Chapter 19
SYVANNAH
Time behaves strangely in this hellhole. It stretches thin in some moments and crushes inward in others, folding fear into the smallest spaces. The concrete floor steals heat from my body. The lights flicker overhead, casting trembling shadows across rows of cages.
Peanut curls against me, her small body warm beneath my hands, her purr steady, a fragile heartbeat fighting to stay alive in a place meant to destroy everything soft.
Around us, the other women hover between sleep and panic, drifting into nightmares only to claw their way back out. My own thoughts feel like they’re made of static and broken glass.
Peanut lifts her head, her whole body going rigid, ears pivoting sharply. She senses something.
Slow, measured, confident footsteps echo our way. The door at the far end unlocks with a deliberate click that slides down my spine like ice.
Lattimer enters.
The shelter seems to bend around him, shrinking to make room for the weight of his presence.
His suit is immaculate, his posture relaxed, as if he’s walking into a board meeting instead of a room full of terrified captives.
His fingertips drag lightly across the chain-link as he passes cages, and every metallic tap rings like a countdown.
He stops when he reaches mine.
“Oh, Syvannah Blake,” he says, crouching. “You were always my favorite escape story.”
I refuse to lean back. I refuse to give him anything.
“You’re stronger than you look,” he continues. “You always were. But strength doesn’t matter when you’re leverage. And that’s what you are now. Leverage, not a person. Just pressure for someone else’s breaking point.”
Peanut growls, tiny but fierce.
Lattimer’s smile widens. “Yes. Him. Tiny. The gentle giant who collects broken things and calls them home.”
My breath stumbles. Lattimer sees it and pounces. “He didn’t save you the first time,” he says softly. “He didn’t even know you existed. And now? Now he has to choose. Brothers or you. The club or leverage.”
“That’s not who he is,” I whisper.
“Oh, but it is. When this place starts to collapse, and bullets start flying, he will save the people who built him. Not the girl who wandered into his arms too late.”
Peanut presses closer, as if shielding me.
Lattimer rises. “You escaped me once. Not again.” He leaves with a slow swing of the door, and the metallic echo settles like dust over every woman here.
A choked sob breaks the quiet. “I can’t do this again,” the youngest girl whispers, trembling violently.
I shift closer, voice steady even though fear digs its claws into my ribs. “You’re breathing. That means you’re still fighting. And we fight together.”
She tries to inhale. Fails. Tries again.
“Follow me,” I say softly, inhaling. “In… two… three… four. Hold” Exhale. “Out… two… three… four.”
More women join, their breaths gradually sync with mine until the jagged panic threading through the cages begins to ease. A fragile, steady rhythm settles over us.
The floor trembles beneath us. Slightly at first, making me think my heartbeat is misfiring.
At first, it’s subtle, then it deepens, rolling through the concrete in a slow, deliberate wave. Peanut’s ears snap forward, and her little body goes tense as the tremor gathers strength, shifting from a distant hum to something alive, something approaching.
The women feel it too. Their eyes widen as they lift their heads. The breath we fought so hard to control stutters as the vibration grows, steady and powerful, echoing through the metal cages like a heartbeat returning to a corpse.
Peanut rises higher in my lap, tail puffed, gaze locked on the doorway as if she’s waiting for the world to split open.
My heart slams into my throat.
The girl across from me gasps, “Is that?”
“Yes,” I whisper, tears stabbing the back of my eyes. “He’s here.”
And then the world erupts.
Gunfire cracks through the shelter like lightning, splitting open the ceiling. Sparks burst from overhead wiring. The women scream, dropping low as bullets chew into concrete and ricochet off metal bars. Smoke pours into the room, thick and acrid.
I throw myself over Peanut, instinct pulling me flat to the floor. A round snaps through the lock of my cage, metal shrieking as it shears apart. The door jerks inward, hanging crooked on one hinge.
For a single stunned heartbeat, I stare. Shock rooting me in place, but survival hits faster.
Everything inside me lunges forward. I shove the door open, using my shoulder to force it wide enough to crawl through. Jagged metal slices my arm, but the pain barely registers. Every second counts.
“Help me, please!” the girl in the next cage cries, reaching through the bars.
I push to her side, gripping the warped lock. The frame is bent from gunfire, loose enough that I can brace my foot and tear the weakened metal. It groans, resists, then snaps with a sharp metallic crack. She collapses into my arms, sobbing, shaking so hard I can feel her bones rattle.
“It’s okay, move with me,” I tell her, steady even as adrenaline floods my veins. “We’re getting out.”
Gunfire erupts again, closer this time. Heavy rounds are shaking dust from the beams overhead. Bullets chew into the walls, sending showers of debris across the cages.
“Don’t leave us!” another woman screams.
“I’m not,” I promise, crawling to her lock. “Stay low, keep your head down.”
The lock is rusted, but desperation gives me strength I didn’t know I had. I wedge my fingers inside the gap, ignoring the burn as metal scrapes my knuckles raw, and yank until the latch breaks free. She crawls out, clutching my shirt like a lifeline.
Smoke thickens around us as the building groans from the impact of bullets and bodies colliding somewhere beyond the corridor.
A window explodes high in the wall above us, glass raining down in glittering shards.
They patter across my shoulders and arms, cutting through skin with a sting that barely slows me.
I guide the first woman forward. “Follow the wall. Crawl if you have to.”
The others move in a trembling line behind me as I break open one cage after another, sometimes with brute force, sometimes with desperate leverage. Each freed woman crawls forward, another body moving toward the door.
The hallway ahead is chaos. Sirens wailing in the distance, the thud of boots running, the metallic clang of men crashing into each other. Smoke swirls through the beams of emergency lights flickering overhead. The air tastes like metal and burning wires, every breath scraping my throat raw.
“Go!” I shout. “Stay under the gunfire, keep moving!”
I scoop Peanut under my shirt and crawl into the hall. Glass slices into my knees and palms with each movement, hot little bursts of pain across my skin. My hand slips in blood, and I hit the ground hard before forcing myself forward again. The floor shakes beneath me.
Then a roar breaks through the storm. A voice not near, but not far, shouts through the gunfire. “TINY! She’s not here!”
Boots pound against the concrete.
Another voice answers, deeper, rawer, one I've heard in nightmares and daydreams and all the moments in between. “WHERE THE FUCK IS SHE?!”
My breath catches. My elbows buckle, dropping me against the broken floor. Tears sting my eyes, not fear, but overwhelming, aching relief.
And then, my name echoes through the air. “SYVANNAH!” Tiny’s voice crashes through the hallway like a promise.
Gunfire answers him, bullets tearing into the walls.
I crawl faster, ignoring the glass embedding in my skin. My lungs burn, my vision blurs, but Tiny’s voice draws me like a lifeline through the smoke.
“BABY GIRL!” he roars, the words loud enough to shake something loose inside me. “HOLD ON! I’M COMING!”
I choke on a sob, hauling myself toward the faint rectangle of light at the far end of the corridor. The exit, the world outside, the place where engines scream and war waits for me.
“I’m here,” I gasp, voice breaking. “Tiny… I’m right here.”
I push to my feet, almost falling again, but I catch myself on the wall, dragging my body toward the chaos, toward the roar of the RBMC tearing this place apart.
Toward him.