Chapter 3 #4
Both dead now. Car accident the summer I went to work for Hewes. And I was about to join them, except there'd be no grave, no funeral, no one to mourn me properly. Just a body in a cell on a prison planet no one cared about.
Sebastian's face. Six years old, crying in my arms after Dad's funeral. "You won't leave us too, right? Promise you won't leave." And I'd promised. I'd sworn I'd always be there.
I was breaking that promise. I'd come to this hellhole and accomplished nothing except getting myself killed.
The guards were still dragging me forward—I felt the movement, felt my boots scraping against the metal floor—but I couldn't see where we were going. Couldn't see anything except that shrinking point of light and the darkness rushing in to swallow it.
Part of me was screaming to fight. To twist free, to run, to claw at their eyes, to do something except let them drag me to whatever horror waited in that cell.
But the rest of me—the larger part, the part that was winning—was frozen. Paralyzed. My muscles wouldn't respond to commands. My legs moved only because the guards were hauling me forward, not because I was walking.
I'm going to die here.
Like Hewes said. Worthless.
No.
The word formed somewhere deep in my soul, somewhere beneath the panic and terror and animal fear that was trying to consume me. A small, hard kernel of rage that refused to be swallowed.
No.
I wasn't worthless. I wasn't nothing. I'd survived Hewes's manipulation. I'd survived the journey to this hellhole of a planet, survived Hewes's fists and Persico's assessment and the horror of learning I was going to be given away like property.
I would survive that too.
The thought didn't stop the panic, didn't slow my heart or steady my hands or even out my breathing. But it gave me something to hold onto, something solid in the chaos of my fracturing mind.
The fighting pits.
My brain latched onto it, problem-solving even as terror flooded my system. Persico had said I'd be the prize for the next champion. Which meant there would be fights. Which meant there would be competitors. Which meant—
Which meant Hewes might come to watch.
He'd want to see what happened to me. Of course he would. He'd want to watch me be given to whatever monster won, would want to see me broken and defeated and destroyed. It was exactly the kind of cruelty he'd enjoy.
And if he came to watch...
If he came to watch, I'd have another chance.
The panic was still there, still clawing at my insides. But beneath it, growing stronger with every step the guards dragged me forward, was something else. Something cold and sharp and murderous.
Determination.
Because Declan Hewes was walking away right now, disappearing into the shadows of Persico's fortress, thinking he'd won. Thinking I was finished, worthless, no longer a threat.
He was wrong.
The guards shoved me through a doorway, and I stumbled, my legs finally remembering how to work. The holding cell was small, dark, reeking of despair and old violence. The door slammed shut behind me with a finality that made my stomach lurch.
I stood there in the darkness, my whole body trembling, my breath still coming too fast, my heart still hammering like it was trying to escape my body. The panic threatened to pull me under, to drown me in terror and hopelessness.
I pressed my back against the cold metal wall and slid down until I was sitting on the filthy floor. Wrapped my arms around my knees. Tasted blood and swallowed it down. Felt the ache of bruises and welcomed it, because pain meant I was still alive.
I forced my breathing to slow. Counted each inhalation, each exhalation, until the rhythm became mechanical.
Automatic. Until I could separate myself from the terror, could observe it from a distance like it belonged to someone else.
Someone weaker. Someone who still believed she could come back from this unchanged.
That woman was gone.
I felt her dying in the darkness of this cell—the Merrilee who'd believed in redemption, who'd thought killing Hewes would somehow cleanse her, would let her return to Earth and slip back into the life she'd lost. That version of me had been naive.
Stupid. She'd thought you could wade through blood and come out clean on the other side.
You couldn't.
I was accepting something fundamental about myself, something that made my stomach turn even as I embraced it.
I was becoming capable of murder. Not in self-defense.
Not in the heat of passion. But cold, calculated, premeditated murder.
Somehow, someway, I would hunt Hewes through this hellhole of a city, and when I found him, I would kill him with my bare hands if I had to.
I would watch the light leave his eyes and feel nothing but satisfaction.
The thought should have horrified me. Maybe once it would have.
Now it just felt true.
The trembling in my hands was slowing. The panic was receding, not gone but contained, locked away where it couldn't interfere with what needed to be done.
Something else was taking its place—something cold and sharp and utterly without mercy.
I felt it settling into my bones like ice, hardening me from the inside out.
I thought about Ana and Sebastian, safe now, free. I'd come here thinking I was doing this for them—to earn my way back to them, to be worthy of seeing them again.
But that wasn't why anymore.
I was doing this because Declan Hewes had stolen years of my life. He'd broken something in me that would never be whole again, and if I was going to carry that weight for the rest of my life, then he was going to pay for putting it there.
Even if killing him added another weight. Even if it made me into something my siblings wouldn't recognize.
I wasn't seeking redemption anymore.
I was seeking vengeance.
Hewes thought I was finished. Thought I was worthless.
I'd show him exactly how wrong he was.
Even if it killed me.