Chapter 17
Kai
I woke up sometime after the last injection Lucy gave me—or at least I thought I did.
Time didn’t exist in here.
No clock.
No sunlight.
No sound except the faint rhythm of my breath and the distant hum of whatever machine kept this place running. The walls didn’t even cast shadows. It was just me, the bed, and the thick, suffocating quiet.
For all I knew, I could’ve been out for minutes… or days.
But something was different this time. The fog in my head—usually thick enough to smother every thought—had finally thinned. The world sharpened at the edges. My thoughts didn’t slip away when I reached for them; they stayed, shaky but intact.
Finally, I could think.
The spinning had stopped. The numbness had eased. My brain, my own damn brain, was waking up again.
What the hell was she planning?
Drugging me, keeping me docile—it wasn’t random. Nothing that woman ever did was random. She played people the way other people played instruments. Every note, every move, every trap was deliberate.
But strapped to this bed like a violent criminal, locked in this windowless box, I couldn’t see the whole board. I didn’t know her endgame.
Money.
All of it came back to money.
Money and appearance—the only two things she’d ever truly loved.
My stomach twisted. Was that how Lucy got dragged into this? Did she need cash? Was her family threatened? My mother knew exactly how to manipulate desperation. She collected broken people and dusted them off like trophies.
Was the girl just another pawn?
Or had she chosen this?
Whose side was she really on—mine or my mother’s?
The question spun in my skull, sharp as a blade.
If Lucy was working with the evil woman, why fake the injections? Why whisper apologies when she thought I couldn’t hear? Why look at me like she hated herself for what she was doing?
Was it guilt?
Fear?
Or was it just one more manipulation in her endless arsenal?
I wanted to believe Lucy. God, I wanted to trust someone in this nightmare. But trust cost too much now. It was a luxury I couldn’t afford—not when the person who birthed me was the one locking me here.
The hinges clicked.
The entrance swung open.
Same sound.
Same rhythm.
Same routine.
Nurse Angela walked in—tight bun, tight smile, tighter conscience. Everything about her felt manufactured. She moved like she’d rehearsed this role a thousand times: the caring nurse, the gentle hands, the false sympathy.
She fussed over me like always, cleaning, checking, adjusting.
And like always, I wanted to fight her—break her wrists, spit in her face, kick her across the room. I wanted to rip these restraints off, and remind every person here that this padded cell didn’t define me.
But I couldn’t.
I had to let her.
Swallowing that humiliation burned hotter than any wound. Lying there helpless—soiled, sedated, wearing the damn adult diaper they forced on me—was its own brand of torture. A hell engineered specifically to break a man like me.
A vicious heat coiled tight in my gut, hot and simmering.
But I needed to stay clean.
I had to stay calm.
I had to survive.
So I kept my eyelids sealed shut, my breaths slow and steady, my face slack—as if her drugs still owned my body.
And while Nurse Angela wiped me down and changed me like I was nothing, like I wasn’t even human. I cursed her quietly in my head.
Her, her parents, her ancestors going back eighteen generations…
And every single descendant she might ever have.
I let fury flood the silence.
Because as long as the fury still burned—I wasn’t broken.
Not yet.
The entry slid open again—lighter footsteps this time, crisp and tentative.
Her perfume hit first, that sharp floral scent she drowned herself in.
Even now, even in this padded box, it felt suffocating, curling down my throat like poison.
Then came a second set of footsteps, softer, hesitant, unmistakably hers—my fiancée.
Every instinct screamed at me to look. To sit up. To demand answers—to everything twisting through my mind like barbed wire. To scream at both of them for what they’d done, what they were planning to do.
But I didn’t move.
My gut screamed at me to stay still.
Not yet.
Not until I understood the full scope of this. Not until I knew who my enemy was… and who wasn’t.
If the evil bitch believed the drugs still had me under—still docile, her obedient little puppet—she’d let her guard down. She always did. She thrived on power and power made her arrogant. Careless.
And I needed that. I relied on her carelessness like oxygen.
If I could just get Lucy alone… I could pry the truth out of her. She knew more—truth, she wasn’t sharing. Something in her eyes had shifted these last few days, some quiet desperation she tried to hide from my mother.
She held the key to everything.
They whispered, carefully and softly, like two snakes curled together in a basket—afraid that one wrong breath might give me away.
But I heard every single word.
“You don’t need to come every time,” she murmured. The edge of annoyance was unmistakable, even wrapped in her fake sweetness.
