CHAPTER TEN
The room was swallowed in darkness.
A thick, sour stench clung to the air—the rot of something dead, long dead, and far worse than the overflowing waste bucket that festered in the corner.
I hadn’t been summoned since Hirsh’s men threw me down here.
We heard the chaos—the shouts, the slammed doors, boots that pounded hard on the floor—but then silence.
A silence so heavy it pressed against my skin like a living thing.
No one had come to check on us. Not in days. Maybe longer.
It could’ve been weeks, for all I knew.
Time doesn’t exist here.
Not without sunlight.
Not without the steady rhythm of day and night.
Without light, you forget how to measure hope. How to count anything but your own breath.
“Psst…you awake?”
A small, mousy voice whispered beside me—fragile, like it was afraid to be real.
“Yeah,” I rasped. “Unfortunately.”
Silence stretched, then she whispered, “Do you think those men will come back? What if something happened to them? What if we just…die here?”
“How the hell should I know?” I muttered. “I know as much as you do.”
She hesitated before saying what we were both thinking.
“You get pulled out more than the rest of us. You lived up there for some time.”
She wasn’t wrong—they liked me more than the others, and I didn’t know why.
Montgomery said I was important to them.
Montgomery.
That name burns through me, carved so deep it feels permanent—something no time, no distance will ever erase.
I will never see him again. The truth settles heavy and suffocating in my chest, stealing the air from my lungs.
I will never feel his hands—steady, grounding—cupping my cheek like I was something worth holding onto.
Never feel the heat of his mouth against mine, that desperate, unfiltered edge that made everything else disappear.
Those moments…they weren’t just memories. They were the only warmth I had left, something fragile I clung to when everything else felt cold and empty.
And now—
They’re gone.
Ripped away like they never belonged to me in the first place.
Like he never did.
And the worst part—
I’m still here, carrying the ghost of him, knowing there’s nothing left to hold onto but the echo.
Every time I caught my reflection in a dirty shard of the mirror, the girl that looked back didn’t feel like me.
She was a stranger I was forced to inhabit.
Too tall. Too thin. A scarecrow of a girl, all awkward limbs and brittle bones, shaped by hunger and silence. I had the body of someone who'd spent years trying to take up less space. I slouched in doorways. I tucked in my shoulders. I curled up like I could fold myself out of existence.
My skin, pale as paper, was dusted with freckles—like the sun once tried to love me and left the proof behind. They scattered across my nose, bled down my cheeks, and sometimes further—trailed the curve of my collarbone, the dip of my chest. If you looked close enough, you’d see them all.
He had.
They all had.
My eyes…they shifted depending on the light—hazel, green, gold. Chameleons. Lying eyes. Eyes that pretended they still belonged to someone human. But now they just looked empty.
Dark shadows pooled beneath them, bruised and hollow, like sleep had abandoned me completely. Like even my own reflection knew something inside me had already been taken.
Like something had been scooped out of me in my sleep.
My mouth was full and soft. Pretty. The kind men liked to press their fingers into. The kind they liked to silence.
I used to speak. Sometimes too loudly. Sometimes too much.
But now I keep it closed. Tight.
Because I’ve learned what happens when I don’t.
There’s a braid over my shoulder, loose and half-undone. The attempt was mine, but the unraveling wasn’t.
Everything about me feels like that braid.Falling apart, strand by strand.
Even when I looked whole, I was never really all together.
I was just another pretty prisoner, who waited for someone else to decide when she was useful again.
Just as the girl beside me opened her mouth to reply, the door slammed open and blinding light spilled into the room. Shouts followed, sharp and chaotic, as boots pounded against the concrete floor.
I threw my arms over my face as flashlights sliced through the dark, sharp beams tearing across the room. Voices echoed against the walls, jarring and urgent.
“In here!” a man barked.
“I don’t know—there’s at least twelve of them,” another called.
Then, a pause.
A beat of silence full of disbelief.
“What the fuck…” A deep, husky voice murmured, softer. Horrified.
