Page 6

6

Moment of Truth

Rain lashed against the cabin windows, nature’s fury matching the storm raging inside me. Six days. Nine scars carved into Jace’s flesh. And still, he wouldn’t fucking break.

I stood in the doorway, shotgun heavy in my trembling hands, watching him sleep. Even unconscious, he maintained that predatory vigilance—muscles coiled, breathing measured, ready to spring at the slightest threat. The nail I’d driven through his chest rose and fell with each breath, the bandage around it stained rust-brown with dried blood. My own private crucifixion, and he’d taken it with nothing more than a grunt and those knowing eyes that saw straight through me.

This wasn’t working.

I’d come here with such clarity—make him suffer as I had suffered. Force him to experience the systematic dismantling that had been my existence for fifteen years. Break him as I had been broken.

Instead, each new mark seemed to feed something in him—some twisted acceptance that transformed my vengeance into communion. Into connection. Into something I couldn’t name without admitting defeat.

“Enjoying the view?” His voice, rough with sleep but still infuriatingly controlled, cut through my thoughts like a blade.

I didn’t answer, just moved into the room with practiced steps, the floorboards creaking beneath my weight. Our morning ritual, performed with the precision of longtime lovers: coffee, protein bar, one hand freed to eat while I held the knife. A sick domesticity that was beginning to feel almost… necessary.

“You look like you didn’t sleep again,” he observed, taking a careful sip of coffee, eyes never leaving mine.

“Nightmares,” I admitted, the word escaping before I could swallow it back.

His eyes softened fractionally, honey-gold in the dim light. “About what they did to you? Or about what you’re doing to me?”

Something much worse. The truth burned my throat like acid. Dreams where the men who’d tortured me wore Jace’s face. Dreams where I carved so deeply into his flesh that I found my own scars beneath. Dreams where I pressed my lips to his wounds and tasted my own blood.

“Does it matter?” I countered, checking his restraints with hands that knew his body too well. “Pain is pain.”

“No,” he corrected, voice dropping to that intimate register that had always undone me. “It’s not. There’s pain that destroys and pain that transforms. You of all people should know the difference.”

Thunder crashed outside, close enough to rattle the windows. I set the tray aside, throat suddenly tight. “Don’t try to intellectualize this, Jace. Don’t try to make it mean something it isn’t.”

His smile was knowing, infuriating. “Then what does it mean, kitten? Six days, nine scars, and here we still are. Me, not broken. You, not satisfied.” He shifted slightly, zip ties creaking against the bedframe. “Not getting what you need.”

“I’m not done yet,” I snapped, reaching for my tools, arranged with exaggerated care on the bedside table: knife (freshly cleaned), antiseptic, gauze, camera.

Today I’d added something new—the shotgun I’d found mounted above the fireplace, old but well-maintained. I placed it across my lap, watching his eyes track it like a predator following movement in tall grass.

“Special equipment for the tenth lesson?” he asked, echoing his words from yesterday, though his voice held new wariness.

“The tenth scar is different,” I said, my tone deliberately clinical despite the hurricane building in my chest. “It represents the worst thing they did to me.”

His eyes narrowed, gaze flicking between my face and the shotgun. “Which was?”

I ran my fingers along the smooth barrel, feeling the cold metal warm against my skin. The weight of it familiar in ways that made my stomach turn. “They made me watch.”

Something shifted in his expression—a flash of understanding, followed by renewed tension in his jaw, in the cords of his neck. “Watch what?”

“The human body is remarkably resilient,” I continued as if he hadn’t spoken, my voice distant even to my own ears. “It can withstand incredible trauma and still function. Still survive.” I lifted the shotgun, not quite aiming it, just holding it across my body. “The mind is less forgiving.”

Jace’s body had gone completely still, predator-still, only his eyes moving as they tracked my every gesture. “Naomi—”

“They liked to make examples,” I cut him off, the memories surging now, impossible to contain. “When someone tried to escape, or fought back too much, or simply became… unprofitable. They’d gather us all to watch. To learn.”

Understanding dawned in his eyes, followed by something darker, something hungry. “The girl in Biloxi. The redhead.”

I blinked, momentarily thrown off course. “You knew about her?”

“I found what was left,” he said quietly, voice rough with what might have been regret. “Too late, as always. But I buried her properly. Made sure she had a name on her grave, not just a number.”

The revelation staggered me—the idea that while I was surviving one hour at a time, Jace had been following my ghost through a trail of bodies, collecting names, giving dignity in death to those who’d had none in life.

