Chapter 5 Phoenix
Phoenix
The first thing I clock when the door opens is the sound. Metal on metal, a single clack instead of the double that’s come every other time.
He’s getting sloppy. Only one bolt on the container.
The second thing I notice is his face.
Danner’s eyes don’t just look at me. They’re calculating, skimming every part of me, and I force myself to swallow bile as they rake over my mouth, my throat, my chest, and even my legs like he’s checking inventory, pausing where he wants to linger just a little longer.
I feel each hesitation like a physical thumbprint pressed into my skin. His gaze lands low and lingers on my core. He licks his lips. A hard line pushes against his zipper.
The ancient feminine part of me, the part that’s lived lives prior to this one, the one that’s suffered and kept going…she knows what’s coming.
My body knows before my brain can form the words. Every muscle pulls tight, like I’ve been cinched from the inside.
I slide my palm into my pocket and close around the screw. It’s cold. Steadying. A single point of order in a room designed to feel like chaos incarnate.
Keep it.
Use it.
Breathe.
He balances a tray on the makeshift table like this is room service and we’re in civilized society, like this is a normal day and I’m a normal girl, and he’s not about to ruin my life in a way I’ll never recover from.
A metal cup rattles against a metal plate, and I’m assaulted by the smell of stale bread and lukewarm broth.
“Good news,” he says. “We’ve come to the time of your stay when you get the rules.”
My dry lips move on autopilot. “Lucky me.” The words come out like they belong to someone else. Lighter. Someone who didn’t wake up chained inside a metal box with no real chance of fighting for freedom.
Don’t give up. Phoenix Jones never gives up.
He drags the metal chair around with a screech that sets my teeth on edge and straddles it, forearms over the back. He’s giving the performance of his life, presenting the pose of a man who thinks his comfort is the center of the universe.
His knees spread wide, inviting his fantasy into the space between us.
“Rule one,” he says, like he’s reading a manual.
It makes me sick to think that he’s done this so often that the words come out as smooth as they do.
“You talk when you’re talked to. No backtalk.
No questions. You do as you’re told. You say ‘sir,’ and you say ‘thank you’ for being allowed to live.
Save your fight for when I say you can spend it.
” He laughs like he’s told a funny joke.
“Trust me. You’re going to need it for what we have planned for you. ”
I keep my face still. Blank. Bored.
Inside, my mind is already doing the math the way Atticus would. One bolt on the door. The clamp lamp angle. Filament exposed at the very edge. The distance from where I am to the bed. The length of the chain strapped to my ankle. The weight of the screw in my hand.
Every possible tool or way out… I have to focus on those things, because the reality of Danner’s plans are traumatic and horrendous, and I can’t let him see that he’s having any effect on me.
He tips his chin at the sink and the field toilet, the whole corner a shrine to degradation. “Stay presentable. Boss likes clean.” His gaze crawls to my hair, tangled and greasy, with several days’ worth of fear and sweat caked in. “You’ll get a brush if you earn it.”
I glance at the rust-streaked basin. “Can’t wait.”
He smirks like he’s been waiting for this line. “Rule two isn’t really for you. No marks on the face. Anyone bruises you or puts something where it shows, I break their fingers. That’s my fun to have. Only mine.”
He leans in, breath stale. “Rule three.” His voice drops, dripping with intimacy he doesn’t deserve. “Nobody touches you without permission.”
The air around us thins imperceptibly. My fingers clench around the screw until the thread bites into the palm of my hand.
“Permission from me?” I keep it flat.
He laughs, pleased with himself for earning a reaction out of me. “That’s funny. You’re a funny girl. Permission from me. Or the boss.”
“Who’s the boss?”
“The Broker,” he says, watching for a flinch of recognition or fear and getting none. At least, none on the surface.
“You don’t need to worry about him,” Danner goes on.
“You probably won’t see him. And definitely not his boss.
He’s old-school, that one. Particular about what he wants, how it’s given to him, and exactly how he’ll react.
Hates a scene, and I have a feeling you’re going to be a scene-maker.
” His mouth twists like he’s quoting someone.
“You won’t have to worry about either of them if you learn fast.”
Learn fast. Like this is a job. Like I’m choosing to be here, and not forced against my will and literally chained to the fucking floor.
I hold his stare like I’m bored out of my skull because I know he hates it. Inside, I’m a wreck. My heart is pounding so hard my ribs hurt.
