I run straight for Bram’s bedroom. It’s closer than I thought – just down the hall.

Through my panic, I can’t help noticing the stark opulence of the house. All of the windows are tall and narrow. Everything is made of dark stone or exotic wood. His bed is covered with a thick fur blanket, and the headboard is distressed brown leather. The lamps are made of gold-veined marble, with metal shades that must glow when they’re lit. So unusual. Larger than life, like he is.

I slide open the door to his closet. It’s a room in itself, filled with the most beautiful fabrics I’ve ever seen. It opens a window into who he is, but I slam it shut with my hardened heart. Finding my dress is all that matters now.

I see it hanging at the end of a row of tailored shirts. It’s been cleaned and pressed, but it smells like him, as if he’s been holding it to his face.

My pussy aches at the thought. This is what he trained me for. To crave him. To put on my own chains so I could never escape

I throw off my robe and slip into the dress. I’ve got Coral’s ballet slippers in my hand -- those go on next. Now for money. I’ll need it for a ride out of here.

I rush to his nightstand. A bottle of aspirin, a Kindle, an old Swiss Army knife. Nothing else. Shit.

I yank open the drawer. I paw frantically past headphones and magazines, feeling for cash or the edge of a wallet. My heart jumps when I touch a leather corner.

I pull it, turning everything in the drawer upside down. Fuck. It’s not a wallet, it’s a book. No. A small photo album.

It’s made of something gray and smooth, like lizard skin. On the cover is a nameplate with a black circle on it. A halo.

A sick chill slithers over my skin. Put it away. It doesn’t matter. Go.

I open the cover anyway. The hand cut paper is rough under my fingers. It smells old.

Every page holds a single black and white photograph of a girl. Not all of them are young or beautiful. They’re women I’d see on the street. Ordinary, but not ordinary at all.

Each one is dressed in a tight black dress that laces to the neck, but leaves a swath of exposed skin under the laces from belly to chin. They wear black pull-up stockings that stop just above the knee. Their thighs are bare. They wear black Mary-Janes with thick high heels. Solid, old- fashioned shoes.

The background looks like a strange country. Twisted trees like I’ve never seen before. Meadows of tall, dead grass. An old brick building with turrets rising into the sky.

In some pictures, the girls are sitting at desks in classrooms. The windows are barred and the walls are peeling.

I flip past pictures of haunted faces, my heart weeping for them. I feel like I know them. Like I could reach out to them and comfort them. I’m them, and they’re me.

One picture shows a girl with her arms strung up to a pipe above her head. Another is handcuffed to a man’s leg. There are pictures of lashed skin and bruised mouths. Another girl is tied naked to a tree with her legs apart and a gag in her mouth. Beside her stands a man holding a riding crop.

Bram. I know those shoulders and that stance. Long legs apart, boots anchored, arms crossed.

What people said about him was true. No one saw anything, because it didn’t happen here. It happened in that strange place, in another time. With all of those girls.

I flip to the next page to see a blonde woman sitting on leaf-strewn steps in her pretty, laced-up dress. I gasp when I see who it is.

Coral.

She’s thinner, maybe eight years younger. She’s looking up at the camera through her lashes. Her eyebrows are raised, but she isn’t smiling. None of the girls are.

What is this place? Why was she there?

No wonder she handles me so well. She must have been trained, like Bram is training me. Was training me, until I woke up from this trance.

I slam the album shut and stick it back in the drawer. Forget money. I’ll call a cab and pay when I get to my parents’ house, or wherever I’m going. I haven’t thought that far.

I run down the staircase through bolts of morning sunlight. Hands trembling, I go from room to room in search of a phone. Nothing.

Okay. I’ll set out on foot. Maybe I’ll get lucky and a cab will drive by.

I find a woman’s coat in the closet by the front door. It’s a little too big, but it’s warm. I shove my arms into the sleeves and wrap it around me.

I’m two seconds from freedom when I see the blinking alarm on the wall by the door.

The breath rushes out of my lungs. My hope is crushed. I can’t get out. The whole house is a prison, wired to go off if I escape.

Unless.

I run back up the stairs, searching for a window. I don’t care how high it is. I’ve jumped for my life before. If I die trying this time, so be it.

I almost laugh when I see it. The slider in Bram’s bedroom that leads to a deck. The big oak tree with the branch hanging over the railing.

With a leap of faith and a prayer to James, I crawl onto the deck railing and grab the branch. It’s slippery, but thick and strong. The bark scrapes my legs as I shimmy toward the trunk and down to the ground.

I take off running toward the road. “I’m sorry, Bram,” I whisper, though I can’t say what I’m sorry for.

The thrill of freedom has turned to low, grinding panic.

I’ve been walking for an hour. In all that time, four cars have passed.

I haven’t been out here since just after James died. I forgot how remote it is. The road is narrow, forcing me to walk in the ditch by the shoulder. The ankle I thought had healed is aching again.

Dark clouds rush in from the horizon. Just when I thought I’d have a sunny day for my escape, the rain is back. Big droplets pelt my head. I raise my chin and keep going.

