CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Nora
Pain woke me before I opened my eyes. At first, it was only a dull ache somewhere in my body. Then it became sharper, spreading through my arm, which made breathing difficult. I tried to move, but my body felt heavy and weak, as if I’d been asleep for a very long time.
I opened my eyes slowly. The light above me was dim and blurry. I could see a cracked ceiling and rough walls around me, but I didn’t understand where I was. My head hurt, and the room spun for a moment.
I closed my eyes again and took a slow breath. When I opened them, the room became clearer. I was lying on a narrow mattress covered with a thin blanket. The air smelled of dust and damp wood. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling, giving off a weak yellow glow.
This wasn’t my apartment. This wasn’t Liam’s house.
Damn, where the hell am I?
I looked down at my arm and saw a thick bandage wrapped around it. The bandage was tied roughly, and small spots of blood had soaked through the cloth. My arm throbbed with pain every time my heart beat.
Someone had stopped the bleeding, but they hadn’t taken me to a hospital. I tried to sit up, and a wave of dizziness washed over me. I held onto the edge of the mattress until the room stopped spinning.
Then the memories came rushing back.
My mother lying on the floor. Victor Hale standing in the doorway, gun in his hand. The loud gunshot, the sharp pain in my arm. I covered my mouth with my good hand as the truth hit me. Victor had shot me. He’d hurt my mother. He’d taken me.
I wasn’t safe. I looked around the room quickly, searching for a way out. The walls were rough and unfinished, and the floor was covered with dust. A small window sat high above me, too small for me to climb through. The only door was made of heavy metal.
Damn, I was trapped. I’d come to my old house thinking I could protect my mother and face my past on my own. Instead, I’d walked straight into Victor’s trap.
I felt someone watching me before I turned my head. The feeling crawled across my skin, cold and heavy, and made my stomach twist with fear. Slowly, I looked toward the corner of the room.
Victor Hale was sitting there. He was leaning back in a chair as if he had all the time in the world.
His hands rested calmly on his knees, and his face showed no anger, no surprise, and no guilt.
He was simply watching me. His eyes were cold as he looked at me the same way he always had, as though I belonged to him.
“Finally awake,” he said. His voice was calm. That shit frightened me more than if he’d shouted.
I tried to move away from him, but the pain in my arm made me gasp. I pressed my back against the wall beside the mattress, keeping as much distance between us as I could.
“Where’s my mother?” I asked, my voice shaking.
He didn’t answer immediately. He studied me for a moment, then gave a small shrug.
“She’s alive,” he said. “For now. And if you want to keep her that way, it’s your choice.”
The words made my chest tighten. “What did you do to her?”
“I did what I had to do,” he replied. “You forced my hand when you ran away all those years ago.”
I stared at him, unable to believe how calmly he spoke about ruining people’s lives.
“You shot me,” I whispered.
“Yes,” he said, as if admitting something unimportant. “And I stopped the bleeding. You should be grateful.”
A wave of disgust rose inside me.
Victor leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees. “You think you escaped me, Nora,” he said. “You took my money and disappeared, and you thought that was the end of it. But money isn’t something you steal and forget. You owe me a debt.”
I shook my head. “I took that money so I could survive.”
“You took what belonged to me,” he said. “And I’ve spent years waiting for the right moment to collect your debt.”
“What are you talking about?”
Victor smiled, but there was no warmth in it. Fear spread through me like ice.
“I’m talking about value,” he said. “You owe me more than money now. You owe me for the years I spent searching for you, for the trouble you caused, and for the humiliation of being stolen from.”
My hands trembled. “What do you want from me?”
His eyes hardened. “To sell you. To recoup the amount you stole and pay for the other damages you caused. There are people who will pay very well for someone like you.”
For a second, I couldn’t breathe. The room seemed to close in around me, and the weak yellow light suddenly felt too small, too far away. I looked at Victor Hale and finally understood the truth.
He didn’t see me as his stepdaughter. He didn’t even see me as a person. He saw me as property. I was just like a piece of furniture, something he believed he owned.
Fear filled my chest, but after a while it changed into something harder. I was still terrified of Victor Hale. My arm still hurt badly, and my body felt weak from blood loss and exhaustion. But I knew one thing clearly: if I gave up now, I would never leave this place alive.
I forced myself to breathe slowly and look around the room again. The small window was too high and too narrow for me to climb through, especially with my injured arm, so that was out of the question. The metal door looked heavy, and I could already tell it was locked from the outside.
Victor watched me carefully, as if he could see every thought moving through my mind. “You should rest,” he said. “You’ill need your strength.”
I didn’t answer him. I kept my eyes on the room, counting the steps from the mattress to the door, noticing the broken wooden crate in the corner and the loose nail sticking out of one of its boards.
He stood up slowly. “Don’t make this difficult, Nora.” He walked to the door and opened it. Before leaving, he looked back at me one last time. “I know what you’re thinking. You can’t escape,” he said quietly.
Then he stepped outside. I heard him speak to someone in the hallway. “Keep watch,” he ordered. “If she tries to leave, shoot her.”
The door slammed shut, and the lock clicked into place. For a moment, I sat perfectly still, listening to the footsteps outside. A man moved back and forth near the door, his boots scraping against the floor. He was close enough that I could hear him clear his throat.
I waited until Victor’s footsteps faded away.
Then I stood up carefully. Pain shot through my arm, and I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out. I crossed the room slowly and reached for the window, but it was too high. I tried to pull myself up with my good arm, and the effort made my vision blur.
