Page 5

5

Surrender

Thunder rolled in the distance as morning broke on the sixth day, dark clouds gathering on the horizon like bruises spreading across pale skin. I stood at the window of the cabin’s main room, watching lightning dance between swollen clouds, feeling the electric pressure building in the air—mirroring the tension coiling inside me.

Five days. Eight scars carved into Jace’s flesh. And still, he refused to break.

The mirror told the story of my growing desperation—eyes bloodshot from another sleepless night, cheekbones too sharp in a face grown gaunt with obsession. Dark circles like smudged ash beneath eyes that had seen too much. I looked like what I was: a woman consumed by vengeance that refused to satisfy, hollowed out by a hunger that wouldn’t be fed.

When I entered the bedroom, Jace’s eyes found mine immediately, alert despite the hour. Too alert. The healing cuts across his torso formed a grotesque map of my past suffering—four precise lines and yesterday’s longer slash across his chest, each in different stages of healing. His skin, a canvas of my failure to make him truly feel anything beyond fascination.

“Storm coming,” he observed, nodding toward the window where rain had begun to spatter against the glass, each drop like a tiny explosion in the silence between us.

“Fitting,” I replied, setting down the usual breakfast tray. Our morning ritual had taken on an almost comfortable familiarity—coffee, protein bar, one hand freed to eat while I kept the knife close. This routine, this twisted domesticity, nauseated me more than any violence.

“You didn’t sleep again,” he said, not a question but an observation. His eyes tracked the tremor in my hands that I couldn’t quite control, the way my gaze couldn’t settle.

I didn’t bother denying it. “Neither did you.”

A ghost of a smile touched his lips—that same smile that once made me weak, still dangerous in ways I refused to acknowledge. “Hard to rest when you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.” His eyes tracked me as I moved about the room, gathering my tools. The weight of his attention crawled across my skin like something alive. “What’s the plan for today, kitten? More sensory games? Another cut? Or have you finally realized this isn’t working the way you hoped?”

I ignored the bait, arranging my implements on the side table with mechanical precision: knife, antiseptic, gauze, camera. Today I added something new—a small glass bottle filled with a dark amber liquid that caught the dim light, throwing golden reflections against the wall.

“Whiskey?” he asked, eyebrow raised. “Planning to get me drunk first?” The teasing tone, as if we were lovers playing a game, made my teeth clench.

“The ninth scar,” I said, voice sliding into the clinical detachment I’d adopted for these sessions, armor against memories that still had the power to drown me. “This one represents when they discovered my true weakness.”

“Which was?” His question came soft, too intimate, as if he were entitled to my pain.

I uncapped the bottle, the sharp smell of alcohol filling the space between us, bitter and burning. “Connection. The desperate human need to not be alone.”

Understanding dawned in his eyes, followed by wariness. I watched his body tense, the subtle shift of muscles preparing for pain. It wasn’t enough. I needed more than just physical reaction.

“Six months in, they started using isolation as punishment,” I explained, wetting a cloth with the whiskey, the fumes making my eyes sting. “But they discovered something interesting—physical isolation wasn’t enough. What truly broke people was emotional isolation. The feeling that no one cared if you lived or died.”

I moved to pull up his t-shirt, exposing his torso where the previous marks were healing in various stages of angry pink and red. My fingers brushed his skin—too warm, too alive—and I jerked them back as if burned.

“So they got creative. Started pairing us up. Making us form attachments. Bonds.” The word tasted like ash on my tongue.

“And then?” he asked quietly, though his eyes suggested he already knew. Always one step ahead, even now.

“And then they’d force us to hurt each other.” I positioned the knife above the unmarked skin of his right side. “Choose who received punishment. Who went without food. Who endured the night’s clients.”

I began to cut—a slow, deliberate line that curved along his ribs. He tensed but made no sound. No gasp. No plea. Just the controlled breathing of someone who’s choosing to endure. My hand tightened on the knife, pressing deeper than I’d intended. A trickle of blood ran down his side, staining the sheets.

“There was a girl,” I continued, focusing on my work while something inside me splintered. “Rachel. Nineteen. They paired us together for almost a year. Made us share a cell, eat together, sleep in the same bed. Forced us to depend on each other for basic survival.” My voice caught. “She was blonde.” Just like Honey. The words hung unspoken between us.

The cut complete, I set the knife aside and picked up the whiskey-soaked cloth. My hand hovered, trembling. “We became friends. Then closer than friends. She was the first person who touched me with gentleness in years.” The memory of her fingers, tentative against my scarred back in the darkness, flashed behind my eyes. “The only one who saw me as human after—” After you sold me to monsters, I didn’t say.

I pressed the cloth to the fresh wound without warning, wanting pain, needing reaction.

Jace hissed, body going rigid as the alcohol burned the raw flesh. A vein pulsed in his neck, jaw clenched so tight I could hear his teeth grind. Finally, something real. “What happened to her?” he asked, words forced through the pain.

