actual laugh. Not a sound. It’s the way the darkness answers when you beg it for mercy. It stays. It tightens. It makes you understand you’re alone.
I whisper, “Mom.”
My voice disappears as soon as it leaves my mouth. I swallow and taste metal. My throat burns. Like I’ve been screaming. Like I’ve been fighting. Like I’ve been calling for someone who never comes.
I blink and the darkness changes again. It ripples, and for a second it isn’t nothingness.It’s a face. Not my mother’s. A man’s face, half in shadow, eyes bright and flat like glass. Familiar in the way nightmares are familiar. In the way you can hate something and still know it by the shape of it.
Brody.
My heart kicks once, hard enough to hurt. His mouth moves, but no sound comes out. I try to step back but my feet won’t move.
The darkness grows hands again. Skeletal fingers curl around my wrists, my throat, my ribs. They don’t pull me under. They hold me in place. They force me to look.
Brody steps closer in the dark.
I want to hate him. I do hate him. The hatred lives in my chest like a second heart, beating harder than the first. But something else lives there too. Something that makes me want to reach for him even while I’m trying to spit in his face.
Brody’s eyes don’t blink. His hand comes up, cold fingers touching my cheek. I flinch as he leans in. I feel his breath against my mouth, and the cold turns into heat so fast it makes me sick. I hate that my body remembers. I hate that it responds.
His voice finally breaks through the void, low and clear, like he’s standing right next to my ear. “Wake up.”
My eyelids snap open. I suck in a breath and choke on it.
The air is different. Cold and stale. Like old wood and damp concrete. My lungs burn like they’ve been asleep too long.
My head pounds. My body feels wrong. Like I’m wading through wet cement.
I stare at a ceiling I don’t recognize. It’s low. Rough boards. One bare bulb hanging off-center. The light is off, but moonlight leaks in from somewhere, pale, carving a rectangle across the floor.
I don’t move for a second. I don’t even blink. My brain tries to place me, like if it can name the room, it can name the rules, and if it can name the rules, it can survive.
This isn’t my bedroom. This isn’t Marcus’s house. This isn’t Sophie’s. This is… nothing. A nowhere place. A place that doesn’t belong to anyone who lives a normal life.
My stomach turns. The room tilts slightly, then steadies. I push myself up on my elbows, and pain shoots behind my eyes. Nausea climbs my throat, thick and fast. I clamp my mouth shut and breathe through my nose until it passes.
My wrists ache. I look down; there’s a mark on my arm, like someone grabbed me too hard. My hand shakes when I touch it. My fingertips are cold, the skin under my nails looks pale.
I swing my gaze around. Concrete walls. Unfinished.
Cracked in places. A few shelves with nothing useful.
A thin mattress on the floor. A blanket that smells like dust. One small window near the ceiling.
It’s the only opening. Frosted at the edges.
Outside is pure snow and black tree shapes, and the moon hangs there like an eye.
No road. No house lights. No signs of anything. My pulse starts climbing.
No. No, no, no.
I scramble off the mattress and my legs almost fold. I catch myself on the wall, fingers digging into the cold concrete. My body lags behind my panic like it’s not fully mine yet. Someone drugged me. The word lands and my mouth fills with bile.
I stumble toward the stairs. There are only a few, leading up to a door. The door is thick. Old. There’s a heavy latch and a deadbolt that looks new. I grab the knob and twist. Nothing. I twist harder, my arm shaking. Still nothing.
I slam my palm against the door once, then again. The sound is loud in the basement, like I just hit a drum.
“Hello?” My voice cracks halfway through. I swallow and try again. “Hello!”
Silence. No footsteps. No voice answering. Nothing but the soft hum of the cold. My chest tightens as I press my forehead to the door and breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
Think. Lola. Think.
Where am I?
The last thing I remember is snow. A van. Hands grabbing me. My body going dead. Darkness swallowing me whole.
Someone took me here, but who would do this? I know Marcus has enemies, but I am not Marcus. I am just his trapped step-daughter. His puppet. If someone has a problem with Marcus, they should go to Marcus about it.
“Is someone out there? Let me out of here!” I bang on the door. Whoever took me has to be out there still. Surely, they did not leave me here to die?
After a few minutes of begging, I huff in frustration and walk back to the mattress.
I pull my knees up to my chest and wait.
Alone in the silence. It is suffocating.
My eyes dart everywhere, watching the shadows on the walls.
Lately, I have been wishing to be alone.
