9. Start The Show
Start The Show
Summer
Igive myself sixty seconds.
Sixty seconds to sit with everything—the relief and the doubt and the grief and the decision I've just made to get up and do something with the time I have.
I count them out in my head the way Jacob taught me without meaning to—the way he'd go still in the middle of something dangerous and just wait, let the room tell him what it knew before he moved inside it.
He never told me to do that. I just watched him long enough that it became instinct.
Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. Sixty.
Alright.
Think.
The first thing I do is cross to the door.
I put my ear against it and listen—properly, the way you listen when silence is a language.
Footsteps somewhere distant, the low indistinct murmur of a voice, then nothing.
The corridor outside has hard floors—I noted that when Jackson brought me here last night—the kind that carry sound with an echo.
Anyone approaching this door would be audible from in here with enough warning to get back to the bed.
Good to know.
I test the handle. Locked, as expected. But I note the resistance of it—not a deadbolt, a key mechanism, the kind that operates from both sides. I look at the gap under the door. An inch, maybe slightly more. Enough to feel the faint current of air from the corridor beyond it.
Enough to hear things I'm not supposed to hear.
I file it and move on.
The window next. I cross to it and pull the curtain back just enough to look without being seen from below.
The grounds stretch out in pale afternoon light—the lawn running to a low stone wall at the far edge, the tree line beyond it.
Further than it seemed last night. The gate just visible as a dark shape in the distance.
Too far to run without being seen.
Too exposed between here and the wall.
I press my fingers to the glass and test the frame. It's a sash window—older than the rest of the house's aesthetic, probably original to whatever structure was here before Jackson built his statement on top of it. The lock is a simple lever mechanism. I turn it.
The window shifts, but only slightly.
There’s a clasp stopping it from opening wide enough for me to fit. But I embrace the feel of cold air before I ease it back and re-lock it.
It opens.
Not wide enough for me to climb through, but maybe with persuasion. If I find something I could use as a screwdriver…
I stand there with that fact sitting in my chest, careful not to let it become more than it is. An open window on the first floor of a guarded property with men on the roof and a gate too far away isn't an escape route. But it's a variable. A thing that exists. Something to build from.
I move to the dresser. Empty, as I already knew. But I pull each drawer out fully and check the backs of them, the undersides, the runners. I find nothing except a faint smell of pine lining and the blankness of a space that has been cleared.
Someone made sure there was nothing in this room that could be used. Which means Jackson thought about it—or had someone think about it for him—which tells me something about how long this has been planned and how much attention has been paid to the problem of keeping a woman contained in here.
He underestimated me.
I check the bathroom next—methodically, every surface, every cabinet. A bar of soap. Shampoo in a wall-mounted dispenser that can't be removed. I check the bathroom door. There's no lock on the inside.
Of course there isn't.
I look at the camera dome visible through the bedroom doorway—positioned to cover the bed and the window and most of the floor space. I step back into the bathroom and angle myself carefully, trying to calculate any blind spots between the two rooms.
I go back to the bedroom and stand in the center of it, turning slowly, then concentrate on the chair angled toward the bed. I pick it up—it’s heavier than it looks, solid wood. Too heavy for me to throw at them. I set it back down exactly as it was.
Exactly.
Because Jackson notices things. I already figured that. The way he clocks everything this—the small details are what he tracks, which means the small details are what I have to be careful with.
Put everything back exactly where it was.
I cross to the window one more time and look out at the grounds.
The guards do a perimeter walk—I clocked them through the glass last night before the lights went out, the arc of their route visible in the way the floodlights caught their shadows.
If the pattern holds, there's a gap on the north side where the tree line comes closest to the house.
Maybe thirty seconds where the angle would make it harder to see someone moving low and fast along the wall.
Maybe.
I don't know enough yet. That's the truth of it—I know more than I did an hour ago, and vastly less than I need to.
Every piece of information I've gathered this morning is a thread, not a plan.
Threads can become something. But they need time and they need more of them and they need someone patient enough to weave them together without pulling too hard and losing everything.
Be patient.
Learn the patterns. Wait until you know enough to move.
I sit back down on the edge of the bed.
My wrists ache where he grabbed me last night. My fingers pulse with the deep broken-bone throb that doesn't ever fully go away, just ebbs and surges with every heartbeat. My jaw is tender where he held it. I breathe through all of it.
In.
Out.
A sound in the corridor jolts me from my thoughts. Footsteps, and there's more than one set.
My spine straightens automatically, every thought slipping back behind the version of me Jackson believes he's creating. I let my shoulders sag. Let my gaze lose its focus. Let the fight disappear from my face while keeping every last piece of it locked somewhere he can't reach.