“They gave us a choice.” I kept the cloth pressed against the wound, watching his face contort, cataloging each microexpression. “One of us would spend the night with a particularly sadistic client. One who’d already killed two girls before they could even finish his ‘session.’ We had to decide which of us it would be.”

Understanding darkened his gaze. Something that might have been genuine horror flickered across his features. “You chose yourself.”

I nodded, finally removing the cloth and reaching for the antiseptic. “I’d been there longer. Had more experience surviving the worst ones. Thought I could handle it better than she could.”

“But that’s not what they wanted,” he guessed, voice soft with a terrible comprehension that made my skin crawl. For a moment, I could almost believe he understood—that he was capable of empathy rather than just calculation.

“No.” I poured antiseptic directly onto the wound, watched him flinch, searching his face for satisfaction that wouldn’t come. “They wanted me to choose her. To prove I’d been broken completely—that I’d sacrifice someone I cared about to save myself.” My voice dropped to a whisper. “That I was just like them.”

“So what did they do?” His question came gentle, almost tender—a tone I remembered from before, when nightmares would wake me and he’d whisper me back to sleep.

“They took us both.” The memory surfaced, viciously clear despite the years—the smell of cheap cologne and expensive whiskey, the sound of Rachel’s sobs turning to screams. “Made her watch what they did to me. Then made me watch what they did to her.” I began bandaging the wound, movements mechanical while my mind replayed horrors in vivid technicolor. “She didn’t survive the night. Internal bleeding.”

I could see her still—broken on filthy sheets, eyes fixed on mine as the light left them. Her lips forming words I couldn’t hear.

For a long moment, Jace was silent, processing what I’d told him. When he finally spoke, his voice held none of the mockery or challenge I’d grown accustomed to. Instead, it carried something worse—genuine concern. “Did you ever find out what happened to her body?”

The question caught me off guard, a sucker punch to a wound I’d thought long scarred over. “What?”

“Her remains,” he clarified, eyes holding mine, seeing too much. “Did they tell you what they did with her after?”

I shook my head, swallowing against unexpected tightness in my throat. “Why would that matter?”

“Because you cared about her,” he replied simply. “Because not knowing means never having closure.”

A lump formed in my throat, unexpected and unwelcome. My vision blurred with tears I refused to shed. “They weren’t big on closure.”

“No,” he agreed quietly. “Neither was I, until I started hunting your captors.” His admission hung in the air between us. “Then I realized how important it was—not just knowing someone was dead, but knowing they’d been properly laid to rest. That there was some… dignity in the end.”

Lightning flashed outside, illuminating the planes of his face, catching on the scar on his cheek that I’d given him fifteen years ago. In that moment of stark light, I caught a glimpse of the man he’d become rather than the evil bastard I needed him to be.

His sincerity unsettled me more than any defiance could have. I took a step back, needing distance. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I want you to know that if you described her to me—what she looked like, any identifying marks—I could try to find out what happened to her.” His eyes never left mine, steady and certain. “When this is over, whatever way it ends. I could try to give you that, at least.”

The offer hit me like a physical blow—an unexpected kindness when I’d been prepared for resistance, for anger, for anything but this genuine compassion. My chest constricted, ribs suddenly too tight around lungs that couldn’t expand.

“Why would you do that?” I asked, voice barely audible above the rain now pounding against the windows.

“Because I understand loss, Naomi.” His voice dropped, became something raw and honest that slipped beneath my defenses like a blade between ribs. “I lost my sister. Lost you. Spent fifteen years living with ghosts.” The truth in his face was worse than any lie. “That kind of emptiness… it hollows you out from the inside.”

I turned away, unable to bear the understanding in his eyes. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He was supposed to break, to beg, to hate me as I hated him. Not offer comfort. Not extend compassion I hadn’t earned and didn’t want. Not make me remember the man I’d loved before the vile club president took his place.

“You’re manipulating me,” I said flatly, gathering my tools with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. “Trying to make me think you care when we both know you’re just saying whatever will keep you alive until you can turn the tables.”

His laugh was soft, without humor. “If I wanted to turn the tables, kitten, I would have done it days ago.”

I stilled, knife halfway to the side table, the air suddenly charged with something dangerous. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means these zip ties aren’t as secure as you think,” he replied, voice deadly calm. For the first time, I glimpsed the predator beneath the mask of compliance. “It means I could have freed myself that first night while you slept. Could have walked out of here—or done to you what you’ve been doing to me.”

Ice flooded my veins, a chill that started in my spine and radiated outward until my fingertips went numb. The knife clattered to the floor. “You’re lying.”

“Am I?” With a sudden, violent motion, he wrenched his right hand upward. The zip tie stretched, then slipped about an inch before catching again. Not breaking completely, but revealing that it had far more give than I’d believed possible. That I’d never been in control. “I’ve been working them loose every time you leave the room. Could have been completely free two days ago.”

