Chapter 4 #2
But his eyes are wrong. Flat. Empty. The eyes of a man who stopped seeing women as people a long time ago.
"Good," he says, looking at me with the clinical interest of a collector examining a new specimen. "You're awake. We can begin."
Nadia moves. Instinct, not strategy. She lunges, gets three steps before Josiah's hand shoots out and catches her by the throat.
The crack is small, just a forearm against her windpipe, but Nadia drops like her strings were cut. She gasps, clawing at her neck, and Josiah steps over her without looking down.
"That," he says conversationally, "is what happens when you don't follow the rules."
Sometimes Lattimer would come with him. He’s the man in charge.
He's not what I expected either. He's handsome, wearing a tailored suit designed specifically for his sculpted muscles.
Middle-aged with thick dark hair styled to perfection.
The kind of man you'd pass on the street and think his woman must be lucky.
"Syvannah." Dr. Chen's voice cuts through. I'm shaking, hands fisted so tight my nails draw blood from my palms. The office swims into focus. Beige walls, that stupid beach print, the box of tissues I'm suddenly clutching.
"Breathe," she says. "You're here. You're safe. Just breathe."
I try. Air scrapes through my throat like glass.
"You were in the motel room," Dr. Chen prompts gently. "What do you remember next?"
I can't speak yet. My body's still there, chained to a wall, Nadia whispering survival strategies, Exleigh crying softly in the dark.
"Time stopped meaning anything," I finally manage. "I don't know how long we were there. Days? Weeks? It all blurred together. He kept us separated most of the time. Brought us food, water, and kept us alive. But every time he came into that room…"
My voice breaks.
"Take your time," Dr. Chen says.
"He had rules," I continue, forcing the words out.
"If we followed them, he was almost kind.
If we broke them…" I swallow hard. "Nadia tried to fight back every time he tried to take me or Exleigh.
He broke her arm so casually, like he was snapping a pencil.
After that, we learned. We became whatever he needed us to be to survive. "
"That's not weakness," Dr. Chen says firmly. "That's a survival strategy."
"It felt like weakness."
"Weakness would have been giving up. You didn't."
The nights were the worst.
He'd come into the room after dark, and we'd play his sick game of Russian roulette. One of us. Sometimes two. Never all three at once. He liked to make us listen while he hurt the others.
I can still hear Exleigh's muffled screams through the thin wall. Still feel the phantom grip of his hands. Still taste the copper fear when it was my turn.
This is the trick I learned. You can't stop what's happening. But you can go somewhere else.
I counted the cracks in the concrete ceiling. One, two, three, four. There was a water stain shaped like a bird. Or maybe a hand. I decided it was a bird. Birds can fly away.
I recited song lyrics in my head. Anything to drown out the sound of his breathing, his voice, the things he said that were somehow worse than what he did.
When he touched me, I wasn't there. I was flying with the water-stain bird, far away from the basement where monsters lived.
But I always came back. That's the part they don't tell you about dissociation. You can leave, but you always have to come back. And when you do, your body remembers everything your mind tried to hide.
"How did you get out?" Dr. Chen asks.
"The Royal Bastards," I breathe. "Red, their tech guy, he tracked us somehow. They raided the place. I remember hearing engines, shouting, and gunfire. Then Tiny was there, cutting the chains, wrapping me in his cut because I had no clothes left."
"How did that feel?"
"Unreal," I admit. "Like a hallucination. I kept thinking I'd wake up and still be in the motel room. But Tiny kept talking to me, kept telling me I was safe, and eventually," My voice cracks. "Eventually, I believed him."
"And then Lattimer took you again." The name alone makes my stomach turn to ice.
Lattimer was different than Josiah. Josiah was a predator of opportunity. A monster who snatched women off the street and kept them like pets.
Lattimer was calculated. Professional. He didn't just want to hurt us, he wanted to use us. To make a point.
"He took me from the compound," I say, the memory still sharp enough to cut. "I thought I was safe there. Thought the gates and the brothers and the security would be enough. But someone," I choke on the name. "Someone helped him. Lured me out with some bullshit excuse, and then."
The smell comes first. Metal, bleach, and old fear. The kind that never leaves your skin. It was a motel once. Or maybe a slaughterhouse before that. Cracked tile flooring, peeling floral wallpaper, and a single bulb swinging overhead, painting everything in yellow light.
