Page 3 of Crushed Vow

“Let go!” I scream, my scalp burning, my hands clawing at her grip. “How dare you!”

In all my time here—locked up, medicated, sedated—I’d never been dragged like this. Not until now.

She hauls me down a new corridor, the lights dimmer, the air colder, to a door marked “Therapy Room B.” Inside, it’s a torture chamber—padded walls, a single chair with restraints, a tray of syringes and electrodes.

My stomach drops, fear spiking. She straps me into the chair, my wrists and ankles bound, the leather biting my skin. “This is for your own good,” she says, her voice flat, as she attaches electrodes to my temples.

A low hum starts, and pain jolts through my skull—electroconvulsive therapy, unconsented, burning my nerves.

I grit my teeth, refusing to scream, my body jerking against the straps, my smock damp with sweat.

Grayson ordered this, I know it, to break me into submission, to make me beg for Luca. But I won’t break. I’ve survived cancer, Cassian’s chains, his betrayal. I won’t let them win.

The session ends, my head throbbing, my vision blurry, and Callahan drags me to a new room—a pitch-black isolation cell, the door slamming shut.

Darkness swallows me, no light, no sound, just my ragged breaths. Hours stretch into days, maybe weeks, time dissolving. I hallucinate—Cassian’s face, his blue eyes wild, my mother’s screams from the cell, spiders skittering over my skin.

I claw at the walls, my nails breaking, whispering, “I’m not mad,” my voice hoarse, my body shaking.

The dark is a living thing, crushing me, and I battle it, pounding the floor, screaming, “I’m Charlotte!” No one hears. No one’s coming.

Grayson’s won, Cassian’s gone, and I’m unraveling. I might die here, alone, a ghost in the dark, but I won’t break—not yet.

I didn’t know how many days—or weeks—had passed. Hunger gnawed at my ribs. My throat felt like sand. Sleep came in broken flashes of nightmares and delusion. I was beyond devastated.

Then the door creaked.

The sound sliced through the silence like a blade, and I flinched so hard my back slammed into the wall.

I couldn’t see. Not in this pitch black.

“Charlotte,” a voice called. Masculine. Familiar. A tremble laced the name.

I pressed myself tighter to the corner. My heartbeat thundered. No one came here to save me. They only came to hurt.

“Charlotte, can you hear me?” the voice came again, softer now, threading through the thick fog of my mind.

“What do you want?” I rasped. Even though the voice pulled at something deep inside me, I couldn’t trust it. Everyone here wore familiar faces and stabbed with hidden knives.

“It’s me. Ethan.”

The name struck like lightning.

I crawled forward, blinking into nothing. “Ethan?” My voice cracked. “How did you—how did you find me?”

Our hands touched—his was warm, alive. Real. He gripped mine firmly.

“I’ve been searching since the day you showed up at my apartment and disappeared,” he said, his breath quickening. “Isaw it—two cars pulled up and men in black grabbed you. I caught it all on my building’s CCTV.”

“It wasn’t you,” I whispered. “I know who did it. My father.”

Ethan exhaled hard, jaw clenched. “Let’s talk later. We don’t have much time. I hacked the system and got us in. Now let’s get out before we’re caught.”

He led me down a narrow back hall, flashlight dimmed beneath his palm. We moved in silence, barefoot, careful. The walls whispered like they could speak our secrets.

At the end of the hallway, a shadow shifted.

Ethan shoved me into an alcove, his hand over my mouth.