STRANGE, BEEPING SOUNDS surrounded me, making my head throb. Or maybe my head was already throbbing and the beeps only made it worse.
I tried to pry my eyes open, but I couldn’t. The effort made me ache everywhere, even in places I didn’t realize could hurt until that very moment. I couldn’t stop the pained sob from tearing through me.
“Try to be still,” said a familiar, deep voice. “Just breathe, okay?”
I yearned to do whatever the voice told me, but doing what I was told hadn’t ever worked out too well for me.
I couldn’t place the voice. I couldn’t make sense of the beeping or why I couldn’t move a muscle or why I couldn’t speak or open my eyes or why I didn’t know where I was.
A large hand came over the back of mine. Warm. Soothing. “You’re safe now,” he said.
I stilled. But I would never feel safe again.
There was no such thing. Safety was an illusion.
It was nothing but a lie.
I tried to tug my hand free, but I couldn’t. I jerked and thrashed, and the machines started beeping out of control, and then there were more voices, hands holding me down, pushing me against the bed, and I knew it was happening all over again.
They were going to beat me and rape me, and they’d tied me up and were holding me down, and there was nothing I could do.
I screamed, but my scream strangled and died in my throat around something that had been forced down it. Didn’t feel like a cock, but I didn’t know what it was. I wanted it out.
Or if I couldn’t get it out, I wanted to die. I wanted it all to end.
I scratched and clawed, trying to get away, but they put straps on my arms and legs and kept me trapped, and I couldn’t move at all.
Then something warm flooded through my body.
Maybe this was it.
Maybe they were going to kill me, once and for all, and I’d be done with it.
Maybe it would finally be over.
I hoped they would kill me this time. I hoped I would die. I hoped this was the end, because I couldn’t bear the thought of going through anything else.
That was the last thought that crossed my mind as I drifted off again, a fitful sleep overtaking me.
THE NEXT TIME I woke, I wondered if I was alone with all the beeping, whirring machines, because I didn’t hear any voices, couldn’t feel any hands on me.
Was this heaven?
Hell?
No, not hell. I’d already lived there. Even if I couldn’t see, couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, it wasn’t as bad as what I’d lived through.
My leg ached and I tried to shift it into a new position, but I couldn’t. The effort hurt, and I let out a pained sound. Probably a mistake, because it would alert them that I was awake.
“Try to be still,” a feminine voice said from somewhere nearby—close enough I could reach out and touch her if only I could move my arms.
I didn’t want to be still, though. I wanted to get away. I had to get away, now, while Hayes and his friends weren’t beating me.
This was my only chance.
I tugged at my restraints, jerking wildly to get free, but they wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t tell if it was because the restraints were so strong or if it was because I was so weak. I started crying, screaming in frustration, desperate to escape before they came back and started beating me some more, but it didn’t do any good, and the woman at my side tried to hold me down instead of helping me escape.
I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to pound her with my fists, to kick and claw and bite my way out of here, but the scuffling sounds of rushing feet flooded into the room, and then more hands were on me, forcing me to lie there and take it, which was apparently all I could ever do, and the warmth seeped into my veins once again.
Black nothingness claimed me.
I liked the nothingness. If anything was going to claim me, I wanted it to be this.
“DO YOU KNOW where you are?” a woman asked.
I didn’t recognize her voice, and although my eyes could crack open just a smidge, it was too painful to try to focus on anything.
I pressed them closed against the blinding light, wincing away.
The light hurt.
Everything hurt.
I didn’t want to feel anything, nothing at all, not ever again, but right now I could feel everything. Far too much of everything.
It was torture.
I wanted it to end. I wanted to die.
Why wouldn’t they let me die?
Hayes had to be behind it. He was keeping me alive. He wasn’t finished with me yet.
What would it take to be rid of him? To be free?
Probably death.
I really wanted to die.
Maybe I could use one of these beeping machines to kill myself. Maybe I could find a way to press some buttons, get too much of the drugs they kept pumping into me, overdose, and just drift away. Maybe I could rip out one of these tubes and stab myself in the heart with the needle. Would the drugs going straight into my heart kill me? It was worth a shot.
I tried to move my limbs, but nothing would budge.
How could I kill myself if they wouldn’t let me?
I screamed in frustration, but my scream was nothing but a broken, hollow, aching sound, despite the fat tears burning my eyes and tracking down my cheeks to the pillow beneath my head.
“Try to speak, Natalie,” someone else said. Another woman, but this time the voice was familiar. I recognized it but couldn’t place it.
A hand gently pressed to one of mine and squeezed, and I realized I could move my fingers. Just my fingers. I bent and straightened them a few times, slowly testing them out.