He made sure I could see the door. That was the worst part. Freedom right at my fingertips, but not mine to take.
Lattimer doesn’t raise his voice the way Josiah did. He doesn’t need to. His tone stays level, almost conversational, like he’s explaining a concept rather than dismantling a person. That quiet certainty is worse than shouting ever could be.
When he reaches for me, I flinch, but he only brushes a strand of hair behind my ear, gentle in a way that makes my skin crawl because tenderness shouldn’t exist in a room like this.
"Do you understand now?" he asks, crouching in front of me like he's about to have a heart-to-heart.
My wrists are zip-tied to the headboard, skin split where the plastic digs in.
My head is spinning from whatever he made me inhale hours ago.
Something sweet that turned the world to static.
My clothes are ripped off and tossed somewhere in this room.
There's a cut on my temple, blood dried into my hair. I can't tell if it's day or night.
Lattimer reaches out, and I flinch, but he just tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. Gentle. Almost tender.
That's when I know I'm in real danger. Josiah's violence was impulsive, reactive. Lattimer's is considered. Every move is deliberate, designed to maximize psychological damage.
"I gave you a taste of what happens when the Royal Bastards get involved in things that aren't theirs." His eyes meet mine, and I see nothing in them. No rage. No lust. Just cold, clinical purpose.
My throat burns when I whisper, “You think this scares them?”
“No,” he says, and that single syllable vibrates with certainty. “It’s not about scaring them, sweetheart. Fear fades, pain doesn’t.”
He pulls out his phone, records me under that flickering light like I’m just another lesson he’s teaching someone. “Tell them, Syvannah,” he says. “Tell them who did this.”
I glare up at him. “They’ll kill you.”
His smile widens, gentle and amused. “If they could have, they would have by now.”
He turns off the recording, pockets the phone, then grabs my chin. His fingers are cool, steady, the control in them more terrifying than violence. I flinch.
“I want you to remember every second,” he murmurs. “The smell, the pain, the fear. And when you close your eyes at night, I want you to see me there. Because I’ll still be watching.”
He traces the edge of the knife along the tie and cuts it with a flick of his knife. For half a heartbeat, I think he’s letting me go. Relief flashes and dies. The knife doesn’t leave his hand.
His voice lowers, steady and cold. “Let’s make sure you don’t forget.”
The world narrows to sounds. The slow drag of his boots, the whip of his belt, the sound of flesh against flesh, the sharp hiss of my own breath. Then everything shatters.
I remember the smell first. Metal and sweat. Then silence. My body shuts down to survive, doing what it has to.
When I come back to myself, the bulb is still flickering. The taste of blood is sharp on my tongue. Lattimer’s shadow stretches across the floor like it owns the room. He wipes his hands, calm again, composed, like he just finished a transaction, not a beating.
He watches me for a long moment, calm again, composed, the predator who’s already finished feeding.
When Lattimer finally speaks, his voice is quiet enough that I almost miss it. “Now,” he says, “you’ll never forget what happens when the Royal Bastards forget their place.”
He walks away, the echo of his boots dull against the warped tile. The door slams, and for a few seconds, I just stare at the wall, blank and silent. Then everything catches up at once, the shaking, the taste of copper, the urge to disappear.
I drag myself upright. My knees won’t hold, so I crawl. The floor burns my palms. The flickering light hums overhead, steady and cruel.
In the corner, a small mirror hangs cracked above the sink.
When I see my reflection, I stop breathing.
My face is swollen with bruises around my eyes, which are too wide, my lip is split open, and my cheekbone is bleeding.
My skin is unnaturally pale, with blood on my neck.
I reach for the tap, turn it, and rinse until the water turns pink, then clears.
Outside, an engine idles steadily, patient and certain. I know without looking that he’s still there, waiting for me to walk out exactly as he planned.
I wrap a sheet around myself and stumble through the door. The hallway stinks of cigarettes and dust. The exit sign buzzes overhead. Every step feels like walking through water.
The desert air hits like a slap when I step outside. The car is parked where he said it would be, with the keys in the ignition and the driver's side door open. There’s a note on the seat in his neat handwriting:
Tell them I’m coming.
I close my eyes. The wind shifts, carrying the smell of exhaust and fear. And in that moment, I understand exactly what the reason is.
"You're another stray he'll abandon," he said. "Just another broken thing Tiny picks up and discards when he gets bored."