To be away from Marcus. I got my wish in a cruel way that feels like a death sentence.
I didn’t know how fast one cage could turn into a worse cage.
I became lost in the abyss of my thoughts, until finally, the door opens. A tall, and broad figure stands at the doorway. Just staring. He tilts his head and watches me.
Leaping up on my feet, I storm towards him. “Hey! I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you need to let me out of here. My step-father is a powerful man and I know he will be looking for me. You’re a dead man when he finds me.”
The man only chuckles, then walks down the steps towards me. His face is hidden behind a skull mask. Despite the situation, I clench between my thighs.
I always had a thing for men in masks.
The man steps closer. So close to where I can feel the rage radiating from him.
“Oh, I know exactly what kind of man he is. And I know what kind of woman you are, Lola Bloom. He won’t find you here.
I am going to keep you here and I am going to fucking destroy Marcus Bloom.
Even if it means ruining the one thing he holds dearest to his heart. You.”
I widen my eyes. I can feel the rapid pulse of my heart, how it is beating out of my chest. I wonder, does he hear it too? Is he getting off on it?
“I don’t know what Marcus did to you, but I can assure you that I am not involved with anything that man does.
He is a monster. That’s all he is to me.
” I try to stand my ground and look like I’m not about to shit myself.
I gaze at him and stare through the holes in his mask. I can just barely make out his eyes.
Glimmering with fury and hunger.
The man holds eye contact. “Marcus took away everything good in my life. He ruined me. Whether you’re with him or not, I’ll make sure he knows I ruined you in return.”
I gulp. He could mean anything.
“How will you ruin me?”
He chuckles again. It’s a low, dark sound. He walks closer, and I back up. My back hits the cold wall, my legs trembling. He takes my wrists and pins them against the wall, leaning in close, his breath by my ear.
“Oh, darling, you don’t want to know. I’ll have you fucking begging to be released out into the cold.
” He pushes against me harder, and I can feel a hardness growing in his pants.
I feel sick. This is turning him on. “I’m going to make you squirm, make you cry, make you ache, make you wish you were anywhere but here. ”
I want to scream.
But part of me remembers this. Remembers the wolf and the woods and the shape of a man who wanted to break me open, devour me, taste all the soft inside parts. That same electric rush, the same sick, sick craving.
The skull mask presses into my hair. His body crushes me tighter. My ribs spark with pain and something else. He grabs my wrists, spins me to the mattress. I shove at him, but I am nothing against his weight.
I try to roll away but am rewarded with his cruel laugh. “You scared, pretty thing?”
Of course I am. Every inch prickles. I want to dissociate, float away, become boneless. But I can’t. The fear holds me to the world.
“What do you want from me?” My voice comes out shredded, bloody at the edges. Not loud, not strong. A pathetic sound.
He barks a laugh. The skull grins. “You’re not getting rescued, Lola.”
My name, in his mouth, slices me up. He didn’t ask. He knows me. I try to swallow the scream.
I twist, but he just presses my arms up harder. My ribs grind against concrete, and my jaw aches. His shadow eats the whole room. “Let me out of here. I’m worth nothing to you. I’m a problem. You’ll regret this.”
“Not a chance.” He tilts his head. I see the glimmer in his eyes behind the mask, endless and sick. “You’re the only leverage that matters.”
He shifts his weight. The rest of his body pins me in place.
I feel every inch of muscle, every inch of threat.
My heart wants to punch through my ribs.
It hammers so stupidly loud I know he must hear it.
Can predators smell panic? Can they taste fear on your tongue?
I bet he can. He probably lives for the flavor.
The pressure of his grip gets meaner, less careful. “You can beg, if you want. Or you can scream. Nobody’s coming.”
He does not say Marcus can’t find me. He says nobody. He means it.
I want to scream in his face. Instead, a whimper leaks out. I hate myself for giving him that little scrap of weakness. I see the satisfaction ripple through his shoulders. He loves it; I know he does.
He drags his thumb along my jaw, his hand is gloved and cold. My skin breaks out in fire and ice, prickling up my spine.
“Play nice, and it goes easier,” he purrs.
He lets me go, sudden, brutal. I lurch away, knees buckling. Crashing to the floor, I scramble towards the mattress, but it’s pathetic. He doesn’t even try to hold me down. He stands over me, still and silent. The skull is inescapable.
“You belong to me now,” he says.
I press my back into the freezing wall and curl up. He watches me again; he likes to watch me. I glare at him. Without another word, he leaves. The door shuts, and the darkness takes over again.