“Her name was Emma,” I said, voice barely audible over the storm. “She was seventeen.”

“I know.” His eyes never left mine. “The marker says ‘Emma Rose Sullivan, Beloved Daughter.’ I found her parents in Portland.”

A sound escaped me then—half-laugh, half-sob. “They made me hold her down. While they—” I couldn’t finish, the memory too visceral even now. “She kept looking at me, begging me with her eyes to help her. But I didn’t.”

“You couldn’t,” he corrected, voice gentler than I’d ever heard it. “That’s different.”

“Is it?” I asked, my grip tightening on the shotgun until my knuckles ached. “Is it really?”

I stood abruptly, moving to the foot of the bed where I could see his face clearly. His body tensed, muscles flexing beneath the restraints, but he made no move to strain against them. Just watched me with those predator eyes, calculating, patient. Waiting.

“Do you know what it’s like,” I asked, voice steady despite the tremor in my hands, “to watch someone die in front of you? To see their face in the moment they realize it’s over?”

Pain flashed across his features—raw, unfiltered. “Yes,” he said simply. “I do.”

Of course he did. All those men he tracked and slaughtered. All those twisted bastards like himself.

“Then you know it changes you,” I continued, raising the shotgun slightly. “Breaks something inside that can never be repaired.”

“What are you doing, Naomi?” His voice was quiet, controlled, but for the first time, I detected a thread of genuine alarm beneath the surface.

“Giving you the tenth scar,” I replied. “But this one won’t be on your skin. It’ll be in your mind. Where it can never heal.”

I placed the barrel of the shotgun under my chin.

His reaction was immediate and visceral—his entire body lurching against the restraints, cords standing out in his neck, eyes wide with something I’d never seen there before: naked fear.

“Don’t,” he growled, the single word holding more emotion than anything he’d said in the six days I’d held him captive. “Naomi, don’t you fucking dare.”

“Why not?” I asked calmly, though my heart hammered against my ribs like it was trying to escape. “It’s the only way you’ll truly understand. The only way you’ll know what it was like to watch Honey die. To see her pretty face blown apart by a shotgun just like this one.”

“Put it down,” he ordered, his voice hard with desperation. “This isn’t the way.”

“There is no way,” I replied, my finger resting lightly on the trigger, feeling the resistance there. “That’s what I’ve been trying to show you. There’s no coming back from what they did to me. From what we’ve become.”

“There’s always a way back,” he insisted, straining so hard against the zip ties that blood began to seep from his wrists, staining the sheets crimson. “Always, kitten. Even for people like us.”

The nickname—so familiar, so intimate—sent a jolt through me. He’d been using it all week, but this time it hit differently. Not mocking or manipulative, but like a lifeline thrown across the abyss between us. A reminder of who we’d been before the world tore us apart. But the bigger shock was calling us people. We weren’t that anymore.

“We’re still here,” he continued, eyes never leaving mine, voice dropping to that hypnotic cadence I remembered from before. “Still breathing. Still feeling. That counts for something.”

I adjusted my grip on the shotgun, the metal now warm against my skin like a living thing. “What if I don’t want to feel anymore?”

“Then you wouldn’t be here,” he countered immediately. “You’d have put a bullet in my heart that night in the warehouse and disappeared. You wouldn’t have brought me here, kept me alive, talked to me.” His voice softened. “You wouldn’t be looking at me right now like you’re begging me to give you a reason to put down that gun.”

The truth in his words burned like fire. I was looking for a reason. Had been all along.

Not why everything happened. Not why two sets of honey colored eyes always haunted me. Not why my past was red and dead like my heart, but why the future was nothing but black, a void of nothing like my soul.

“I wanted to break you,” I admitted, the shotgun wavering slightly in my grip. “To make you feel what I felt. But you won’t break.”

“I’m already broken,” he replied with devastating honesty. “Have been since the moment they took you from me. Since the day I failed you.”

I laughed, the sound hollow and harsh. “You’ve been breaking for fifteen years? Try fifteen hours with Spider and his friends. Fifteen minutes watching Emma beg for her life while they—” I stopped, unable to continue.

His eyes never left mine, even as he worked his wrists against the restraints in small, deliberate movements. “Then show me, Naomi. Not like this. Show me what they did. All of it. I can take it.”

The shotgun trembled in my hands. “You think this is about your strength? Your ability to endure?” I took a step closer, barrel now aimed at his face, close enough that I could see his pupils dilate. “This is about breaking you in the only way that counts. Making you watch something you can’t stop. Something that will haunt you forever.”

