Chapter 23
JENNA
My body pulls me from unconsciousness like surfacing from deep water. Everything aches—my head throbs, my muscles feel leaden, but it’s the soreness between my thighs that makes me gasp.
Sharp. Specific. Used.
I’m naked.
The stickiness on my inner thighs tells the story my unconscious mind missed. I clench involuntarily and feel more of his cum leak from me, warm and thick.
He did it.
He did exactly what I asked him to do.
I lie there for a long moment, eyes still closed, taking inventory of myself. Sore. Marked. Full of him in the most literal way possible. He didn’t half-ass it. He took me thoroughly and left evidence of every minute of it on my body.
And the woman who asked for that is still in me somewhere. I can feel her under the fog of the sedative. She’s not sorry. She would do it again.
That’s the part I have to live with. Not what he did. What I’d do.
The other part of me, the part that survived my stepfather’s basement, the part that spent three years installing extra locks and tape-strips on every window I ever owned, that part is shaking.
Because what damage does a woman have to be carrying to put herself unconscious in a kidnapper’s hands and mean it?
Both of those women are me. I don’t get to be only one of them.
I sit up, taking in my surroundings through the drug-induced fog.
This isn’t the same concrete cell. The room is larger, maybe twelve by fifteen feet.
Walls painted a soft gray. An actual bed with a frame and decent mattress instead of that institutional cot.
A small table. A chair. A bookshelf with actual books.
But the door is steel. Still no handle on this side. Still a prison, it’s just a prettier one.
The lock mechanism clicks, and I scramble backward on the bed, pulling the thin sheet around myself. My heart hammers against my ribs as Nikolai enters, still wearing that bone-white mask. His eyes find mine immediately, and I see satisfaction there. Possession.
I knew he’d move me. He told me he would sedate me for transport before the needle went in.
I’m not surprised to wake up somewhere new.
I half-expected the same cell again. What I didn’t expect was the bookshelf.
The real mattress. The chair. A room that someone furnished for a person they intend to keep for a while.
“Where are we?” My voice comes out hoarse.
“Wisconsin,” he says. He doesn’t move from the doorway. “My compound. Forty-seven miles from the nearest town.”
Forty-seven miles. Far enough that running means a lesson in survival skills. He didn’t just move me—he moved me somewhere the geography is an extra failsafe if I get past the locks.
I take inventory of myself instead of panicking. Sore. Marked. Full of him. All of it I asked for. I hold onto that. It’s the one part of this I chose, and I’m not going to let him see me flinch from my own choice.
“Okay,” I say. “What now?”
He studies me, like my calm surprises him.
“Now I start your conditioning.”
“Conditioning?” I ask.
“Training. Preparation. Breaking you down and building you back up into what you need to be.”
My blood turns to ice. “Are you going to sell me?”
His jaw clenches behind the mask, the first crack in his controlled demeanor. “That remains to be seen.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means you’ll do what you’re told and see where your compliance takes you.”
I laugh because the audacity of this man is breathtaking.
“Let me get this straight.” I sit up, the sheet falling to my waist, too angry to care. “I asked you to take me unconscious. But conditioning? A month of breaking me down? That wasn’t in the deal, Nikolai.”
“I didn’t think you’d agree to it.”
“Of course I wouldn’t agree to it! That’s how consent works—the parts I didn’t say yes to are the parts you don’t get.”
His jaw works behind the mask. “That’s not how this works. Not here.”
I grab the water glass off the nightstand and throw it at his head.
He catches it and sets it on the table without looking away from me.
So I go for him with my body instead.
I launch off the bed before my brain finishes the decision. Sheet forgotten. Naked and shaking with rage, going for his throat with both hands like I’m clawing my way out of a grave.
He catches me midair. One arm around my waist, the other locking both my wrists in a single grip that should be impossible. He pivots my momentum and pins me against the wall beside the door, my back to the concrete, his body a column of restraint against mine.
“Better,” he murmurs into my hair. “But you’re not going to win this one either.”
I bare my teeth at him. “I don’t need to win it. I just need you to know I’m still in this fight.”
“I never doubted it.”
He holds me there for a long beat, letting me feel how outmatched I am physically. Then he releases me carefully, like he’s handling something both precious and dangerous, and steps back.
“Sit down, Jenna.”
I don’t sit, but I don’t lunge again either. We’ve established what we needed to establish.
