Page 77 of His To Erase

The second one lunges from the doorway and I pivot, catching his momentum and looping the rope around his forearm mid-strike. I twist hard, dragging him off balance and slamming him into the wall so hard the crack of bone echoes through the room. He crumples, spitting blood on the floor.

I crouch over him, while my lungs claw for air. Blood drips from my knuckles, and my vision narrows slightly, but I don’t let it pull my focus.

Not yet.

“You should’ve run,” I growl, as I reach for him again.

I’ve got him in a chokehold, seconds from crushing his windpipe, when it hits. A sting at the base of my neck.

My body reacts before my brain catches up.

Fuck. Not again.

I rip the dart from my neck, my vision already tilting sideways while the floor shifts beneath me. This time it kicks in faster, since it’s already in my system. My legs don’t respond the way they should—as my muscle turns to dead weight, every step harder than the last.

My pulse slams against my skull, but I shove off the wall, willing myself forward, sheer instinct dragging me three paces before my knees hit the concrete.

Hard.

Pain fractures through my shins, but it’s distant. Drowned by the chemical fog bleeding into my veins.

A shadow moves. The silhouette sharpens as it steps into the light—and the second I hear the voice, I know.

“Hello, Steven.”

My blood runs colder than the concrete beneath me.

No.

It can’t be her.

That voice doesn’t belong here. It belongs to a nightmare I buried in a different life—wrapped in fire and gunfire and the smell of burned skin.

“Get him tied back to that chair,” she says, calm as ever. “And do it tighter this time. If he breaks out again, I’ll cut your fucking hands off myself.”

Leather boots scrape behind me as hands grab my shoulders, jerking me upright with the grace of a butcher lifting meat. The rope bites into my skin, tighter this time. I feel my blood throb beneath it.

She steps in closer, just enough for me to smell the faint trace of something floral under gun oil. Jasmine and violence.

I lift my head, muscles twitching with resistance, but the serum’s already dragging me under. I can feel it. My thoughts fracture, and the only thing still sharp is her.

“Still hard to kill, I see.”

I stare at her, unmoving. I couldn’t respond if I wanted to. My body’s failing, but my mind’s screaming.

The last time I saw her, the world was burning—and she was at the center of it. There was blood all over her hands, and she was screaming.

My vision flickers.

The concrete bleeds into memory—blood pools in the cracks of the warehouse floor, bodies are slumped against rusted beams, the light flickers, and shadows crawl up the walls like they’ve never left.

“You should’ve stayed gone,” I rasp, trying not to pass out. Every word drags like sandpaper being torn from my throat.

A soft, low chuckle follows, laced with something dark. “You should’ve stayed dead.”

Then all I see is black.

I fight to lift my head, vision swimming. The light above swings, casting her face in flickering shadow—and still, there’s no mistaking her.

Time didn’t soften her, it carved her into something cold. The girl I bled for is gone. What’s standing in front of me now…isn’t flesh and memory. It’s a phantom draped in the face of the girl I should’ve saved.

“What did he promise you?” My tongue feels thick and dry. “Money? Power?”

“Closure,” she says softly. “Funny how we both came for the same thing.”

My gut twists.

“You were with him?”

“Still am.”

Her voice is too calm for a girl who once clung to me with blood on her hands and terror in her eyes.

It doesn’t match the memory I’ve spent half a decade chasing.

If she’s really standing here, alive and colder than I ever remember—then either she’s been broken into something I don’t recognize…

or I’ve been chasing a ghost that never needed saving.

And fuck, I don’t know which is worse.

“You never understood, Steven. You thought you were the only one he broke. The only one who survived.”

She crouches, putting her face inches from mine, and it’s like staring down a barrel I used to trust.

“But I didn’t survive,” she murmurs. “I adapted.”

Her arms were in front of her, tied at the wrists, trembling so hard I thought they’d snap. He leaned into her, saying something low against her ear—and even now, I can’t stop hearing the silence that followed.

I lunged—then the gun went off.

She screamed. I saw her fall. I watched the blood bloom beneath her body. I thought she was gone.

I buried that night in the deepest part of me and let it rot there. And then I burned everything in my path trying to make him pay for it. I mourned her like a fool, but she was never a victim.

“You killed that part of me,” she whispers, almost tender. Almost like she’s grieving it. “The night you ran.”

“I didn’t run.”

“You didn’t stay either.”

My jaw locks, the ropes biting deeper as I clench my fists. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

She straightens, smoothing her skirt like she’s wrapping up a therapy session and not carving me open. “He taught me how fast love turns into leverage.”

I almost laugh because nothing about this is funny. “Why now?” I ask. “Why bring me here?”

She tilts her head like she’s weighing the truth. “Because you’re circling something you don’t understand. And he thinks you’ll get to it before he does.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

She smiles. “The girl.”

My entire body goes still. “Ani?” I whisper.

She shrugs. “Is that what she calls herself?”

She’s fucking with me. Or worse—she’s not. And that’s the part that twists deeper. It confirms everything I’ve been thinking for weeks. But hearing it from her mouth is a different kind of poison.

“You don’t touch her,” I snarl, teeth bared.

She doesn’t flinch. “I don’t have to. Frank’s already inside her head. You’re just the decoy.”

I jerk against the rope, and my vision flashes red with rage.

The decoy?

No. That’s not possible.

It can’t be. But the pieces are already shifting in my head, and they’re too fucking clear.

I thought I was closing in. Every move felt like progress—like I had him. But it was a lie. He was never running. He was playing with me. Keeping me busy while he bled her dry.

She was the fucking bait. Fuck.

My pulse hammers against the rope, pounding in my ears like it already knows what’s coming. I don’t know exactly what I’m walking into—but I know it’s worse than I imagined.

“She’s not part of this,” I grit out.

She leans in again, lips brushing the edge of my ear. “She’s always been part of it,” she whispers. Like I should’ve known all along.

I snap forward, headbutting her so hard the chair tips. Pain detonates through my skull, but I hear her stumble back with a grunt.

“Still got fight in you,” she breathes, wiping blood from her lip.

I spit on the floor. “You have no idea.”

But I’m outnumbered, still drugged, and the second guard is probably on his way back.

“Tell Frank he picked the wrong fucking girl,” I growl.

She kneels beside me, slow and graceful like a predator, and drags her nail down my cheek. The sting is sharp, but it’s not about pain. This is war after all.

“Tell Ani,” she purrs, her voice dipped in something colder than venom, “that the monster she’s running from sleeps in her bed.”

My whole body goes still. Rage pulses so hot behind my eyes I could fucking explode. I breathe through it, forcing my focus through the haze. She’s trying to break me.

“What did he do to you?” I rasp.

Her smile fades. For the first time, something flickers in her expression—loss, maybe. Grief? But it’s gone a second later, replaced by steel.

“He taught me how to survive.”