The little girl inside me is crying, shaking in fear, tormented by the nightmare she knows is coming. The pain I’m not going to be able to stop.
He stands, the chair feet scraping again. “Training starts now.” He crooks a finger. “Up.”
“No.”
He enjoys that. I can see the spark of pleasure in his eyes at my refusal.
“You’re gonna want to make this easy.” He closes the distance between us, pushing the chair aside with a casual kick. His hand clamps around my elbow, bruising. “I can make it hard. I think I’d almost prefer hard with you.”
I let him think he’s herding me. Two steps, then one more, my bare feet whispering against the cold floor. He grabs my wrist. I go limp enough that my body moves where he wants it, keeping my right hand angled away, the screw seated along my index finger, point forward, exactly where I need it.
He shoves me toward the bed.
That’s when I see what he’s doing.
Leather cuffs hanging from the rails—brown, thick, stitched with thread that’s fraying in spots. They’re old. Used. The leather is darkened in patches, spotted with stains that are too big and too random to be anything but what they are. Not rust. Not oil.
My skin goes cold from the inside out.
This is a system. A setup. I’m not the first girl who’s stood here with their heart hammering in their throat. Some of those stains might be from someone who never walked back out.
I swear I won’t be one of the ones who doesn’t survive.
He wants my wrists first. If he gets them, I’m done. I know that the way I know gravity. Once those cuffs close, once the buckles bite, my options collapse to zero.
“Good girl,” he says, his foul breath touching my cheek. “You learn quick, we don’t have to make a mess.”
He noses at my hair like he owns the right, dragging air over my scalp. Revulsion spikes up my spine so hard I almost shake him off by instinct. I pull the feeling down into my lungs instead, mix it with salt and rust and fear, and breathe it out slow.
He reaches for my left wrist, and I kick out with my legs, snapping as high as the chain allows, doing my level best to nail him in the junk. It’s a wild, ugly kick—no finesse, all desperation.
“Fucking bitch!”
His hand cracks across my face, open-palmed, vicious. White explodes behind my eyes. My head whips to the side. For a second the world narrows to heat and sound and the taste of iron blooming on my tongue.
I slap my hand to my cheek, feel the shape of his fingers in the forming welt. Rage flares bright, clean. It cuts through the fog.
He uses that moment. He grabs my thigh in a grip that promises bruises, fingers digging in hard enough to make my eyes water. The chain at my ankle screams as it pulls taut, biting bone.
The chain says I’m not going far. It also says he has to undo it if he wants all of me.
He has to undo it, and I have to be ready when he does.
Danner moves fast, sliding his hand down from thigh to knee to calf to ankle, claiming territory.
My skin crawls under his touch, my body trying to wriggle out of itself and away from the torment. He jerks me to the foot of the bed, my spine scraping over the thin mattress in useless protest. My head thuds against the rai, but I think I’m going into shock because I don’t feel anything.
He kneels by my foot, his foul breath puffing against my skin as he fiddles with the padlock, metal scraping metal. There’s a tiny pause as he finally slots the key, his thumb sure from practice. He’s done this before. So many times his fingers don’t hesitate or struggle to find the hole.
I’m just another in a long line of those he’s tortured and forced.
This man. This cop.
He’s someone I should be able to trust. He’s supposed to help me.
Instead…he’s going to take what isn’t his.
The cuff clicks open.
Relief rushes up my leg so fast it makes my vision gray out. The absence of pressure is dizzying. I could kick. I could run. I could—
He doesn’t give me long.
Keeping his hand wrapped around my ankle, he reaches for the leather cuff attached to the bottom rail, the one that will keep my leg where he wants it. His fingers are confident, the motion more routine than anything.
I let my body go slack, let my limbs lie heavy and limp, letting him believe he slapped the fight out of me.
I stare past him, at a rust spot on the wall the exact size of a coin. I count my breaths. One. Two. Three. I imagine the screw in my palm is a needle on a compass, pointing not north but out.
When he begins to wrap the cuff around my ankle, leather brushing skin, the buckle cold against my bone, I move.
I yank my leg back and drive the heel of my foot into his mouth with everything I have. All the terror, all the rage, all the days of waking up in metal and not knowing where pour themselves into that one strike.
The sound is meat and bone and shocked breath. A thick, ugly thud.