This is who Bram was training me to be. Resourceful and disciplined. He should be proud of me for breaking out. I didn’t let him stop me, and now I’m on the brink of escaping him forever.

A strange sadness arcs through my soul. Escape, forever. Bram out of my life. Back to the role he used to play, the demon I blamed for everything. My grief, my drinking, my bad dreams.

Blaming him won’t work anymore. I know that. He’s too real to me now. He touched and fed me. He brought me back from the dead.

If Bram’s heart were that black and rotten, he wouldn’t have protected me. He’d have let me die.

I look over my shoulder, but the Bristol Mansion has disappeared. For the first half hour I could see it, black and forbidding against the blue sky, and a shameful part of me longed to run back. My battered spirit imagined the bed where Bram spanked me and made me come, and craved the security of his arms.

In a perverse way, he gave me of glimpse of what I never had.

The longing will pass. It’s just a sign of my sick addiction to his body. I had to get away from him. He’s a dream and a nightmare. He’s everything that can’t come true.

I blink back tears when I see a gas station in the distance. Sadness and joy battle in my heart, until the tears spill over.

Life as Bram’s captive was easy in a twisted way. I’ll miss it.

There are no cars at the gas station. My cheeks are dry when I walk inside and approach the counter. The woman at the register looks over from the TV.

“Help you?”

“I’m wondering –” I clear my throat. “Is there a phone I can use?” My voice echoes in my ears. I haven’t spoken to anyone but Bram and Coral in two weeks.

She shakes her head. “Not for the public. Sorry.”

“The thing is, I don’t have a phone and I’m…stranded.” Memories of Bram dance in front of my vision. The idea that I might blurt out his name terrifies me.

“Stranded,” she says, in a distracted monotone.

I nod. “I don’t have any money, either.”

She throws her eyes toward the corner near the bathrooms. “ATM’s over there.”

Holding out the remote, she turns up the TV. The anchor is announcing Powerball winners.

She glances at me again, her gaze cutting through my defenses. It’s as if she can see what Bram did, and who he turned me into.

She wouldn’t believe what some men do, and how some women come to crave it. I’m no different from the girls in the halo pictures, except that I almost envy them. They were part of something that fascinates and scares me. I long to know what it was.

“I’ll be right back,” I say.

I turn and go to the bathroom. The disinfectant smell turns my stomach. Shutting the door, I stare at my fluorescent-lit reflection.

Who am I? Where’s my voice? The old me would have insisted on using the phone. I’d have screamed that I’d been kidnapped. I’d have gone to the first house I passed and banged on the door. I wouldn’t have protected Bram.

But even the thought feels wrong, like the worst kind of betrayal. Two weeks in his prison have changed me. I’m not Grace anymore. I’m a slave who loves her master’s attention. Who can’t conceive of hurting him.

I scrub the tree sap off my hands and take deep breaths. I have to do this. There’s no going back.

I open the door and walk up to the counter. The cashier is stocking the water case. The TV still blares.

I’ll wait until she comes back. I won’t leave until I’m rescued.

I’m sorry, I don’t have my ATM card. I need your help. Please call 911.

My heart is pounding. My throat is cracked and dry. Every moment feels like a hallucination. There’s too much noise, too many colors. I crave my isolation. My thoughts, my silence, him.

I’m going to scream if she doesn’t turn the TV off. All I can hear are jumbled words. The people on the screen look weird and contorted.

I squint. Something tells me I should recognize them. I blink hard until their faces become clear.

I stare at them numbly. My parents. Isaac. The police.

This isn’t real.

I want to laugh. The only thing that makes sense is the headline at the bottom of the screen. Local woman reported missing.

Isaac stands with his hands clasped in front of him, his flat face smug. He can barely keep from smiling. My mother huddles beside my father, who speaks woodenly into a microphone. We’ve called her friends. No one has heard from her in almost two weeks.

I’m actually seeing this. It’s really fucking happening.

A desperate cry chokes in my throat. They know I’m not missing. I told them not to look for me. I made my choice, compromising and wrong as it was.

Funny how they didn’t tell the police why I ran. Just as I was running back to them, they betrayed me.

I stand at the counter with my mouth open. I can’t cry. I can’t even move.

I’ve ruined everything. Bram’s trust. The chance to help James’s father. The opportunity to heal and move on.

I look down and realize I’m ripping at my bare thighs with my nails. My lungs are too tight to take a breath.

I hate what I’ve done.

I can’t go to my parents. I can’t bring this nightmare on Stephanie or James’s father. I won’t. I’d rather die.

And Bram… Even if he wants me, he’ll destroy me. I’ve seen the pictures. I know what he’s capable of.

But I have no choice. He’s all I’ve got.

He’s protected me this long. If I can just convince him to take me back. To let me try again.

The cashier shuts the door to the water case. “ATM on the blink again?” she says, walking back behind the counter. She turns toward the TV screen, where my mother is holding up my high school graduation picture.

By the time she turns around again, I’m gone.