Fae
Consciousness returns slowly. At first, I don’t move.
I simply exist in that quiet, drifting space between sleep and waking.
My body feels warm. The mattress beneath me is so soft it sinks under my weight in a way that makes my muscles loosen.
Silk slides against my skin when I shift and the pillow cradles my head like a cloud.
I breathe in deeply, catching the faint scent of lavender instead of rust and damp concrete.
It feels… good. For the first time in weeks my body isn’t bracing for pain.
My shoulders sink deeper into the mattress, and I pull the blanket closer, enjoying the simple, quiet luxury of being warm.
I go to stretch but something bites me. It slices clean through the soft haze of sleep, dragging me out of that fragile pocket of comfort.
My body jerks awake as the reality of my situation crashes over me so fast it steals the air from my lungs and the room slams into focus all at once.
Light spills down from an enormous chandelier overhead, catching on every polished surface until the whole space glows.
The ceiling stretches high above me carved with delicate moulding that feels more like the inside of a palace than a bedroom.
Cream panelling lines the walls, broken only by tall mirrors and gilded furniture.
Everything is perfect. The kind of perfection that only exists where money flows freely.
The bed beneath me is enormous, a towering headboard upholstered in thick, padded velvet that swallows the wall behind it.
Silk sheets spill across the mattress and pool around my legs like liquid.
The contrast between where I was and where I am now is so jarring my mind struggles to reconcile it.
But none of it matters because there’s a cuff around my wrist.
I simply stare at it, my mind struggling to reconcile the cold weight of steel against my skin with the softness still wrapped around the rest of my body.
The metal catches the warm light, glinting faintly against the silk.
My gaze follows the chain slowly as it runs across the bed before disappearing into the headboard.
“No,” I whisper.
I jerk backwards on instinct and the cuff pulls at my wrist. Pain shoots up my arm as it digs into my skin and I cry out. Adrenaline floods my body like fire as I sit upright trying to untangle the silk sheets around my legs.
“Fuck,” I spit at the cuff attached to my ankle too.
The metal is a mirror image of the cuff around my wrist, and when I try to stand my legs buckle beneath me.
I take a steadying breath as my last memories force their way back in.
Fisher’s face hits me first, twisted with the same sick satisfaction he always carried as Robyn’s knife drove into him again and again.
And then the door. Standing there like salvation itself when freedom was only inches from our fingertips.
We were so fucking close.
My gaze drops to my body and confusion flickers through the panic.
The white dress is gone and my stomach revolts.
Someone changed my clothes when I was unconscious.
Someone touched me, cleaned me and then dressed me like a doll and left me here.
There isn’t a single smear of blood left on my skin.
My hand lifts to my neck and I wince when my fingers brush the tender puncture there.
“The boss,” I breathe.
Saying it sends a cold ripple through my chest before my heart begins to pound harder against my ribs.
The silence in the room suddenly feels too loud as it presses in from every polished wall and velvet surface.
My gaze drifts back to the bed, to the untouched pillows and the smooth stretch of silk beside me.
“Robyn?” I squeak out, but silence is the only thing that answers me.
“Robyn?” I call again, louder.
Still nothing.
My body breaks into a cold sweat as my eyes search the enormous bed again, then the floor, then every corner of the room as if she might suddenly appear if I just look hard enough.
The chains rattle with every step I take, but it’s almost drowned out by the frantic thud of my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.
I can’t be separated from her. I just can’t. I only just got her back.
“Robyn!” I scream and my voice echoes off the high ceiling before I collapse into a heap on the floor.
I close my eyes and force a slow breath into my lungs, reaching for the training drilled into me back at university.
Panic wastes oxygen. People think Swallows only exist to open their legs or pull a trigger when someone important wants a problem erased, but the truth is we’re trained for far more than that.
The men we are forced to deal with don’t always respect the boundaries they’re given.
Some of them try to take what isn’t offered.
Some of them try to take us. So we learn how to survive it and stay calm when fear tries to hollow you out.