“He… he needs the next dose,” Lucy said, her voice thin as rice paper. Then, in the tone she saved for the matriarch of this hellhole—light, agreeable, submissive—she added, “And I know you hated needles.”
My fists tightened beneath the sheets.
“Oh, aren’t you sweet.” Her voice dripped sugar and venom at the same time. “The fat nurse can handle the needle for me. You’ve done enough. I’ll handle the rest.”
Fat nurse.
Enough.
Handle the rest.
Each phrase scraped across my nerves.
The silence that followed felt suffocating. I could almost picture the young, insecure woman by the doorway, twisting her fingers together the way she used to when she was anxious. Trying to summon a courage she didn’t have. Trying not to look at me. Or maybe too afraid to look at me.
“I just thought—”
“What you think doesn’t matter.” She snapped, every syllable sharpened to cut. “You’re lucky I kept my promise.”
Lucky.
Promise.
Each word settled in my chest like stones.
Lucy’s voice cracked when she finally spoke again. “You said you wouldn’t hurt him.”
The evil woman laughed then—a low, throaty sound I’d grown up fearing. The sound of a woman who found amusement in pain. “Hurt him? My dear, he’s already done that to himself. With that whore of his. I’m just cleaning up his mess.”
My pulse hammered so violently I thought the bed would shake with it.
She didn’t just call June a whore.
Lucy didn’t defend me. She didn’t defend June either. She didn’t even breathe.
Her silence sliced deeper than the needle ever had.
Then came the familiar rhythm—heels tapping across the tiles, a soft sigh, the rustle of expensive fabric.
“Come. We’re done here,” she announced, her tone fading as she moved toward the exit.
I opened my eyes just a sliver, blinking hard as my vision swam. The drug she’d administered—fake or real, I couldn’t tell anymore—was spreading through my bloodstream like thick cement. My limbs felt heavy, my thoughts slower, stickier.
I needed her. Lucy’s kindness was my only chance. If she stopped coming—if the old woman took full control—I’d be finished. There’d be nothing left to fight with.
Nothing left of me at all.
Then it started.
A metallic impact echoed from outside—violent, metallic. Like a steel pole slamming into a solid barrier.
Then another crash.
A series of clangs, sharp and jarring, echoing down the hallway.
Followed by pounding—brutal fists or battering tools pounding hard enough to rattle the hinges.
Someone was trying to break in.
And for the first time in days, something fierce ignited inside me—alive.
Hope.
Shouts erupted—sharp, frantic, overlapping. Then the unmistakable crash of bodies hitting walls, fists hitting flesh, boots scraping across the ground. A metal object clattered to the ground, followed by a dull, sickening thud.
And then… A crack.
A gunshot?
Or just the pounding in my skull, loud enough to drown out the world?
Each inhale grew heavier, slower, trying to wrench me back into full consciousness, to fight through the fog flooding my veins. Instinct roared awake—live, move, survive—but the haze was thickening, dragging me deeper, smothering me from the inside out.
Every inhale dragged slower, thicker, like I was inhaling mud. My limbs tingled with numbness, my eyelids trembling under the weight of the sedative. I fought to keep them open, even a sliver—anything to see what was happening.
Footsteps.
At first, just one pair—quick, purposeful.
Then another.
Then three.
Then too many to count.
Their echoes ricocheted through the padded walls, distorting into a confusing rhythm that made it impossible to tell who was coming—or from where they were coming.
Murmurs drifted in, urgent and low. The scuff of shoes. The sound of someone breathing too fast. Somewhere close, metal clicked—something being cocked, or unlocked, or armed.
I tried to speak, but my tongue lay useless in my mouth, thick as stone. No sound came out.
A shadow leaned over me, blocking the fractured light from the flickering ceiling fixture. The face blurred, swimming in and out of focus. The outline of a jaw, a sweep of hair, a silhouette that could’ve been anyone.
For a second, I swore it was her.
The way she hovered, hesitant.
The softness in posture.
Or maybe I was hallucinating again—another dream stitched from desperation and fear.
A palm pressed lightly to my shoulder—gentle, steady, grounding. Not hostile. Not rough. But firm enough to tell me: stay down.
Before I could decipher who that touch belonged to… chaos detonated.
A brutal impact—wood splintering inward.
A guttural shout ripped through the room.
Then a scream—raw, piercing, jagged enough to slice straight through the drugged fog in my skull.
Everything blurred.
My vision fractured into shards of brightness and gloom.
The room tilted.
The sounds collided.
And just when I fought hardest to surface… everything collapsed into shadow.
A thick, merciless void that swallowed everything whole.
I woke to brightness.
Sunlight.