Chapter 9 Violet
VIOLET
The thin mattress smells like sweat, mildew, and blood that's gone stiff.
And Matt… whose arm is dead weight across my ribs.
Even in whatever passes for sleep in this place, his fingers stay twisted into my shirt like he's afraid the floor will take me if he lets go.
Like I'll just dissolve into the concrete and that'll be that, one less thing for him to keep alive in hell.
I don't sleep. Not really.
You'd think all this time on concrete would just knock a person out cold. Like at some point the body throws up its hands and says fine, you win, I'm done, and shuts everything off. You'd be so wrong.
My body's forgotten how to turn off by now. Now it just runs, processing every creak, every boot-fall, every distant clang against the three-hour rotation I've memorized the way I memorized the bus schedule back home.
Welcome to hell. The orientation packet is nonexistent, and the HR department is worse.
Matt's breathing is shallow but steady against the back of my neck, his nose whistling slightly on the exhale when the door bangs open.
Matt's arm goes rigid, pulling me into him as every muscle locks in a full-body flinch he can't hide. Squeezing his hand, I peel his fingers away gently, one at a time, loosening his grip.
"Up," the guard barks in a bored tone.
Matt sits, his back blocking my view of the door, which I'm sure is intentional. He always does it. Puts himself between me and whatever comes. Guards grab him under both arms and haul him to standing. His knees buckle for a second before he catches himself.
Looking back at me over his shoulder, as they drag him out he mouths, "survive."
The door clangs shut behind them and I cannot stop thinking about the way he looked at me, like it was the last time he was going to see me.
Sitting up, I pull my knees to my chest, the mattress shifting beneath me. I'm using that word generously for a two-inch slab of foam that wouldn't pass quality control at a dog shelter.
Somewhere in her cell, Elena is silent.
Part of me wants to call out to her. Part of me knows better. It's the wrong time to draw attention to her. Maybe she's still planning her escape, or maybe she already made it out.
I press my forehead to my knees.
Please let her plan work.
A set of footsteps startles me, my head snapping up at the sound. A single pair of boots.
Not the usual two-man rotation. Just one set, unhurried, with that heavy-heeled rhythm I've memorized the way you memorize the sound of a car backfiring in Southie. Not because you want to, but because your survival depends on it.
My back hits the wall before I'm consciously moving.
It's him.
My hands start to shake as he approaches, making me feel for every woman who's ever been watched too long in a bar, on a subway, across a parking lot at night.
Except my version has keys to my cell and the backing of an organization that sells women by the pound, and the game he's been playing for the past few days just hit its expiration date.
No second guard. No clipboard. No clinical excuse for why I'm being dragged somewhere. Just him. His key. And the look in his eyes that says someone finally gave him permission.
He steps inside. Closes the door.
Locks it.
The key.
Every nerve I have left fires at once.
"Your reservation's been canceled," he says slowly, savoring every word as if he's rehearsed them. "Boss says you're fair game now."
His hands move to his belt buckle.
I'm already on my feet.
Here's the thing about three weeks of barely eating, of stale bread, and drinking only water Elena warned me about, of layered bruises and broken sleep and every calorie your body had to burn just to keep the lights on inside—there's nothing left in the tank. But there's also nothing left to lose.
The switch flips.
I've had it my whole life, this switch, this ugly, hard-wired thing.
It flipped when I was thirteen with those scissors.
It flipped the night Danny's parole officer showed up and everything went sideways.
It doesn't ask. It doesn't consult. It just says no in a language older than words, and then your body's already moving.
I drive the heel of my palm into his nose. Cartilage grinds but doesn't break, not enough left in me. The guard grabs my arm, twists it hard enough that white sparks up to my shoulder.
I sink my teeth into the meat of his hand. Deep. Past skin, into something that shouldn't be in my mouth. Copper floods my mouth, hot and wrong, as he howls, ripping his hand back, a chunk of him staying between my teeth. I spit it at his feet.
Then I scream.
Not for help, there's no help here, never has been, but because the sound tears out of me anyway, because my body has decided this is what it's doing.
Three weeks of not screaming have apparently filled some reservoir I didn't know I had, and now it's going all at once, ripping up through my wrecked throat until it turns ragged and wet and not quite human anymore.