I couldn’t see past the light that burned into my closed eyelids, but I felt him—a heavy presence that knelt in front of me, his voice low and careful.
“Hey there, no need to be afraid,” he said, as a gentle hand brushed against my arm. “We’re here to get you out. You’re safe now—we’re taking you with us.”
Safe.
That word didn’t sound real. It didn’t fit in this place. Not after Montgomery’s failed attempt.
Slowly, I lowered my arms, blinked against the brightness, my body curled tighter, knees pressed to my chest like they could protect what was left of me.
“Who…who are you?” I whispered.
“I’m Captain Garrett Shoomaker with the Dinah Police Department.” A pause. “Are you, by chance, Starling Pierce or know where I can find her?”
His words hit me like cold water.
Starling Pierce.
That name was a ghost. A grave.
I took a deep breath, sharp and shaky, then pressed my back harder to the wall, as if I could slip through it and disappear.
“No,” I said quietly, fiercely. “She died months ago.”
A beat passed.
“Well then,” he said gently, crouched at eye level with me, “how many girls are here with you?”
I swallowed, throat dry and aching. “Last I counted…seven. Plus those two over there.” I nodded toward the corner.
He followed my gaze, eyes narrowed. I expected him to say they were gone. I thought they were. But I’d stopped trusting my instincts long ago.
“Cap,” a voice called from behind him, “the van’s ready to move these girls when you are.”
Captain Shoomaker stood slowly, his gaze swept the dim, putrid basement where everything still reeked of rot and silence and suffering. Then his eyes met mine.
I flinched without meaning to.
His boots stopped just a few feet away. He crouched—not fast, not sudden—almost like he didn’t want to scare me.
He extended his hand.
I stared at it.
Calloused. Steady. Clean.
And most of all… real.
I didn’t move at first.
The only thing I could think about was Montgomery—the last time I reached for a hand and thought it meant safety, only to realize too late it wasn’t. I couldn’t fall into another trap.
Still my fingers hesitated in the air before I finally reached for it.
His fingers closed around mine—warm, solid, grounding. It didn’t erase the fear clawing at my ribs, but it held it back for just a moment, long enough for me to breathe.
That was enough.
He helped me to my feet without a word, without asking questions I wasn’t ready to answer. Then he nodded to the others, and we moved.
All of us.
Even the two girls I thought were long gone. Turns out they’d only been pretending—playing dead in the shadows. Just in case the men came back. Just in case there was more pain waiting. Just in case it wasn’t over.
Because it never really felt over.
We climbed into the van, and I sat near the back, close to the doors, like I needed an escape even though I had none. Captain Shoomaker took a seat across from me, silent but present.
He didn’t hover.
But every so often, he glanced at me—like he was making sure I was still breathing. Still here.
There was something in his eyes that I didn’t understand. Not pity. Not fear.
Regret.
Like he wished he could take it all away.
After a long while, his voice broke the quiet.
“There will be people to help you at the station when we get there,” he said, voice low and even. “But you don’t have to talk right away. You can talk on your own terms. Whenever you’re ready.”
I nodded once. I didn’t trust my voice.
He gave a small nod back. Like that was enough. Like I was enough.
And for the first time in a long time, I believed maybe someone out there didn’t just want to use me.
Maybe someone wanted me to live.
Days later, after countless statements were written and recorded, I was left on my own.
Endless therapy session followed—hours of sitting in silence, unsure where to begin or how to explain anything that felt too heavy to put into words.
Doctor after doctor came and went, examining, documenting, cataloging every bruise, every fracture, every scar as if turning my body into evidence.
Then came the trauma facility—walls too white, nights stretching too long, and a quiet that felt heavier than anything I had lived through before.
And eventually, I started self-defense classes—not because I believed I could fight them all off if it happened again, but because it gave me something I could control. Something I could build myself around when everything else felt like it had been taken away.
It became a way to take back my body, my breath, and my space.
That was what survival turned into.
Not clean. Not simple.
Just messy, solitary, and mine.