Page 19 of Enzo
So I shut down. Said nothing. Locked the words in my mouth and slammed the door in Enzo’s face. Because if he knew what I was and what I could do, I wouldn’t be safe here either.
John had known, and he’d gotten to me before the other two.
They hated that he’d won.
They made sure I knew it.
A trio of torturers.
Enzo never mentioned the empty page again, and in the last two weeks, I’d quietly continued to match up paperwork. Every invoice, every receipt, every battered logbook had been wrangled into order and filed into neat piles on the scarred metal desk, and I’d made actual notes and didn’t reveal my freaky brain to anyone. Enzo never mentioned it again, and probably chalked it up to him not seeing notes, or something.
I hoped for that anyway.
The filing cabinets were open now, half empty, the rest waiting their turn. I’d started reordering everything into something that made sense—not just to whoever dumped it there ten years ago, but to someone who might need to find something again.
My hands still shook when I got tired, but I didn’t drop things as much now.
Pain still clawed at me—low in my gut and up through my ribs as if someone had barbed wire wrapped around them—but it was bearable. Manageable. Doc said I could shower if I wanted to as he removed stitches with his usual brusque precision. He wasn’t the friendliest of men, but I let him touch me because he didn’t care. He was here to heal the bag of meat he’d been handed to fix, and he took the money and ran. He’d unwrapped my feet, commented on the healing, tutted over a stitch that wouldn’t move, but pronounced they could stay out of being wrapped as long as I wore these stupid hospital slipper things. Of course, I agreed, because Doc was fucking scary.
Also. I could keep food down. That was new. Huge, actually. I’d managed a full bowl of soup and half a pack of crackers yesterday, and it stayed put. No retching. No cold sweats. No dizziness so bad I had to lie on the floor until the ceiling stopped spinning. Progress. And, today, I was determined to take a shower.
I’d made a mark on the back of the office door for every day I’d been here—thin lines carved with the tip of a paperclip. I knew I’d missed some at the beginning, when I was too out of it to know where I was, let alone what day it was. But I’d counted. Fifteen days since I’d woken up and hid in this room—over two weeks of sponging myself down with wet wipes and water from the sink. Fifteen days of pretending it didn’t matter that I felt sticky and sour and less than human. That a shower was too much. It was just a shower. Hot water. Steam. Soap. How bad could it be? I gripped the edge of the desk and took a breath. Deep and slow. My ribs ached, but I could breathe. I could stand. I could do this. But the moment I managed the stairs, and turned toward the small bathroom, my chest tightened. I could still feel it sometimes—the water rushing in, filling my nose, my mouth. The way it burned going down. The way I couldn’t fight it, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream. The helplessness. The choking. My feet stopped moving.
“It’s not the same,” I whispered to myself. My voice sounded thin in the empty room. “It’s not the same.”
Still, I reached to shut the door. One hand, steady enough. I could feel the tremble in my knees now, and the room tilted for a second, like it was testing me. But I didn’t fall.
I could do this. I locked the door, used the toilet, brushed my teeth, counted the white tiles on the wall, glanced out of the small window which opened onto a wall, pulled the tiny blind, checked the door was locked again, then counted some more tiles.
Fucks sake.
It was a shower over a bath, one of those all-in-one setups with a nozzle on a bracket, and I had to climb in to use it. That meant bracing both hands on the sides, lifting one knee, then the other, the bones creaking as if they belonged to someone twice my age. My knees cracked as I bent them, muscles stiff and screaming from too many days curled in a ball, from too many injuries not yet healed. But I got in and sat myself on the edge of the bath at the opposite end, water up to my ankles now, enough to soak the soles. I stared at them for a moment—at the raw, scabbed-over wreckage of what used to be skin. I’d run so far from John that night in blind panic. No shoes. No thought. I’d torn my feet to shreds on concrete, gravel, broken glass. The pain was nothing compared to the fear, but it still hurt like hell.
I glanced at the bottles by the taps—soap, scar salve, shampoo. New. Expensive. The guys I was staying with had stocked up. Quiet and steady kindness. It chipped away at me, softened seams I’d stitched tight.
I gripped the tub’s edge. My body trembled. “Fuck,” I whispered. “Okay.”
I stood, flipped the shower on, and let the water hit my chest. Warm. Not painful, but overwhelming. I turned slowly so it hit my back, then face. I flinched. Cold water. John. That night. I grabbed the edge. Stayed upright.
Let it run.
I washed my hair with lemon-scented shampoo, slow and methodical. Focused on the heat, the scent, the simple act of cleaning myself. I wasn’t drowning.
I sobbed quietly beneath the spray, grime and fear washing down the drain—not just dirt, but John and his bosses, all of it, gone, if only for now.
I picked up the soap, lathered my chest, arms, throat. My skin felt like mine again and as I rinsed the shampoo slowly, blinking at the ceiling to keep the water away from my eyes. The water was soft—not harsh or biting—and as it poured over me, I felt the grime lift. The stickiness. The layers of sweat, fear, blood, and years of just… surviving. Breathed in the citrus and steam. Not blood or fear.
Just clean.
I’mhere. Notthere.
The tension in my shoulders gave a little more. I leaned into the stream and let the water beat down on my spine. I closed my eyes—not in fear, but in peace. I hadn’t realized how heavy the dirt had felt until it was gone. There were fluffy towels—there always was—and wrapped in them, I rubbed the salve into one of my oldest scars absently, my touch gentler than it used to be. I didn’t flinch from it. Didn’t rush. I was learning I didn’t have to.
I made sure to put the slippers back on, and picked up the clean sweats that were just the latest in clothes left outside my door. I’d worn these ones before, the softest cotton and blue with a darker stripe, there was a small tear in the cuff at the ankle, as if these had been well-loved. They smelled of washing detergent, so someone was doing my laundry here. That didn’t seem right.
I should offer to help.
I headed back downstairs, one cautious step at a time. My legs still ached, shaky from effort, but the clean weight of warm skin and damp hair gave me a strange feeling of strength. Not physical, exactly. Just… steadier. Confident. I leaned hard on the banister, careful not to slip, feeling all kinds of brave. The step creaked beneath my feet as the office door swung open and Enzo stepped into my space. I jolted, foot slipping, heart slamming against my ribs in a burst of raw panic. A gasp tore from my throat as my knees buckled, the world tilting like it might swallow me whole?—