I know I thought it was impossible to get through a few moments ago, but desperation made me try it anyway. People who said there was no harm in trying must be crazy. The pain throbbing my arm told me there was plenty of harm in it.
I let go and dropped back down. Next, I searched the room for anything I could use. The wooden crate was cracked, and one of the pieces had splintered into a sharp edge. I picked it up carefully, testing its weight in my hand.
It wasn’t much, but it was something. I slipped the piece of wood beneath the mattress, where Victor wouldn’t see it immediately. Then I pressed my ear against the door.
I could hear two men talking in low voices somewhere down the hallway. I couldn’t understand every word, but I heard Victor’s name, the sound of laughter, and the scrape of chairs being moved.
I stepped back from the door and looked around the room one more time.
I knew escape would be difficult, maybe impossible while my arm was injured, but I refused to surrender to hopelessness.
So I sat back down on the mattress, the sharp piece of wood hidden nearby, and waited for the smallest opening.
Because when that moment came, I was going to survive. I sat on the mattress with my injured arm pressed against my chest, trying to keep my breathing steady.
The bandage wrapped around my arm felt rough against my skin, and every small movement reminded me that I was weak and completely at Victor Hale’s mercy.
The hallway outside had been quiet for several minutes except for the guard moving back and forth beyond the door.
His footsteps were slow and steady, and the sound had become almost familiar in the awful silence of the building.
I kept my eyes fixed on the metal door, listening without allowing myself to hope for anything.
Then the building shook. The force of it made the walls tremble, and dust drifted from the ceiling in a thin gray cloud. A violent crash echoed down the hallway, followed by shouting so sudden and loud that I jumped up from the mattress.
For a moment, I couldn’t understand what was happening. Another crash came, closer this time, and the quiet building exploded into chaos. Men shouted over one another, footsteps pounded across the floor, and the sharp sound of gunfire cracked through the air.
“Move!” someone shouted.
“Cover the back entrance!” another voice yelled.
“Don’t let them inside!” The words were filled with panic.
My heart thumped against my ribs as I pressed myself against the wall, listening to the violence rushing closer.
The gunshots came again, controlled and precise, not wild or careless.
Whoever was attacking the building knew exactly what they were doing.
I heard the guard outside my door curse loudly.
His footsteps, which had been slow and steady only moments before, suddenly became frantic as he ran down the hallway toward the noise.
I pressed my back against the wall and listened, my heart beating so hard that it drowned out every other sound for a second.
Another gunshot exploded, closer than the ones before. The sharp crack echoed through the building, followed by shouting that was too loud and too close. I couldn’t understand every word, but I heard enough to know that Victor Hale’s men were no longer in control.
“Fall back!” someone shouted.
“Get to the back!” another voice yelled.
A heavy crash shook the floor beneath me, and the lightbulb above my head swung wildly. Dust drifted through the air, making my eyes sting. I covered my mouth with my good hand and tried to breathe through the fear rising in my chest.
The building sounded as if it was being torn apart. Doors slammed open and furniture scraped across the floor. Men ran past the room. I heard one of them curse loudly, but another burst of gunfire cut him off before he could finish.
“Where’s Hale?” a voice demanded.
“I don’t know!” another man shouted back.
The words sent a shock through me. Whoever had entered the building was searching for Victor.
A door was kicked open somewhere nearby, and the crash made me jump. The gunfire came again, closer than before, controlled and precise, nothing like the wild panic of Victor’s men. I heard footsteps rushing past my door, then stopping suddenly.
For one terrible second, I thought the handle would turn and Victor would drag me away.
But the footsteps moved on. The shouting grew louder. The building trembled again, and somewhere below me glass shattered across the floor. I closed my eyes and held my breath, listening to the chaos closing in on me from every direction.
The fear that had been crushing me since I woke up in this place began to change into something sharper, something painful and impossible to ignore.
The gunfire grew louder, echoing through the building in sharp, terrifying bursts that made the walls tremble around me.
I stayed close to the door, my good hand pressed against the cold metal while my injured arm throbbed with every heartbeat.
The pain was constant, but I barely noticed it now.
Every sound outside the room held my full attention.
“Get him out of here!” someone yelled.
“Hold the stairwell!” another voice shouted back.
The words were followed by a series of rapid gunshots, then the heavy crash of something large falling to the floor. The footsteps outside my door stopped.
My breath caught in my throat. For a second, the hallway went unnaturally quiet, as if everyone on the other side was holding their breath, too. I stared at the handle, waiting for it to turn, but nothing happened. Then a new voice cut through the silence.
“Clear the rooms!” The command was deep, controlled, and familiar enough to make my chest tighten painfully. I pressed my ear harder against the door, afraid to breathe.
More footsteps rushed down the hallway, moving with purpose instead of panic. Doors were kicked open one after another, and men shouted brief reports.
“Empty! Clear! Move to the next one!”
My heart pounded so hard that I thought it might burst from my chest.
The voice came again, closer this time. “Find Victor Hale. Don’t let him leave this building.”
I knew that voice. Even through the chaos, even through the fear and the ringing in my ears, I knew it.
Liam.
The realization hit me with such force that my knees nearly gave out beneath me. I covered my mouth with my hand to keep from crying out, tears burning suddenly behind my eyes.
Liam had found me. He was here. The fear that had been suffocating me all night collided with a painful surge of relief, so strong that it almost hurt more than my injured arm.
I’d spent hours believing I was alone, believing Victor Hale had finally won, and now Liam’s voice was only a few feet away.
But then a gunshot exploded directly outside my door. I jumped back as someone slammed against the wall in the hallway, followed by a curse.