Kiara
Three weeks earlier
I open my eyes, not sure what time or day it is, and look to the side, at the wooden table next to my bed, counting the little lines I tried to dig into the soft wood with my nails. Six lines.
My gaze lifts to one of the small windows, catching its bright light. It should be day seven.
Reaching for the nightstand, the chain pulls tight before I can get there, so I rattle it a little, loosening it around the metal hold, just enough to reach the wood. My thumbnail sinks into the soft surface, slicing into it, leaving line number seven.
A deep breath escapes me as I sit up on the bed, counting my possibilities like every morning.
Nat takes me to the toilet twice a day. There is no way to escape on the way to the toilet, not even a window.
My hands are tied in handcuffs all the time, so whatever weapon I take, I won’t be able to use it properly unless it’s a gun.
One of the men I caught a glimpse of always wears his gun strapped to his thigh.
That’s easy to reach. I could get to him somehow. Maybe.
I try to take in most of the surroundings on the way in and out of the toilet, but there is just a long hall with sconces, and one huge door to some library or office, where I spared a look at the guy with the reachable gun.
But whenever I see a man, he’s always surrounded by a couple more. It’s pointless.
I need to work on Natalya more.
It always comes down to the same thing. If I ask about Kasien, it’s empty. Only a glimpse of pain before some switch inside her head turns it off.
And when I ask about Adrien, it gets fucking crazy. Either it’s the high-pitched screaming that has practically drilled a hole into my head at this point, or she’s trying to rip her hair out until she can’t breathe anymore and throws something instead.
I earned another dose of midazolam from Lucien after her last tantrum. It ruined my day count. I was so confused and disoriented I could’ve slept for two days. I need to do something before they get here. Before they get killed because of me.
Leaning back against the headboard, I think, trying to suppress the urge to cry. I can’t fucking cry anymore.
I need to think.
Nat is visiting me all the time, but she’s always wearing just black leggings or some tight black coveralls, looking like an assassin but without any weapons on her. If she ever wears any, she takes them off before she visits me.
My gaze falls to my feet. The cuts from the sharp stones are already healed. The little blood stains are still on the sheet. My feet are a bit dirty and I fucking reek of sweat.
Lucien really doesn’t seem very interested in me.
He lets me rot here. Whatever his evil plan is, he probably didn’t expect I will stay here this long.
My wrists got so red and raw from the handcuffs that Natalya took a blue ribbon and curled it around the metal of the handcuffs so it wouldn’t scratch me anymore.
She acts like she wants to take care of me but at the same time she looks like she has no idea what she’s doing.
All of this feels like I was meant to be bait, just quick collateral damage. But instead, I’ve been here for a week. A hostage in the hands of a psychotic couple.
I close my eyes and see the images haunting me since I woke up in this prison.
Kasien’s body, soaked with water, blood pouring from his forehead, his eyes fighting to stay open, his body trying to get up but failing over and over.
The thoughts I try to fight every minute of my days here creep in again.
What if he’s dead. What if they didn’t make it.
The pain shoots to my chest so violently I cry out loud, not fighting the sobs since there’s no point. The chain rattles again as I catch the tears in my hands.
?
Natalya is sitting on the other side of the bed, her legs crossed in front of her, bowl of grapes in her hand. She takes one grape in her fingers and throws it up, trying to catch it with her mouth.
I just can’t take my eyes off her. She looks so fragile, pale, and sick. Her bleached hair is long and thick, falling around her thin body, wrapped in tight black clothing. Despite that, she still has that magnetic beauty—the foxy green eyes and the hint of mischief she carried everywhere she went.
“How long have you been here, Nat?”
She gives me that confused empty look, like a doll who was just turned off, waiting for someone to open her head and change the music cassette.
“I’m not sure.” She suddenly shrugs and pays attention to her grapes.
“Months? Years?” I try to pry it out, slowly.
“Does it matter?” She throws another grape into her mouth, giving me an unbothered look.
“It does. Do you remember anything before you got here?”
The freeze again. She remembers something.
“Tell me, Nat. You can trust me.”
I’m starting to sound like a child psychiatrist.
“Well, I know I was in some hospital,” she eventually says, unbothered.
“What? Hospital? Were you injured?”
“No, I don’t mean this type of hospital. It was like a hospital but for your head,” she explains with her hands, circling a finger by her temple.