I count the inhale slowly, letting the air settle deep in my chest until the violent hammering of my heart begins to ease.
One problem at a time.
My gaze drops back to the cuff around my wrist and I twist it, studying the mechanism with more attention.
It’s solid steel; the kind designed by someone who never expected it to be broken.
Brute force isn’t going to help me here.
The locking system is small and precise and the cuff around my ankle is an exact match.
The chain between them is thinner though, and when I shift my arm I notice it gives slightly more than I expected.
My mind latches onto it as a possibility, a weak link I might be able to exploit, before a dry scoff slips out of me.
Right. Because I’m definitely going to stumble across a pair of bolt cutters in a room like this.
When I pull myself cautiously off the floor, the chain drags after me with a soft scrape across the carpet.
I move slowly through the room as I test its limits.
Whoever set this up wasn’t interested in pinning me to the bed; the length gives me enough freedom to cross most of the space before it finally pulls tight around my ankle, stopping me roughly five feet from the door.
From here it looks perfectly ordinary. Dark polished wood set neatly into the panelled wall, a brass handle catching the light with a reinforced lock sitting just beneath it.
I take one more step towards it and the chain snaps taut, jerking me to a stop.
Turning away from the door, my eyes catch on an open doorway I somehow missed in my first sweep.
I follow the chain’s length as I move toward it and step into an ensuite bathroom that looks like it belongs in a luxury hotel rather than a prison.
White marble stretches across the floor and walls, veined with soft grey that glows under warm recessed lighting.
A freestanding bathtub curves near the window and a massive glass shower sits beside it, framed in gold that catches the light from another chandelier hanging above the space.
Every surface is polished so perfectly it feels sterile.
The long marble vanity is lined with neatly arranged bottles of shampoo, conditioner and body wash.
I note it’s all expensive brands that I recognise from my father’s house.
My gaze moves across the counter before a small detail stops me cold.
There’s no mirror. The empty space above the vanity feels deliberate and the wall is smooth where a reflection should be.
I stare at it as unease curls quietly in my chest. Is it to stop me seeing what I look like…
or to stop me breaking it and using the glass as a weapon?
Where the fuck am I? More importantly, where is Robyn? Is she safe? We were supposed to stay together. No matter what they did to us, no matter how bad it got. I squeeze my eyes shut as I grip the sink, trying to hold onto the last clear memory I have of her.
She was right there.
A slow, creeping guilt starts to crawl up my spine as the silence around me stretches longer.
What if I fucked this up? What if getting us out of that room only got her taken somewhere worse?
Robyn followed me. She trusted me to get us out of there alive, and now I’m awake in a bed that smells like money whilst she is somewhere else, somewhere I can’t protect her.
I step back into the bedroom, my mind already racing through possibilities when a sound reaches me.
Footsteps echo outside and my blood turns cold.
The first thing I notice is the steady rhythm of them carrying through the thick wood of the door.
The second thing I notice is how clearly I can hear them, which means whoever is on the other side of that door can probably hear me too.
My heart leaps into my throat as I count slowly to ten in my head, forcing the numbers through the sudden spike of fear.
My breath comes out in controlled pulls even though every instinct in my body is screaming at me to move, to run, to hide before whoever is walking down that corridor reaches the door.
But where would I go?
The chain around my ankle answers that question with a quiet scrape of metal across the floor.
Running would only prove one thing; that I’m afraid.
I square my shoulders, forcing myself upright as I draw in a steady breath just as the lock disengages with a soft mechanical click and the door swings open.
A tall figure steps into the room.
My heart stops.
Then hope explodes through my chest so violently it knocks the air from my lungs.
“Oh my god,” I gasp, stumbling forward as far as the chain will allow. “Thank God you’re here.”
I’m already pulling at the chain around my ankle, trying to wrench it loose before I even realise he hasn’t moved.
“You need to get me some bolt cutters,” I rush out, the words tumbling over each other. “Fisher is insane. His men took me to this place and he—”