I say nothing, jaw clenched against the pain. Terrance's hand releases my throat only to trail down my body, stopping at the collar of my shirt.
“Did he touch you here?” His fingers brush across my collarbone, then lower, cupping my breast through the fabric. I flinch, turning my face away as bile rises in my throat. “Did you like it when he put his filthy hands on what belongs to me?”
“I don't belong to you,” I choke out, fighting against the restraints until metal cuts into my wrists.
His palm slides lower, creeping across my stomach until it stops at the waistband of my jeans.
“What about here?” he murmurs, fingers toying with the button. “Did he touch you here, too? Did he get to ruin what was mine?”
His hand dips beneath the denim.
I thrash violently, the restraints cutting deep, the bed frame groaning against the concrete as I kick with everything I have left.
“Don’t touch me!” The scream rips from my throat, torn and feral.
Terrance’s grin widens, a predator delighting in the agony of its prey. “There she is,” he breathes. “There’s my Charlotte. I’ve missed that sound—you, begging me to stop. Like old times.”
“You’re fucking sick,” I spit.
He releases me so suddenly my body collapses against the mattress, lungs heaving as I gasp for air.
Terrance steps back, fixing his tie with slow, deliberate care. As if straightening silk could polish the rot inside him.
“Sick?” he echoes, unbothered. “Maybe. But I’m not the one who’s about to be fucked into obedience and sold like the good little product she was always meant to be.”
From his jacket, he produces a syringe. Glass and steel. Clinical. Cold. The liquid inside glints beneath the overhead bulb, clear as death.
My throat tightens. “What is that?”
“Compliance in a vial,” he says, flicking the syringe like a man about to paint his masterpiece. “Just a little cocktail to keep you pliable during transport. Don’t worry—you won’t feel a thing.” He leans closer, smile razor-sharp. “But they will.”
Panic floods my system so fast it drowns everything else. I buck and twist, wrists tearing against metal cuffs until warmth drips down my arms. Blood. Mine. Again.
“Still fighting. You never did know when to quit.”
He crouches by the bed, breath ghosting over my cheek. “No one’s coming for you, Charlotte. Your biker’s probably decomposing in a ditch. And those new little friends? Oh—they screamed like amateurs. One of them begged.”
A sob claws at my throat, but I swallow it down like poison. I will not give him that.
“Thor will find me,” I rasp, every syllable forged from pain and defiance. “He’ll bury you.”
Terrance tilts his head, as if genuinely intrigued. “You actually believe that.” He smiles like a man watching a child clutch a broken toy. “That’s adorable.”
He grabs my arm, rolls up my sleeve with the same hands he used to bruise me all those years ago. The needle gleams, its tip brushing my skin.
“I’ll make you a deal. If your precious Thor manages to crawl out of whatever grave I left him in and stumbles through that door alive…” He taps the syringe once, twice. “I’ll let him watch me break you before I slit his fucking throat.”
I thrash like a feral thing, teeth bared, wrists shredding against metal restraints, but Terrance barely moves. His grip is unyielding, forged from years of control and cruelty. He pins my arm down with one hand, the other lifting the syringe—sleek and silver, trembling with promise. Not mercy. Never mercy. Oblivion.
“I wonder,” he murmurs, almost to himself, “if you’ll still love him when your brain is nothing but static and rot. When you’re drooling and spread for the next bidder, crying because your body remembers pain, but your mind doesn’t know why.”
The needle presses to my skin.
I try to jerk away.
I fail.
The sting is sharp, but the scream that tears from my throat isn’t for the pain—it’s for the helplessness. The violation. Thegoddamn nightmare he’s dragging me back into with a smile on his face.