She’s so utterly lost. It doesn’t make any sense. Adrien said they have someone keeping an eye on her. How is she here?
“You mean psych ward?”
“I think so. But it sounds too dramatic. I’m not a psycho.” She huffs and rolls her eyes.
Yeah, you’re totally fine.
I try to ignore the bile rising in my throat as I slowly unfold this mystery of Natalya and bite in the olive bread she gave me for dinner.
“Nat, I really need to clean myself up.”
“Oh my God, you’re right. I’m so sorry!” She squeals like there’s a new adventure in front of us. Then she hops off the bed and goes to unlock the end of the chain trailing from my hands.
“Let’s go.” She throws a handful of grapes to her mouth before we head out of the room.
The familiar hallway swallows us as we walk through and the smell of expensive perfume and cigarette smoke fills my nose.
This time she takes me through that big office, thankfully it’s not full of men this time. I quickly scan the surroundings as I finally see some new room. There’s another huge door in it, probably leading to the center of the building, some lobby, judging by the muffled voices coming out of there.
It sounds like five men at least.
Painful realization hits my chest—I’m never getting out of here.
We get into a huge bathroom, white and clean, equipped with tons of stuff and filled with beautiful, expensive scent. Natalya locks the door behind us and sits up on the bathroom counter, dangling her feet in the air.
I leave the dress on since the shower is apparently too luxurious for doors, and I step under the showerhead, trying to turn the water on with my hands clipped together and the long chain screeching against the floor. The hot water finally falls on my head and I close my eyes in sensation.
After a few seconds, I finally feel like a person, like I’m worth fighting for my life. I’m not rotten and stinky anymore.
I squeeze the shampoo pumper and lift my hands to my head, but the handcuffs are dangling around me together with that heavy chain, making it hard to actually wash my head.
Natalya jumps off the sink, heading toward me while she takes off her top and slides down her bottoms, leaving herself only in black lingerie.
I stop mid-movement.
Her body is firm, seemingly trained, beautiful, but skinny and bruised. My eyes sting with tears as I see the bruises covering her porcelain skin.
She steps in the shower and locks her body behind mine.
I freeze.
This feels a bit strange.
“Let me help,” she whispers to me and pumps her hands full of shampoo, then she rubs it on my head, gently and nicely so that I almost want to close my eyes.
But then I instantly freeze and realize again how weird this is.
She helps me wash my hair, the water running over both of us when she slides her hands down to my waist and turns me around.
My dress is soaked and stuck to my body and the last bubbles of shampoo run down my skin. She stands in front of me, just a few inches from my face. She’s a bit taller than me, long white strands of hair stuck to her wet body, and her eyes flicker around my face. Suddenly they lock on my eyes.
“You have those brown puppy eyes,” she whispers.
She tilts her head, looking at me like she’s remembering something, like she’s daydreaming.
I get lost in her eyes too, since they are the same as her brother’s. My chest burns with pain, longing for him, praying for him for too many days now. My brows furrow to suppress the painful sobs in my chest.
Her both hands cup my face under the water current and her lips get so close to mine I can almost feel them touching. I close my eyes in reflex when she starts whispering again.
“Do you miss him?”
I shoot my eyes open and frantically look for hers. Her pupils flicker between my mouth and my eyes, but for the first time since I’m here, I feel like they’re not empty.
My heart starts hammering so loud in my chest she can probably feel it.
“Who?” I whisper back, praying for whatever just happened in her head to not end yet.
“My brother,” she whispers so quietly I’m not even sure she said it. But she did.
Oh my God.
I inhale a shaky breath.
“Yes, yes! I do. I miss him, Nat.”
She smiles and tilts her head.
“I miss him too.”
Her eyes falter, like she’s savoring some memory for a second.
“Kasien? You remember him, right?” I ask gently, wanting to hear it out of her mouth.
Like it’s supposed to give me hope he’s alive. My body starts to tremble with hope. The corner of her mouth tugs a little.
“Adrien,” she breathes out.
I can’t stop myself from breathing out a happy laugh.
She’s there. She’s still there. I can save her.
Her lips suddenly sink into mine, gently savoring my mouth, as if she’s just tasting me, and waves of something warm and unsteady run through my body.
“We can miss them together,” she mumbles into my mouth.
The words coming out of her mouth are soft and dreamy, like someone talking in their sleep.
