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She should know that by now.
“Are you trying to run? Are you trying to leave us, beauty?”
She flinches as she whimpers, her eyes dropping down to the ground.
I stand up before moving towards her slowly. With every step that I take, I watch the way her body desperately tries to shrink into nothing. When I’m in front of her again, I crouch down, reaching out to touch her hair, curling a strand of it around my finger.
“You belong to us now.” I whisper, tugging on her hair so that she’ll meet my eyes. “You can fight us, and you can struggle all you want. But the truth is, Chiara…” I lean in closer, my breath fanning against her lips. “You’ll never be able to leave us. Not now. Not ever.”
She swallows audibly as she looks away from me, tears already rising in her eyes.
“You belong to me. You belong to Nikolai. And now that we have you, we will never let you go.”
The words suffocate her with their truth as they settle over her like a thick fog.
I watch her body tremble in response, her gaze fixed oneverywhereelse thatisn’tme, as she desperately tries to hold herself together. But as the seconds pass, I see it; the crack in her confidence as her walls crumble, piece by piece as one teardrop falls after the other.
I pull my hand away before standing up once more.
We’ve taken her, so now, she’s ours.
Chapter Seven
Chiara
I'm losing my mind.
The days—if you can even call them that—blur together into one endless stretch of suffocating silence.
My captorsstillhaven’t told me why I’m here, and they haven’t told me what they want.
Nothing.
Every time I find myself drifting off to sleep, I wake up not too long after, finding either one, or even both, of them there, looming over me like a shadow that clings too tightly. They watch me at all times. It’s a maddening cycle—wake, exist, sleep, repeat—with absolutely no meaning or explanation.
I’ve tried to count the hours in my head, but it’s impossible.
Is it morning?
Or is it night?
I don’t know.
There aren’t any windows in here, in the bathroom, in the kitchen, or even the hallway.
I have no idea how I haven’t just suffocated to death yet.
And I know that they’re trying to break me.
At first, I was strong. I knew I wouldn’t give in to them, wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of ever seeing me like that. I made sure to refuse to speak to them, to refuse to move whenever they wanted me to, and toneveracknowledge them in any way.
But that didn’t last long.
It left me trapped in my own head, spiralling deeper and deeper into my own thoughts, questions of whether I’ll ever be able to escape this place floating around in my mind.
I wrap my fingers around the duvet, sitting up on the bed now. They brought it in a day or two ago, and as much as I hate them for the situation they’ve put me in, I’m also a little bit grateful for this since I’m no longer sleeping on the cold floor.
My stomach growls loudly in the silence of the room as I press my hand to my stomach. It’s been a while since they last brought me anything to eat, and my hunger gnaws at me, twisting my insides into painful knots.