Thunder crashed directly overhead, the cabin trembling with the force of it. My world tilted, certainties crumbling beneath my feet like sand in a rising tide.

Horror and confusion warred within me. My hand went automatically to the small of my back, where I kept my pistol—but we both knew I wouldn’t use it. “Then why haven’t you? Why stay restrained?” My voice cracked, betraying me.

His eyes held mine, fierce and merciless despite his vulnerable position. Heat and intensity radiated from him, the mask of submission discarded. “Because you need this. Need to work through what they did to you. Need to feel in control for once.”

“Bullshit,” I spat, trying to ignore the tremor in my hands, the way my heart hammered against my ribs like it was trying to escape. “You’re just saying that because I caught you before you could escape.”

“No,” he replied with quiet certainty, the kind that had once made men twice his size back down. “I’m saying it because it’s true. Because I know you, Naomi. The real you—not the crazy bitch they created, but the girl underneath who’s been fighting to survive for fifteen years.”

“That girl is dead,” I hissed, backing toward the door, feeling the wall cold against my spine. “They killed her a long time ago.” In a bayou. In rooms with no windows. In a van that smelled of blood and fear.

“No.” He shook his head slowly, eyes never leaving mine. “She’s standing right in front of me. Damaged, yes. Changed, absolutely. But still you.” His voice softened, dropping to that register that used to make me melt, that still sent unwanted heat spiraling through me. “Still mine.”

The possessive claim ignited something in me—rage, yes, but also a dangerous heat that pooled low in my belly, a visceral response to the raw certainty in his voice. My body remembering what my mind wanted to forget.

“I am not yours,” I said, the words sharp as broken glass. “Not anymore.” Not since the night he traded me for a bag of meth and a promise.

“Then why am I still breathing?” he challenged quietly, a predator scenting weakness. “Why bring me here if not because some part of you remembers what we were to each other? What we could be again?”

His words hit too close to the truth I’d been running from since the moment I saw him again. Since I felt that pull, that recognition—darkness calling to darkness.

“We could never be anything again,” I snapped, though the conviction in my voice wavered like a candle flame in a storm. “Too much has happened. Too much blood. Too much time.”

“Time doesn’t matter,” he countered, the force of his certainty like gravity, pulling me toward him even as I fought to maintain distance. “Blood doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that fifteen years later, we found our way back to each other.” His eyes burned into mine, seeing too much. Knowing too much. “Tell me that’s coincidence. Tell me that’s random chance.”

I couldn’t. Couldn’t explain the force that had driven me back to Louisiana, back to the clubhouse, back to him. Couldn’t articulate the compulsion that had made me take him captive rather than simply killing him. Couldn’t admit what we both knew—that hate and love were two sides of the same obsession, and I’d never been free of either.

“Rest,” I said abruptly, hand on the doorknob, desperate for escape. “Tomorrow. The tenth scar.”

“Tomorrow,” he agreed, eyes never leaving mine, the promise in them more threat than surrender. “But ask yourself something before then, Naomi. If this is really about breaking me, why haven’t you gone for the kill? Why these elaborate rituals instead of just torture? Why not show me your scars instead of just giving me new ones?”

The questions followed me as I closed the door behind me, pressing my forehead against the cool wood, eyes squeezed shut against unwanted tears that burned like acid. Five days. Nine scars. And instead of satisfaction, I felt only growing doubt, creeping like poison through my veins.

Because Jace was right—I could have broken him physically. Could have used the methods I’d learned from my captors to shatter his body beyond repair. Instead, I’d been trying to make him understand. To witness. To acknowledge.

To connect.

The realization sent me stumbling to the bathroom, where I emptied the meager contents of my stomach into the toilet, throat burning with bile and truth. When there was nothing left, I sat on the cold tile floor, arms wrapped around my knees, shaking with the force of a truth I’d been avoiding since bringing him to this cabin:

I didn’t want Jace broken. I wanted him whole. Damaged, dangerous, but intact enough to see me—really see me—as I was now. Wanted him to look at the monster they’d made of me and recognize the girl he’d once loved. Wanted to know if she could still be loved.

As the storm finally continued to build outside, rain lashing against the windows with increasing fury, I made a decision. Tomorrow would indeed be different—but not in the way I’d planned. Tomorrow, with the tenth scar, I would force a reckoning neither of us might survive.

Because if Jace truly knew me as well as he claimed, he would understand what came next. Would anticipate the ultimate test I had planned.

The shotgun I’d found mounted above the fireplace. The choice that would determine everything.

Whether he was still the love I once clung to during the most brutal moments of my captivity—or something else.

Whether I could finally admit what had truly brought me back to him—not just vengeance, but the desperate, broken hope that the one person who’d known me before could still see me now. Could still want me, scarred and twisted as I’d become.

Whether sick fucks like us deserved second chances—or only death.