I just stand there, letting the water cover us, hiding us from the world and letting her taste me. I start to kiss her back unintentionally and my hands shoot to her body, gripping her waist clumsily since I’m still handcuffed.
Her lips are soft, trembling against mine, tasting like water and something strangely sweet. My whole body tightens. Not because I don’t want it, but because there is too much happening at once. Too much pain, too much fear, too much grief, too much loneliness.
And she feels all of it. I can tell.
Her fingers slide into my wet hair, not seductive, but desperate. Searching. Like she’s trying to glue herself to something familiar.
I gasp into her mouth.
“Nat—”
She kisses me deeper. And for a second, a single, horrible second, my brain tricks me. Her eyes. Her skin. Her hands gripping the back of my neck. The way she breathes against my lips. It feels like him. Like Kasien. Like both of them and none of them.
Her mouth moves against mine with a hungry, aching need and my knees quiver. My cuffed wrists pull helplessly at the metal between us.
“Nat—please—”
I push a little, just enough for her lips to hover over mine instead of being fully there and her eyes snap open. Kasien’s green, but empty and full at the same time, like two different people are looking at me from inside her skull.
“I miss him,” she whispers, breath trembling across my mouth. “And when I look at you, I feel something. I don’t know what it is. It feels like him.”
My chest hurts, violently, not only for Kasien now, but for all of them.
“Nat, this isn’t—”
“Don’t ruin it.”
Her voice turns sharp. Not angry, but terrified.
She presses her forehead against mine, eyes squeezing shut. She tilts her head like she’s listening to music only she can hear. Her smile widens, unsteady, trembling at the edges.
“I don’t know,” she says brightly. “I forget things all the time.”
And that’s it.
The moment is gone.
Any flicker I thought I saw evaporates like steam.
Before I can speak, she leans forward and kisses me again.
But the kiss is wrong. It’s not intimate, not searching for passion or clarity, it’s almost mechanical.
Like she’s repeating something she was taught, a programmed gesture with no understanding behind it.
Her lips are soft but her mind is somewhere else entirely.
“Wait Nat, stop,” I mumble between her kisses and she finally pulls away, studying my face.
“You remember them,” I say a little louder.
Her eyes widen, like I just tore her out of some moment.
“Who?”
“Adrien,” I say quietly, my voice shaking.
Her face breaks into something dark, like some agonizing pain just hit her.
"They’re dead,” she breathes out and falls to the shower floor, gripping her hair like a maniac. I quickly kneel down in front of her, trying to hold her hands in mine.
“No, Nat. They’re not.”
“Stop. I know they are. Make it stop.” She sobs and cries out loud.
“Nat, listen to me.” I try to take her face in my palms and lift her up, but she’s shaking with sobs and keeps pressing her head down to the shower wall.
“Make it stop. MAKE IT STOP!”
Natalya’s scream ricochets off the tiles, sharp enough to slice through my skull. I drop lower, but she thrashes violently, her wet skin slipping through my fingers.
“Nat, look at me—please—”
She can’t. She’s not even here. Her whole body convulses with sobs, her forehead pressed to the cold shower wall, fingers clawing at her temple as if she’s trying to dig the memories out with her bare hands. Black tears run down her face.
“They’re dead,” she cries more, voice cracking and raw. “MAKE IT STOP—MAKE IT STOP—MAKE IT—”
My chest tightens until I can’t breathe.
The warm shower spray turns colder, like the entire room is exhaling around us.
I try to lift her, but she slips, collapsing deeper into herself, shaking so violently the cuffs on my wrists rattle from how hard I’m trying to hold her.
I keep trying to cup her face and make her look at me so I can explain but she’s fighting me.
Then my fingers graze something on her skin, on her temple. Her skin is so soft and delicate under the water but there is suddenly something wrong. I run my fingers through her hair to move them and see it.
Oh my God.
A faint mark, not even coin size but it is there, I can feel it. The skin is dark red there, on her temple. I quickly shoot my other hand on the other side, on the second temple. It’s there. The same thing.
A violent gasp escapes me when I realize the terrifying truth and I have to cover my mouth to catch the sobs.
And then, a sound freezes us both. A slow, deliberate knock on the bathroom door.
Nat’s scream dies instantly in her throat, cut off like someone yanked a cord inside her. She goes rigid, hands dropping from her head. Her breath stops. Her eyes go blank.
A soft voice slips through the door, smooth and cold as marble.
“Angel? Is everything okay there? Come out already.”