“You gave me one thing,” I say, my voice shaking with a fury that’s clean and welcome after the fog.
“One. And you’re going to use it as a doorway to take ten more.
Fine. Don’t you dare stand there and call it my compliance.
Call it what it is. You’re going to try to break me, and I’m going to make you work for every inch. ”
“You’re right,” he says.
“I know I’m right.”
“That doesn’t change what happens next.”
“It might,” I retort.
We hold the look for another beat. Then my legs remember they’ve been holding me up since I came off the wall, and the adrenaline crash hits like a dropped weight.
I move back to the bed, not because he told me to, but because if I’m going to keep doing this, I need to do it sitting down.
I pull the sheet back around myself. Armor I can’t afford to pretend I don’t need.
He watches me settle and doesn’t comment. He’s giving me the small mercies because he knows the big ones aren’t coming.
I bark out a harsh laugh. “Not sure any buyer will want damaged goods if you’ve already bred me.”
His eyes narrow to slits. “You think that frightens me—you, round with my child.” Something dark moves behind his eyes. “It’s the opposite of a deterrent.”
“And if I’m not pregnant?”
“Then we keep trying until you are.”
“You’re insane if you think I’m going to cooperate with any of this.”
He moves to the foot of the bed. Even with the sheet, I feel exposed under his gaze.
“You don’t have a choice in whether you cooperate. You only get to choose how much you suffer in the process.” His voice drops, becoming almost gentle. “I remember how responsive you were before. How beautifully you submitted when you stopped fighting yourself.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
I don’t have an answer that doesn’t make me sound pathetic.
“It just was.”
“The conditioning will help with that confusion. Clear away all the unnecessary thoughts and feelings. Make everything simpler.”
“You mean it’ll turn me into a zombie.”
“It’ll turn you into what you need to be to survive what comes next.” He pauses. “What you were always going to become anyway.”
“And what’s that?”
“Mine.”
The single word hangs between us, heavy with promise and threat. I hate that it sends a shiver through me, hate that some twisted part of me wants to believe him.
“Your property, you mean.”
“If that’s how you need to think of it.”
I study his masked face, looking for any hint of the man who held me tenderly after sex, who whispered my name like a prayer. But all I see is cold calculation.
“Why keep me at all? Why not just ship me off to whatever sick fuck wants to buy me now?”
His hands flex at his sides. “Because you’re special.”
“Special how? Because I killed a few people?”
“Because you became a predator.” He steps closer. “Because when you glimpsed my world, you used it to become dangerous instead of running away. Because you understand violence in a way most people never will.”
“So?” I ask.
“So that makes you valuable. To me and to others.”
I wrap the sheet tighter around myself, armor against his words and the heat they kindle.
“What if I refuse to be conditioned? What if I fight you every step of the way?”
“Then the conditioning will take longer and hurt more. But it will happen.” His voice carries absolute certainty. “I’ve broken stronger people than you.”
“People like yourself?”
For just a moment, his controlled facade slips. I catch a glimpse of damage before the mask reasserts itself.
“Careful, Jenna. You’re not in a position to psychoanalyze me.”
“Hit a nerve?” I ask.
“Keep pushing, and you’ll find out exactly how much nerve you’ve hit.”
But I see the truth now—he’s as broken as I am. Maybe more so. And that knowledge feels like the first real weapon I’ve had since waking up in this prettier prison.
“What happens if the conditioning doesn’t take? If I can’t be broken the way you want?”
“Everyone breaks eventually. It’s a matter of finding the right pressure points.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
His eyes glitter behind the mask. “Then I keep you anyway.”
The words should terrify me. Instead, they send heat spiraling through my core, and I hate myself for it. Hate that even now, even after everything he’s done, part of me wants to belong to him.
“You’re sick.”
“We both are.” He moves toward the door. “Breakfast will be delivered in an hour. Eat it all. You’ll need your strength for what comes next.”
“Wait.” The word escapes before I can stop it.
He pauses, hand on the door. “Yes?”
“The mask.” I swallow hard. “Why won’t you take it off?”
“Because without it, I might make a mistake. And we both know how that worked out last time.”
Then he’s gone, leaving me alone with the echo of his words and the knowledge that whatever humanity I glimpsed in him before has been locked away behind the mask.
I touch my belly, wondering if his seed is already taking root. Wondering if I want it to be.
And hating myself for not knowing the answer.