He's got a hundred pounds on me easy. He's bigger, stronger, fed and rested while I've been running on stale bread and Matt's butchered Shakespeare.
I fight him anyway.
What choice do I have?
He slams me down, concrete biting into my shoulder blades through what's left of my shirt. One hand pins both my wrists above my head. Easy, so easy, like I'm nothing. The other rips at fabric, and what's left of my shirt gives way like tissue paper.
I keep thrashing. Keep kicking. What comes out of my throat isn't really a scream anymore, but I keep making it anyway.
And my brain, my stupid, stubborn, architectural-restoration brain that cannot stop cataloguing things even when the building is actively on fire, does what it always does when the structure fails. It focuses on the stupidest possible details.
His left bootlace is frayed. Just the one, the right one looks brand new. One.
There's a nicotine stain on his index knuckle. Two-pack minimum, maybe three. Two.
Overhead bulb flickering every four seconds. Exactly four. I've counted it a thousand times from this floor.
Three.
The walls are cracked but standing. I'm still here. I'm surviv—
He shoves the skirt up and forces a leg between mine, his belt buckle biting into my thigh as the cold air hits skin that shouldn't be exposed. His breath is hot on my neck, sour, and the belt buckle digs into my thigh like a brand. Still half-undone. Still telling me exactly what comes next.
Four seconds. Flicker. Four seconds. Flicker. Four...
The world explodes.
Not metaphorically. Not my world came crashing down the way people say it when their boyfriend forgets their birthday, or their flight gets canceled.
The actual, physical, concrete-and-rebar world detonates.
A concussive explosion so massive it doesn't register as sound but as pressure, a fist of air slamming my eardrums flat.
My teeth rattle, as dust rains from the ceiling in a gray curtain.
The bulb swings wildly on its cord, strobing light-dark-light-dark.
The guard on top of me freezes, just as there's a second blast. This one closer. Bigger.
My eardrums ring as muffled sounds of gunfire reach us. Rhythmic and controlled. Professional.
The guard's head snaps toward the door, his weight shifting, as his hand goes loose for one heartbeat. One heartbeat is all I need to drive my knee into his groin with every scrap of strength my legs have left.
He makes a wet, choking noise that folds him sideways off me as his hands release my wrists.
I scramble backward on torn palms and raw elbows, not standing because standing takes too long, just away, just as far from him as possible. My spine hits the far wall, my shirt torn to strips, doing nothing to shield me from the cold of a concrete wall. I welcome the cold.
The cold means I'm still here. Surviving.
My ears pop back into the here and now as the sound of gunfire gets louder. Whoever this is, they're close.
The guard gets up, takes one menacing look my way, and draws his gun aiming it at my chest. Good, whatever death will be better than whatever he's got in store for me.
But then he cocks his head when sharp Italian voices cut through the space and lowers his gun.
Whatever they're saying sounds like commands. Call and response.
Is this salvation? Is this a faster way to die? I genuinely cannot tell.
The guard swears under his nose, turns to run out of my cell as I press harder into the wall, just as another bang cuts through the space and the metal door I thought of as the exit doesn't open.
It's ripped off. Metal screams against concrete as it swings inward, landing several feet away.
Men in tactical gear flood through the gap. Weapons up.
They sweep the floor in seconds, disarming the guard who started running away before he even had a chance to blink.
And behind them.
The man in the doorway is covered in blood. Face, hands, the body armor over what used to be a black shirt. All slick and dark, catching the swinging bulb's light in wet streaks. He's taller than I remember. Or maybe everything else has gotten smaller. Probably both.
I don't recognize him at first.
Not because he looks different. Although he does, god, he does.
But because for weeks I've been building him into a memory so polished and far away that he stopped being a person and became a concept.
A smell I tried to reconstruct from nothing.
A voice I played on repeat until the tape wore out.
Something that lived in dreams and not in actual reality.
Except here he is.
In actual reality.
His eyes are wrong. That cold, bottomless brown I know, the color I fell into and couldn't find the way back.
It's cracked open. Something unchained stares out from behind the face I memorized.
Whatever leash he kept on the thing behind those eyes has snapped, and what's left isn't pretending to be civilized.
His gaze finds me.