Page 44 of Fallen Empire

Itsuffocates.

And the moment you try to breathe—try to scream—it reminds you: Last time, you couldn’t walk for three days. Last time, he shattered your bedside lamp across your back. Last time, you almost didn’t wake up.

Fighting back felt like war in a ten-by-ten ring.

But there was no ref. No bell. No mercy.

And ifthatwas the punishment for staying...

What the hell would leaving look like?

What kind of rage would come from him learning you escaped?

What would happen if no one opened the door on the other side?

Because people love a comeback story—once you're already standing. But when you’re flat on your face, bleeding, begging for help?

That’s when you find out just how many people were really in your corner.

Spoiler alert: It’s not many.

And now, lying here, I understood why some women never made it out. Why some gave up. Why silence was easier than survival. The pain I’d endured at the mercy of someone who once claimed to love me didn’t compare to the fire clawing its way through my chest now. This pain wasn’t rage or fear—it wassomething worse. Something deeper. A raw, unrelenting agony that pulsed with every shallow breath.

I’d never been shot before. Never thought I would be.

The bullet missed my heart by less than an inch. I’d heard the doctor say it. Heard Millie’s sobs when they wheeled me in. Heard Jaxson’s voice crack. They thought I couldn’t. But I could. Somewhere beneath the surface of it all—beneath the copious amounts of morphine, the machines, and the darkness pulling at me—I could hear every sound like it was underwater, muffled and distant but real.

The pain should’ve knocked me out completely. I almost wished it had. My body was numb in places it shouldn’t have been, while others felt like they were burning alive. My chest throbbed, a steady, crushing rhythm that reminded me I was still here, still breathing… barely.

My ribs ached with every shallow rise and fall, and my spine felt splintered from the accident, from the fall, from everything.

The drugs dulled it, but they didn’t take it away. Not completely. I was caught in between—too weak to wake, too strong to let go.

And maybe that was the worst part.

Because I wanted to.God, I wanted to. Not because I didn’t love them—Millie, Jaxson, the life I almost had—but because letting go seemed easier than holding on to a body that felt more broken than whole. The morphine couldn’t touch the kind of pain that came from being betrayed, hunted, shattered, and left to bleed on the floor while the man I thought I’d never escape stood in front of me with a gun.

So I stayed in the quiet, in the space between life and whatever came after, because waking up meant feeling all of it again.

And I wasn’t sure I could survive it twice.

"It's been over an hour. She should’ve shown some sign of life by now."

Millie. I knew that voice anywhere, sharp but cracking at the edges. She was close. Probably right next to me, pacing or perched on the edge of a chair, clutching whatever hope she had left.

"Give her time, Millie."

Jaxson. Deeper, quieter. His voice came from the other side of the bed. I was between them. Between the two people I loved more than anything in the world.

And I wanted—desperately—to tell them I was still here.

I’d tried earlier. Just my hand. A twitch. A movement. Something to let them know I wasn’t gone. But the pain that shot through my arm was unbearable. Like dragging shattered glass beneath my skin, every tendon set on fire. It radiated up to my shoulder, seizing my chest until it felt like my lungs were collapsing beneath the weight of it. I’d had no choice but to retreat again, to slip back into the safety of stillness.

I couldn’t feel my feet. Not even a tingle. I wondered if they were still attached to my body, or if the numbness meant something worse. It was a terrifying thing—not knowing what pieces of you are still intact. What’s been taken.

But I could feel my left leg.

God, I could feel it.