5. The Show #2
My stomach twists. My hand clenches on instinct, but my broken fingers refuse to obey, pain splintering through them instead.
If he gives the order, they'll come for me.
I don't let myself imagine what happens after that.
So I move, each step slower than the last, every muscle straining against the command my feet refuse to obey as I force myself across the threshold.
It's a bedroom. Or at least, it's pretending to be one.
The room stretches wider than I expect, swallowing me whole the farther I step inside.
Everything is immaculate. Too immaculate.
The bed sits beneath towering windows with the sheets pulled so tight they don't look as though anyone has ever slept in them.
The dresser against the wall is bare, stripped of anything that might suggest a life exists beyond these four walls.
No photographs. No books. No forgotten belongings. Nothing.
My gaze catches on the chair beside the bed. It isn't tucked away or carelessly abandoned. It's angled toward the mattress with deliberate precision, as though somebody placed it there to watch. A chill crawls the length of my spine.
I cross to the window because if I stop moving, I'll fall apart and I can't afford that.
Not yet. Not here. The glass is cold under my fingertips.
Outside, the grounds stretch away in darkness—manicured lawn running to a low stone wall, tree line beyond it, the shape of the gate just visible in the far distance.
Too far to run tonight. Too exposed between here and there. But I take in the layout of it. The direction the wall runs. The gap in the tree line to the right that might mean a path, or a road, or something worth knowing about.
Jackson interrupts my observations. "Take a seat." His voice lands against my chest like weight. He points to the bed.
I shake my head before I can stop myself, my body deciding before my brain catches up, backing me away from it by instinct alone.
It's barely anything. A tiny movement. But I don't miss the way one of his eyebrows slightly lifts.
Then, as if testing me, he lifts his hand, fingers poised—a single click away from summoning the men in the hall. Fear shoots through me so hard it turns my stomach.
What I want doesn't matter enough to irritate him.
My throat almost closes as my feet betray me, carrying me forward one step at a time. By the time I reach the bed, my hands are trembling badly enough that I can see it. I sit right on the edge, like that makes it less real. Like if I don't settle fully, maybe it doesn't count.
It counts.
Jackson watches me, his gaze moving over me, taking me in piece by piece without laying a hand on me. My skin prickles under it. Then he reaches into his pocket and casually pulls out his phone. My heart starts thudding harder as his thumb moves across the screen. Tap. Pause. Tap again.
A soft beep sounds somewhere in the room makes me flinch. Then a small red light begins blinking in the corner.
My breath catches.
No.
My eyes lock onto it. That tiny pulse of red, steady and indifferent, and suddenly the whole room feels different. Smaller. Closer. Like the walls have crept inward without me noticing.
Jackson lifts the phone slightly, gesturing upward.
"I can see everything that happens in this room."
My stomach drops. My gaze snaps to the ceiling, the corners, the walls. Then he gestures toward the open door across the room.
"I can see everything in there too."
I follow the direction of his nod.
The bathroom.
The full weight of it lands. Every intimate, unavoidable moment. Every second of privacy I assumed I could be granted. Gone. All of it. The tears come before I can stop them.
"You belong to me now, Summer."
Something in me cracks.
I shake my head, weak and useless. My lips part, but no sound comes out. I want to scream. I want to sink into something so deep that none of this can reach me. I want to say he can't do this—but my voice won't come.
It's gone.
All I can do is sit there shaking while every instinct I have screams at me to run, move, do something. There is nowhere to go. Nowhere that isn't him.
"Oh…" The sound drags my attention back to him whether I want it or not. "And do you want to know the best part?"
My stomach twists.
No.
I don't. I don't want another word from him. But he moves closer anyway. The mattress dips beside me as he sits, and the nearness of him sends panic shooting through me all over again. I lean away without meaning to, my body reacting before thought, but there's nowhere to go.
"It's attached to a livestream." He runs a hand through my hair, his knuckles skimming my jaw. The words hang there, suspended. “And every client will get to watch as I tear you apart piece by piece.”
“You won’t lay a fucking finger on me!” I scream. Pulling my head away fast, but he catches my hand. Pulls me closer. Looks at my broken fingers and kisses them. The corner of his mouth turning up to a smile.
"And my bet is, the sheriff is going to be the first one watching." He runs his tongue over his bottom lip, then scrapes his teeth across it. “With a click of a button, he sees you. He sees you breaking. He sees the moment you admit that you’re mine.”
Jacob.
The thought of him seeing this—seeing me like this, helpless and breaking in front of a man I can't fight my way out of—hits somewhere so deep it steals the breath from me completely.
Not just fear. Something worse. Something made entirely of him—of his face at that window, the way he ran like nothing else existed.
Seeing me like this would destroy him, and Jackson knows it—that's exactly why he's doing it.
A sob tears free, broken and helpless. My hands clench into fists as I shake my head, as if refusing it can make it less real.
"And baby…" His voice softens.
That makes it so much worse.
"…we're going to give him one hell of a show."
He just watches, with calmness radiating his features. Like this is exactly what he wanted from the moment he took me.