Page 13

The air is colder than I remember.

I wake with a jolt for a second time—gasping, clawing at the thin blanket tangled around my legs as if it’s holding me down. My breath fogs in the still air. Every inch of me aches, bruised and burning beneath the surface, like my body hasn’t yet realized it’s alive.

The room is familiar. Familiar in the worst way.

The cracked walls, uneven with moisture-stained patches. The faint, metallic tang in the air—blood and rust and damp. The old lightbulb hanging naked from the ceiling, casting flickering shadows against the splintered floorboards.

I know this place. This is where I woke up after they took me. This is where I was kept.

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to pretend I’m wrong. That this is some new hell. That I haven’t ended up right where I started, like a pawn shoved back into her corner.

The silence confirms it.

The quiet here is different. It’s not peace—it’s absence. No footsteps overhead. No voices muttering behind doors. No guards posted outside, not even the sound of wind through loose boards. Just that hollow, stretched-out stillness that means you’re well and truly alone.

I sit up slowly, each movement a grim reminder of the toll all this has taken. My ribs scream with the effort, the pain sharp enough to cut through the fog clouding my head. Someone cleaned my wounds again. There’s fresh gauze wrapped around my torso. The blood crusted along my hairline has been wiped away.

It wasn’t kindness; it was maintenance. Keeping me alive, not because they care, but because I still serve a purpose.

Panic coils low in my chest, winding tighter with each breath. I can’t stop shaking. My hands curl into fists in the sheets, white-knuckled and useless.

William.

His name comes like a punch to the throat.

For a heartbeat, I can’t breathe. My chest caves in around the thought.

He did this. He led me back here—fed me hope, warmth, the illusion of safety—only to open the door and reveal him.

Kolya.

Sitting like a king, smug and silent, as if he knew I’d come crawling back eventually. As if this whole thing had been orchestrated to remind me that running was never an option. That nothing is ever mine—not my freedom, not my life, not even my trust.

I curl in on myself, knees to my chest, forehead resting against bone. The thin blanket offers no warmth. I feel everything: the sting of betrayal, the pulse of my heartbeat against cracked ribs, the cold pressing in from every direction.

I don’t cry. Tears would mean admitting it. That this is final. That I have nothing left.

Instead, I rock slightly, back and forth, chasing the motion like it might ground me. The silence begins to sound louder the longer it lasts, like the walls themselves are whispering all the things I don’t want to hear.

You’re alone.

You’re trapped.

He owns you.

I dig my nails into my shins and focus on the burn. On the small, sharp pain I can control. My breath starts to even out. The edges of the room stop spinning.

The fear doesn’t go. I used to think fear was something loud—screams, panic, running. But this kind of fear is quieter. Colder. It seeps into your bones and makes a home there, whispering that there’s no one coming, that the people you love will be the ones to hand you over.

I hear the door creak from somewhere in the house. Footsteps now.

I flinch automatically, spine going rigid. The steps fade again, swallowed by the distance.

A false alarm. Still, I don’t uncurl. I stay in that tight, clenched position, trying to hold on to something—anything—that feels solid.

That’s when I realize it’s raining.

The first drop lands with a faint, hollow tap against the window. Then another.

Then dozens—hundreds. Rain falls in sheets, hammering the glass and roof with rhythmic violence, a deep, endless percussion that seeps into the walls and floors. The sound surrounds me, swallows me whole. I lift my head from my knees just as the first thunderclap hits.

It splits the silence like a knife.

My breath catches hard. Too hard. I double over, hands clutching my ribs, my throat tight and closing, like the air itself has turned to smoke. My heart pounds so violently it’s all I can hear—until another rumble follows, this one louder, longer, deeper. It rolls through the room like it’s crawling across the floor, shaking the cracked boards under me, the very air vibrating in my chest.

A choked sob escapes me before I can stop it.

I try to count my breaths, the way I learned in med school, the way I teach patients in trauma: inhale, two, three—exhale, two, three—but my lungs won’t cooperate. The air won’t move right. It scratches at my throat like glass, leaving me gasping, panicking.

The thunder comes again, closer this time. Like it’s chasing me. Hunting me down in this godforsaken room.

Suddenly, I’m not here anymore.

I’m eight.

A child huddled under thin blankets in the attic bedroom of the third foster house that month. Alone. Freezing. Thunder shaking the ceiling above me while strangers argued downstairs—doors slamming, glass breaking. Rain pouring in through the broken window because no one had bothered to fix it. I remember the taste of it—rust and cold—and the way my hands wouldn’t stop shaking, even when I bit them until they bruised.

I hadn’t spoken a word that night. I hadn’t cried, but I do now.

The sobs break out of me with no warning. I press my palms to my ears, curling into the corner of the bed like it’ll shield me, like this thin, grimy mattress can block out the storm tearing through my chest. I try to tell myself it’s just weather. Just wind and sky and sound. But that logic dies fast.

