Chapter 11
Chapter eleven
JUDE GRAVES
The hotel door opens and light spills in, and I’m vaguely aware of the hands under my arms. My body doesn’t cooperate. It just hangs like dead weight. I’m dimly surprised I’m still breathing.
“Jude! Oh my god!” Adriana’s voice reaches me. It’s genuinely panicked.
The men don’t answer her or even look in her direction.
They carry me three more steps and then drop me.
I hit the floor hard, air blasting out of my lungs in a wet, broken sound.
Pain flares everywhere at once, but it’s distant, like all of this shit just happened to someone else. Boots turn, and the door closes.
Gone.
“Jesus Christ,” Adriana sobs. She’s on her knees, hands hovering, afraid to touch but touching anyway. Her fingers skim my ribs, and I hiss. She recoils. “Oh my god, you’re covered in blood.”
My eyes won’t stay open. The room swims in and out of focus. I catch flashes—her face wrecked with fear, mascara streaking, hair half-fallen from its golden clip.
“What did they do to you?” she whispers, horrified. “Your arm—Jude, it looks like it’s been fucking butchered.”
A sound crawls out of my chest. It might be a laugh. It might be a cry. I don’t know anymore.
Footsteps thunder in from the hall.
“What the hell is going on—” Nolan freezes mid-sentence. The color drains from his face when he sees me. “This is…Jesus,” he mutters. “This is the worst I’ve ever seen him.”
Of course it is, you motherfucker.
You sold my life away to a man who knows no kindness. Or warmth. He will fucking kill me the moment I don’t do what he says. Or he’ll hurt...her.
Adriana brushes my hair back from my face with shaking fingers. My skin is on fire, and I feel like I’m soaked in sweat. Her touch is too much and not enough all at once. “I’m here,” she keeps saying, like a mantra. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
Black creeps into the edges of my vision.
Nolan’s phone dings, stupidly loud in the quiet room.
He looks at it and swallows. “It’s Alexei,” he says.
Adriana looks up sharply.
“He says Jude’s been dosed,” he says, voice flat. “That he needs to rest. He’ll be in contact soon about his next job.” A pause. “And…a meeting. Between Alexei and one of my partners in the States, it seems.”
My stomach twists weakly at the word job.
Adriana huffs. “He’s going to kill you,” she sobs. “You know that, right? He’s just using you. He’ll take everything. Your contacts, your partnerships...and then he’ll kill you.”
“Stop,” Nolan snaps.
“And then he’ll sell me to that fucking Vlad guy,” she shrieks, terror lacing every word. “You saw how that fucker looked at me, Nolan. You don’t understand. You’re nothing compared to him.”
His expression shifts, unease flickering for just a flash before it’s gone. “I don’t need to hear this right now,” he says.
My eyes flutter, tears leaking out. I can’t stop them.
My body shakes in small, broken tremors as it remembers the trauma it was just put through for god knows how long.
I reach for Adriana without thinking. My mind immediately forces the memory of my overdose forward from a few weeks ago. When I was reaching for someone else.
She gasps and immediately gathers me up, pulling my head into her lap. Her hands cradle my skull, pressing my face against her stomach. She rocks slightly, smoothing my hair back again and again. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. You’re safe here.”
Safe.
The word barely means anything anymore. I can’t help but sob against her. The dose Alexei gave me keeps me floating just above the pain in my body.
Nolan watches us. He clears his throat. “Well,” he says awkwardly, trying to sound casual. “Looks like you finally got him to like you.” He gestures toward my head in her lap.
Her body stills. Slowly, she looks up at him. Her face twists, but it’s hollow.
I squeeze my eyes shut, another sob tearing through me as the room tilts again. Nolan isn’t scared enough. Not of Alexei or what he’s done.
Not of what he’s turning me into.
I wake up slowly. Not the wild, panicked jolt I’ve learned to expect, but a heavy, drugged drag back into my body.
The blankets are warm. My head feels full, thoughts lagging a half second behind.
I blink, realizing that I’m in our bed. The afternoon sun is bright out the window, even if the curtains are drawn.
I try to move, and pain blooms along my arm.
I suck in a breath and roll my shoulder carefully, heart starting to thud harder as awareness creeps in.
I’m clean. That’s the next thing I notice.
The dried blood is gone, and I’m wearing soft clothes.
One of my pairs of sweatpants and a T-shirt. Someone changed me. Someone washed me.
My stomach turns. I lift my arm slowly, vision swimming as I bring it closer. The inside of my elbow is a mess—purple and yellow bruising blooming violently under the skin. A vein stands out like it’s been traumatized. Like someone missed and didn’t care if they did.