Understanding dawned in his expression, stark and cold. “You’re not just going to do it,” he said, voice rough with realization. “You’re going to make me watch. Helpless. Just like that night. Just like you were with Honey.”

“Now you’re getting it,” I confirmed, a bitter smile twisting my lips. “The ultimate scar. The one you’ll never recover from.”

He went still then, a different kind of stillness from before. Not the predator waiting to strike, but the predator deciding whether to reveal itself. Lightning flashed outside, illuminating his face in stark white light, casting shadows that transformed his features into something ancient and terrible.

“You won’t do it,” he said with quiet certainty.

“No?” I challenged, finger tightening on the trigger. “You think you know me after fifteen years apart? After everything they turned me into?”

“I know you better than anyone alive,” he replied, voice low and dangerous. “Better than you know yourself right now.”

I barked out a laugh. “Oh really? Then tell me, Jace, what am I going to do?”

His eyes locked with mine, honey-gold and bottomless. “You’re going to put down that shotgun. You’re going to unzip these restraints. And then you’re going to run.”

A chill raced down my spine at the absolute conviction in his voice. “Why would I do that?”

“Because you finally understand.” His smile was slow, predatory, terrible in its beauty. “I’ve been letting you do this. All of it. The restraints, the knife, the nail.” He flexed his wrists slightly, and to my horror, I saw the zip tie on his right hand begin to give. “I could have stopped you any time I wanted.”

Ice flooded my veins, followed by something hotter, darker. “You’re lying.”

“Am I?” With a sudden, violent motion, he wrenched his right hand free, the zip tie snapping with a sound like a gunshot. “I gave you what you needed, kitten. The illusion of control. The chance to work through your rage. But playtime’s over.”

I stumbled back, shotgun now aimed squarely at his chest, my breath coming in sharp, shallow gasps. “Don’t move,” I ordered, voice shaking. “I will shoot you.”

“No,” he countered calmly, reaching with his freed hand to begin working on his other restraints. “You won’t. Because you’ve spent six days proving to yourself what you really came here to find out.”

“And what’s that?” I demanded, finger on the trigger, heart in my throat.

His smile was knowing, triumphant. “That you still love me. That beneath all the hate, all the rage, all the righteous vengeance, you still want me. Still need me.” He leaned forward, undeterred by the shotgun. “Still burn for me the way I’ve been burning for you for fifteen years.”

The words hit like physical blows, each one landing with devastating accuracy. “Fuck you.”

“You will,” he promised, the second zip tie giving way with a snap. “But first, you’re going to run.”

I backed toward the door, shotgun still raised. “You can’t be sure I won’t shoot you.”

“I’m sure,” he said simply, working on the ties at his ankles now, movements unhurried but deliberate. “Because you didn’t bring me here to kill me. You brought me here to see if I was still the selfish bastard you remembered—or if I’d become something worse.” His eyes met mine, blazing with terrible understanding. “And what you found terrifies you more than anything they ever did to you.”

“What’s that?” I whispered, already knowing the answer, already feeling it uncoil inside me like a serpent waking.

“That I’m the same,” he replied. “That fifteen years and all the blood between us hasn’t changed what we are to each other. What we’ve always been. You were fine with it then and even more so now… that we are the same.”

The first ankle restraint snapped. I knew I had seconds before he was completely free. Before the psycho I’d been poking for six days was unleashed.

“Run, kitten,” he advised, voice dropping to a dangerous purr that resonated in my bones. “I’ll give you a head start. For old times’ sake.”

I didn’t wait to see the last restraint break. I turned and fled, shotgun still clutched in my hands, heart thundering in my chest. Behind me, I heard the final zip tie snap, followed by the creak of the bed as Jace rose for the first time in a week.

His voice followed me, calm and terrible in its certainty: “Run as fast as you can, Naomi. It won’t be fast enough.”

I burst through the cabin door into the pouring rain, the storm that had been brewing all day now a full deluge. The mountainside stretched before me, dark and foreboding in the gathering twilight.

I ran.

Not because I believed I could escape him. Not because I feared what he would do when he caught me.

But because, for the first time in fifteen years, I felt truly alive. Prey to his predator, again. It was so wrong how right that felt. The only choice that mattered wasn’t if I would run, it was how fast.

And in which direction…

Behind me, I heard the cabin door slam open. Heard his voice, raised over the storm: “Ready or not, kitten. Here I come.”

And heaven help me, some dark, broken part of me rejoiced.