This fear isn’t new. It’s rooted deep in bone and memory, in every moment I ever felt powerless and small and unwanted.

Another crack of thunder, this one so loud the walls tremble.

I scream. Hands over my ears. Eyes squeezed shut.

I’m not in control anymore. I’ve lost it. Completely. The tears come in waves, hard and ragged, my breath hitching and breaking like a ship caught in surf. I curl tighter, pressing my face to the wall, and sob like it’ll undo something, like it’ll drain the fear out of me somehow.

It doesn’t. It only makes it worse.

I don’t know how long I stay like that. Minutes. Hours. My sense of time has unraveled completely. All I know is rain and thunder and sobs—my own, echoing around the room like they don’t belong to me.

I feel like I’m drowning in it.

I don’t hear the door open.

Not over the storm. Not over the panic.

I feel the shift. The slight change in pressure as air moves differently, the faintest creak of the floorboard as someone steps into the room.

I stiffen. My body still thinks it can disappear if I hold still long enough.

Then I hear the voice. Low. Sharp. Unmistakable.

“Elise.”

I flinch.

Another rumble of thunder makes me jerk again. My hands fly back to my ears, breath ragged and uneven. I don’t answer him. I can’t. My throat’s too raw. My chest feels like it’s caving in.

“Elise.” Closer this time. Still low. Not angry.

I squeeze my eyes shut tighter.

The mattress shifts. He’s kneeling now, beside the bed. I can feel the weight of his presence without looking at him.

For once, he doesn’t touch me. He just waits.

Another thunderclap.

My entire body lurches.

Then, finally, I hear him sigh—quiet, heavy, like he doesn’t understand why this is happening and doesn’t know what to do with it.

Then his voice, again. Softer. “It’s just a storm.”

I let out a broken laugh, half hysterical. “Just a storm,” I croak, still not looking at him. “That’s what you think I’m scared of?”

Silence. Then, softly: “Isn’t it?”

I want to scream at him. I want to tell him this fear is older than him, older than Yuri, older than blood and betrayal. It’s a fear with roots. With memories. It’s not about noise—it’s about being trapped. Being powerless. Forgotten. Small.

It’s about being a child and knowing no one’s coming for you.

Except, I can’t say that. I can’t say anything.

I just sit there, trembling in a cage of my own body.

Another thunderclap shatters the air. This time, without asking, Kolya reaches out and wraps his hand around my wrist.

I should pull away. I want to pull away.

With the storm clawing at the walls and my body on the edge of breaking again, I need something solid. Something real. Even if it’s him.

Especially if it’s him.

His hand stays wrapped around my wrist, warm and immovable.

I hate how much I need that warmth. How the weight of his touch steadies something inside me, even as every instinct screams to fight it. But my body’s traitorous—shaking still, sobs tapering into hiccups, too weak to resist the comfort, even if it comes from him.

From him.

Another thunderclap rolls overhead. I jerk despite myself, a tremor racking through my shoulders.

Kolya’s thumb brushes along the inside of my wrist, the motion slow and deliberate. Not comforting exactly—he’s not that kind of man. But steady. Controlled. Like he’s reminding me who he is, and what he can do.

“Is this what breaks you?” he murmurs. “The weather?”

My throat tightens.

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you tried to escape twice, bled for it, and still looked me in the eye like you weren’t afraid.”

I don’t answer. Can’t.

His voice drops further, almost thoughtful. “But thunder leaves you shaking like a leaf.”

“It’s not the thunder,” I whisper. “It’s what it reminds me of.”

I don’t elaborate. I don’t need to. He doesn’t deserve that part of me. He’s silent a beat, then says, “I didn’t expect you to fall apart.”

“I didn’t expect you to care.”

Kolya doesn’t flinch. “You shouldn’t have trusted William.”

I turn my face toward the wall. My voice cracks. “He was all I had.”

He’s quiet for a long moment. Then, carefully, “Now you have me.”

I laugh—hoarse, bitter, trembling. “That’s not comfort, Kolya. That’s a threat.”

Another crack of thunder makes me wince, but I don’t pull away from him. His grip on my wrist shifts. He moves closer, kneeling fully beside the bed now, and I feel the heat of his body as he leans in.

“You’re stronger than this,” he says softly. “I’ve seen it.”

“I don’t need your approval.”

“I’m not offering it.”

“Then what are you offering?”

His silence stretches again. My heart hammers.

Finally, he answers, voice rough and quiet: “I don’t know.”

He says it like it surprises him.

Like maybe he came in here expecting to gloat, or punish, or just watch me unravel—but now he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. His hand hasn’t moved from mine. His breath is close. The storm rages on outside, but inside the room, something has shifted. Tightened. Heated.

I can feel it in the stillness. In the way he watches me like I’m some equation he can’t solve.

“You don’t have to understand me,” I say, voice barely above a whisper. “Just let me go.”

Kolya exhales slowly.

Then, without a word, he stands.

I expect him to leave.

Instead, he sits in the chair beside the bed, and stays.