He wants a girl who's beginning to fold. I can be that. Until I don't have to be anymore. Because Jacob is coming, and I’m going to break free. And I refuse to accept that there’s any possibility that I remain in this hell-hole.
The door opens. Donnie walks in first like he owns the place, like this is just another room to him, just another job.
Just another woman. Another piece of meat.
Jackson follows a step behind him, laughing at something Donnie's said.
The sound is low and effortless, the kind of laugh people share over dinner or drinks, and hearing it here makes my stomach turn.
They're carrying on a conversation that started somewhere else, neither of them in any hurry to acknowledge me, neither of them changing the rhythm of it simply because they've walked into the room where I'm being kept.
Like I'm not standing here. Like I'm no more significant than the furniture.
Jackson's eyes find me eventually, lingering only for a split-second before drifting past me to the breakfast tray.
His gaze settles on the empty plate, then follows the trail into the bathroom.
I hear the bin open. A second later he reappears in the doorway, the corner of his mouth lifting as he looks back at me.
"You've got to start eating, princess." His voice is easy, almost conversational, like we're discussing the weather instead of the fact I'm trapped in his house. "Or Donnie here will feed you."
"With my cock," Donnie says with a grin that makes my stomach turn.
Jackson turns his head just enough to look at him. He doesn't smile. He doesn't laugh. He doesn't tell him to stop.
The silence stretches between them, heavy enough that I almost convince myself Jackson's about to shut him down. Instead, he looks back at me. The faint smile returns.
"And neither of us wants that."
Jackson looks back at me, whatever passed between him and Donnie lingering in the hard set of his features for only a moment before it disappears beneath that same easy composure.
"We've come to start the show."
The words don't register straight away. They hang in the air between us, too calm for what they imply, my mind refusing to attach meaning to them until it has no choice.
"No."
The word leaves me before I can stop it, brittle enough that I barely recognize my own voice.
I take an instinctive step backward until the edge of the sideboard catches the backs of my legs, the solid wood digging into me hard enough to remind me exactly where I am.
The room has already run out of places to hide.
My pulse surges, every muscle in my body screaming at me to move anyway, to fight, to do something.
My hand sweeps blindly across the polished surface behind me, fingers closing around the first thing they find.
A bottle of water that I took from the breakfast tray.
I don't think. I throw it with everything I have.
It spins through the air, missing Jackson by inches before exploding against the marble floor.
Plastic splits open on impact, water spraying across the room and racing over the polished stone in shimmering streams.
Jackson doesn't even blink.
His eyes follow the bottle to the floor before returning to me, and for the first time since he walked into the room, something unreadable settles across his face. He inclines his head once, almost lazily, as though I've merely confirmed something he'd already decided.
"Donnie." He doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't need to.
The single word has barely left his mouth before Donnie is moving, and by the time my body catches up with what's happening, he's already on me.
His hand closes around my wrist with bruising force, fingers biting into my skin as he yanks me toward him.
I stumble, catch myself for half a second, then fight with everything I have left.
I twist violently, trying to wrench free, my broken hand slamming into his back hard enough to send a blinding bolt of pain through my fingers.
It burns white-hot, stealing my breath for a heartbeat, but I hit him again anyway.
I drive my knee upward, aiming for the space between his legs, but he moves.
Not much. Just enough. My knee collides with the solid muscle of his thigh instead, the impact ricocheting back through my hip as though I've kicked a concrete wall.
"Don't make this harder than it has to be," Jackson says, his voice carrying the same detached boredom he'd use discussing the weather. As though I'm the one creating a problem. As though dragging me through this house against my will is the reasonable part of this conversation.
Donnie doesn't even seem to notice I'm fighting anymore.
One arm wraps around my waist, lifting me effortlessly off the floor until my feet are kicking uselessly at empty air.
I buck against him, twisting so hard my muscles begin to shake, clawing at his arms, shoving at his chest, throwing every ounce of strength I have into forcing even an inch of space between us.
Nothing.
He simply tightens his grip and keeps walking.
The bedroom disappears behind us. The doorway.
The corridor stretches ahead, each step carrying me farther from the only room that's felt remotely familiar since I got here.
Panic rises so quickly it presses against my ribs, my breathing turning shallow as I fight to drag enough air into my lungs to think.
Don't panic. Don't let him have that.
The words come from somewhere deeper than fear, surfacing through the chaos until they become something solid enough to hold onto.
The note. Folded into impossibly small squares. Hidden inside the tampon wrapper exactly where no one would think to look.
Jacob is coming. Jacob is coming. Jacob is coming.
I cling to the thought with everything I have.
Because right now… it's the only thing they're never going to take from me.