I swallow hard, throat tight, and let my arm drop back to the mattress. Then I feel the weight beside me. I turn my head.
Adriana is asleep on her side, facing me. Hair loose across the pillow. One hand curled near her mouth, the other resting close to my chest. She looks peaceful and normal. Like she didn’t spend years hurting me. My chest tightens painfully, and an unwanted thought slips in:
I miss when she was one of the worst things in my life.
Back then, there was a hierarchy of pain. Something I could at least measure. Something I could endure and still recognize myself afterward. Now she’s a lesser evil. The realization of that makes me feel sick.
I stare at her and try to piece it together. She must’ve cleaned me up. Nolan wouldn’t have the stomach for it. He barely looked at me when I was like that. Adriana does, though. Always has. She’s a vile human being. That hasn’t changed.
But she knows we’re all fucked.
She can’t leave. Not really. Nolan controls her money, her access, her entire life. If she walks, she has nothing. No safety net or identity outside of what he’s built around her.
In a way...she’s trapped, too.
It doesn’t absolve her. It just makes everything messier. She had power over me. Real power. And she used it. Over and over. Took what little agency I had left and fucked me in ways that were confusing and...permanent. I’ll never forget the times she disregarded me entirely for her own pleasure.
When you’re stumbling around in the dark, you grab whatever light is available. Even if your grip is too tight. Even if you don’t realize until it’s too late that you’re not holding the light—
You’re smothering it.
That's what I would have done to…her…if I had stayed in Seaside. She was my light. So instead of smothering her, I tucked myself back into the dark.
I lie there, staring at Adriana’s sleeping face, arm throbbing, body heavy with drugs and memory and shame, and wonder when exactly the line disappeared. When survival stopped looking like hope and started looking like this.
This time when I wake, it’s to darkness. The only little light flows in through the cracks of the curtains from the city below. I sigh, discovering that Adriana’s body is pressed against mine.
Her back is curved into me, and my arm is wrapped around her waist, hand resting above her hip. My fingers curl without thinking, as if my body remembers this more than my mind does. I've slept in bed with Adriana more than with anyone else…aside from Micah, maybe. I wish it wasn't the case.
I blink and let the stillness settle in.
This is wrong.
But my body doesn’t exactly protest. My chest tightens, a sharp squeeze of shame, and yet I don’t pull away. The pain in my arm doesn’t hurt as much as it did earlier, thankfully. Or maybe it’s because it’s just buried beneath a need I don’t want to admit I have. Comfort.
She shifts slightly, and the movement makes her hair brush my forearm. She murmurs something, half a word and a breath. “Jude…”
I freeze. And then, without thinking, I tug her closer. My hand tightens around her waist, and I feel the heat of her skin through the fabric of her shirt. It’s not pleasant. It’s not even really comfortable.
It’s necessary.
I press my mouth into her hair, letting the scent of the hotel shampoo fill my nose.
It’s a ridiculous comfort. And yet it works.
My body relaxes…just a little. My breathing steadies, and the tremor in my fingers eases.
The terror from earlier, the memory of Alexei’s voice, the image of the photo, the ache of knowing the woman I love could be taken and sold…
I will it all away, but am overtaken by the simple fact that Adriana is here, and I am holding her instead of that woman. I hate that I need it. I hate that my brain is so desperate for relief that it will take it from the only place available, even if that place is poisonous.
She sighs in her sleep, turning to face me. Her hand slides up and rests against my chest, like she’s trying to reach for me in the dark. I feel her breath on my neck as she tucks her head under my chin.
The sensation makes something deep inside me crack open.
My eyes sting, and I fight the urge to cry.
I don’t want to be here, lying beside this person.
No. I still want...her. But I can’t have her.
I told Micah to keep her away from me, and I trust him.
There’s nothing any of us can do. My only escape will either be prison or death.
And at this point, I'd choose the latter if I had the choice.
I pull Adriana closer again, just a little, and bury my face deeper into her hair. The moment is so quiet it feels unreal. I swallow.
There’s something deeply fucked about the comfort in this. About the way my body just accepts it. About how easy it would be to pretend this is just two people clinging together in the dark because they’re scared.
I stare into the black and let myself feel the quiet and the absence of pain for half a second. No chains. No voice in my ear telling me what I am. Just warmth and breath and the illusion of safety. After Alexei, everything else feels like safer ground.
I think about power and how it shifts and corrodes. How people hold onto whatever scraps they can reach. How easy it is to confuse survival with connection when you’re starving.