Chapter 1
Dylan
Ten Years Ago
The steady drip, drip, drip is slowly driving me mad.
Or maybe it’s the fact that I haven’t eaten in—I don’t know how long.
Or the dehydration.
Or the putrid stench of the dead bodies decomposing on the floor of my prison. Even now, it sears my throat and lungs, burning me up from the inside. At least, I can’t see them or stare into their dead eyes. This pitch-black hole we were thrown into ensures that.
No, I can’t see them.
But I can feel them.
Death surrounds me.
They used to moan in agony. Used to plead with God for mercy.
Until, one by one, they fell silent. Leaving only the drip, drip, drip.
How long until I join them too? Why haven’t I already?
I’ve begged for my life to be taken. Pleaded.
Yet, here I remain. Wrists chained in front of me, trapped in a cell of death, ready for whatever nightmare they have planned for me next. The upside to all the pain? Anything new they do is just background noise.
As they torment me, I let my mind drift back to home.
Back to her.
Blonde hair. Sun-kissed, freckled face. Eyes so blue that they make me want to swim in them forever.
My love.
My Emma.
Would she even recognize me if she saw me now? Would she see past the animal I’ve become to the man I used to be?
I’ve been bound so long that I don’t even know what it feels like to be unchained. I’m a creature in a cage. A shackled monster. That’s what they’ve made me.
Light assaults me when the lid covering my prison is opened. It burns my eyes, so I have to close them tightly, listening only to the yelling above in a language I can’t understand.
Slowly, I try to open my eyes, but the moment I do, tears fill them. The light is so beautiful. Is this it? Am I dead?
Even before those thoughts can fully form in my mind, the light is momentarily blocked by two bodies rushing down the stairs toward me.
I grip the hilt of the blade I found when I was feeling around the cell for something to fight with. I’d pulled it off of one of the dead—then promised to use it to get justice for us all.
Even if it’s the last thing I do.
“Get up,” a man orders in a thick accent. I don’t know his name, but I know he loves to play with fire. I have the burns to prove it.
I don’t listen. Get closer.
“I said get up!” He raises a rifle at me. Does he not know that I don’t fear death? It would be sweet relief for me to leave this world. Doesn’t he realize just how dangerous that makes me? After all, a man with nothing to lose is hardly a man at all.