“Let me go,” I pleaded, but my voice was nothing but a harsh whisper that I couldn’t even understand myself. The act of getting those few simple words out took all the strength I had. I’d been straining, trying to get up, but now all I could do was collapse back against the bed that was my prison.
“You’re in the hospital,” the familiar voice said. “You’ve been hurt really badly, but you’re going to be okay. You’re safe now.”
That was a lie.
I wasn’t going to be okay.
And there was no such thing as safe.
I strained against my bonds again, determined to free myself. I kicked and thrashed and screamed an eerily silent scream, and all the machines started beeping as wildly as I fought.
The feet rushed back into the room, and something warm flooded my veins, and I was out again.
“TRY TO STAY calm,” the familiar voice said again, the next time I drifted back into the land of the living.
I preferred to be in the land of the dead.
It was peaceful there.
And I didn’t hurt when I was there.
But here, everything hurt, especially my heart.
“We know you’re scared and you’re in pain. Ethan’s on his way. She’s always calmer when he’s here,” she added, as if speaking to someone else.
I tried to open my eyes. They burned like fire, but I finally managed to crack one set of eyelids apart. My vision was fuzzy. Everything was too bright, but I made out two women sitting in the chairs next to me.
When I looked down at myself, I saw what seemed to be dozens of tubes connected to my arms. I was in a hospital bed. One of my legs was immobilized in a cast that stopped above my knee, and it was elevated above the bed. I shifted my hips, but that made my ribs scream in pain, so I tried to stay very, very still.
I glanced over at the women again.
They were familiar, despite my fuzzy vision. Vaguely familiar, at least.
One of them reached for my hand, and I fought the urge to cringe away from her. Jerky movements were my enemy now, every bit as much as Hayes and Alex and Jason were.
Her touch was gentle, though. She held my hand as if I were delicate and fragile.
Maybe she was right about that. Maybe I was delicate and fragile.
I certainly felt as if one wrong move would cause every bone in my body to shatter, if they hadn’t already done so.
“Who are you?” I croaked, not recognizing my own voice.
“Dana Zellinger,” the woman holding my hand said.
Dana. She was one of the wives from the team. No wonder she was familiar but not overly so.
Hayes had never allowed me to spend much time with any of them. He preferred to keep me away from them. Alone. It was easier to beat me up if I was all alone. If I didn’t have anyone else to turn to. If there weren’t other people around to ask questions, to wonder why I was bruised or cut or whatever.
Hayes.
Panic grabbed my throat and threatened to strangle me, just as he had so many times. I couldn’t breathe, and my eyes stung so badly I had to force them closed, even though that meant I was back in the dark.
“Calm down, Natalie,” Dana said smoothly. “You’re safe here. You’re in the hospital. It’s just me and Tallie in the room with you, okay?”
“No one’s gonna hurt you in here, honey,” the other woman said.
Tallie.
I felt her move around to the other side of the bed, and she took hold of my free hand, and they both kept uttering soothing words and gently stroking my arms and hands and face, but I couldn’t take any of it in.
“Take a deep breath, Natalie,” Dana said. “In through your nose. Out through your mouth. Come on. You can do it.”
I forced myself to take big, deep breaths, and gradually the machines surrounding me stopped beeping so erratically.
“I want to go back to sleep,” I forced out. But I didn’t just want to sleep.
I wanted it to end.
To all be over.
To never have to see or hear or feel or think about Hayes again.
“They need you to be awake for a while now, hon,” Tallie said.
Right. Because it was more fun to torture someone who was awake. What was the fun in beating or fucking a dead girl?
I knew Hayes was behind this. He had to be. Why else would they have me tied down so I couldn’t move? He’d chained me to this bed, I knew he had. He was making sure I was healthy enough that he could take me home again and start all over from scratch.
I might not understand why Dana and Tallie were helping him, but I knew they were. He was behind this. That was why I couldn’t move. He’d imprisoned me now, more than he ever had before.
For all I knew, the tubes shooting drugs into my veins were merely sedating me so it would be easier for Hayes to beat me and fuck me some more.
It wasn’t over.
It would never be over.
I would never be free.
Not unless I somehow got away.
I screamed and thrashed again, ripping at the tubes with my battered, swollen hands as silent cries ripped my throat raw.
People in green scrubs rushed into my room, pushing Dana and Tallie out of the way, and held me down to shoot more drugs into my system.
Then it was black. It was nothing.
I was nothing.
The black nothingness was my only solace. The only thing I craved.
I clung to it as if my life depended on it.
Because it did.