Page 36

T he bed was cold, empty sheets where V should have been.

I'd been suspended between numbness and anger for days now, nights spent with eyes closed, breathing measured while V waited in that purgatory of unspoken words nearby.

Something on the mirror caught my eye, a dark square among the still broken glass. V had taken to leaving Greek words which was a new addition, written in his sharp, distinctive script.

Paramoní.

I stared at the unfamiliar word, knowing instinctively what it meant before my mind translated it: Stay. Not a command, not exactly. More like a tether looped quietly around my throat.

I traced the letters, a shiver crawling through me like ice water through veins—the ghost of his hand lingering with every stroke. When had he left this? Last night, while I pretended to sleep, my breathing was too forced to be believable? This morning before he disappeared to his morning workout?

How long could I hold onto this anger before it drowned me? I was exhausted, not just from sleepless nights but from the constant vigilance of maintaining this wall between us—brick by emotional brick, mortar mixed with fear and resolve that crumbled faster than I could rebuild it.

All I needed was to look at the ashes where my heart once was—the hollow cavity he'd carved out with calloused hands that knew exactly how to break without leaving external bruises, filled with his poison that ran through my veins. Each beat a metronome counting down to inevitable destruction, a reminder that the man I'd fallen for was just a beautiful mask worn by a monster who knew exactly where to press to make me bleed, which wounds would scar and which would kill.

The emptiness of the apartment seemed to mock me, every corner haunted by memories I couldn't escape.

"Paramoní," I whispered to myself, the word still echoing in my mind from the mirror as I ripped the note, the pieces falling with the rest onto the floor neither of us bothered to clean.

Stay.

I'd spent weeks mentally rehearsing all the things I wanted to tell him, accusations and questions that scorched my throat like swallowed embers. But each time he entered a room, the words calcified in my lungs, refusing to surface.

Even if I learned to forgive him—I feared what would come after. Trusting again. Letting him close enough to slip between my ribs and tear my heart out all over again, this time with my naive permission.

I shook my head. It was too early for my brain, heart, and people pleasing personality to be clashing. Instead, I slipped back into bed, wanting to ignore reality for just a while longer.

His newest note lay like confetti on the floor, forgotten.

He was there when I woke up.

His arm weighed me down across my chest, hot and unyielding as molten iron poured fresh from the crucible. He slept like he didn't destroy me nightly—breaths deep and rhythmic, face slack with a peace I'd forgotten existed. Like this was normal. Like I was his wife and not his hostage, the diamond wedding band cutting into my finger.

I tried to slide out before he woke up. Instead of getting farther away, he pulled me tighter to him—my back flush with his bare chest.

His arm tightened around my waist when I shifted, his body coiling possessively behind mine. Heat radiated from his chest against my back, his breath warm against my neck. The muscles in his forearm flexed when I tried to slip away.

"I-I need to get up," I whispered, my voice tight with discomfort.

V's response was to pull me closer, one leg hooking over mine, effectively trapping me against him. His palm splayed flat across my stomach, fingertips pressing just enough to make his reluctance clear. I stiffened against his grip, throat dry with familiar fear. He made a low sound deep in his throat. His fingers dug into the soft flesh of my hip, then slowly uncurled one by one.

The moment his hold loosened, I bolted from the bed, putting immediate distance between us, the cool air a relief after the suffocating heat of his embrace. His eyes tracked my movement, unblinking as I hurried to the dresser. His stare burned between my shoulder blades as I grabbed the first clothes I could find.

The bathroom door closed behind me with a satisfying click—the only barrier he allowed between us. Even that small freedom felt like borrowed time. I braided my hair with trembling fingers, the movements offering small comfort in their familiarity. No makeup today—it would take too long, and the thought of being trapped in here while he waited outside made my skin crawl. I dressed quickly, fumbling with buttons, the cheap fabric of my dress a shield too thin to offer real protection.

When I emerged, V was waiting in the hallway, shoulders pressed against the wall, one foot crossed over the other. He hadn't bothered with a shirt, the marriage certificate stark against his skin—a permanent reminder of what he'd taken. His head tilted as I approached.

I pressed myself against the opposite wall, inching past him in the narrow hallway, careful to avoid even the slightest contact. My breath caught when his hand moved, but he only adjusted his mask, black fabric hiding whatever expression might lurk beneath. The kitchen beckoned with its promise of escape—of flour and sugar and things that made sense in a life that no longer did.

My bare feet slapped against the tile as I darted around gathering bowls, measuring cups, ingredients—building a fortress of normality against his silent presence. Cabinet doors opened and closed in quick succession, each task a desperate attempt to focus on something other than him. The refrigerator hummed as I pulled out eggs and butter, nearly dropping them when I turned to find him closer than I expected.

V followed, silent as a shadow, positioning himself in the doorway where he could watch every move I made. I kept the island between us as I worked, a pathetic barrier we both knew meant nothing to him.

He moved in that unnatural way of his—too graceful for someone his size. His hands found my face—warm, familiar, calloused fingertips that traced my cheekbones, mapping territory he considered conquered. "Stay with me."

My body jerked away on its own before my brain could intervene. A reflex now, muscle memory deeper than conscious thought. The rapid thud of my heart against my ribs felt like morse code spelling out danger-danger-run.

"I'm busy." The words were clipped, cold, my tongue clicking against the roof of my mouth with each syllable.

"Let me come with you."

"Since when do you ask permission?" The words erupted before I could stop them, rage bubbling up from depths I'd forgotten existed. Heat flooded my chest, my hands shaking—not with fear, but fury.

His head tilted, studying me like I was an equation he couldn't solve.

"Don't you dare look at me like that." The strength in my voice was waning. "I’m already trapped in your sick fantasy. Don’t treat it like it’s real."

His thumb brushed my lower lip, cutting off my words. The gesture was intimate in a way that made bile rise in my throat.

I shoved him away, the heel of my palm connecting with his solid chest. Hard enough to send him back a step.

"Don't touch me!" The scream tore from somewhere deep, years of swallowed protests finally finding their voice.

Let him watch me walk away from him. I hoped it ruined him, hoped the sight of what he'd claimed and couldn't keep would haunt him like his hands haunted me—phantom touches that made me scrub my skin raw in the shower.

"Just leave me alone," I spat, pushing past him, walking out the front door, slamming it shut behind me.

I hesitated, back against the door, chest heaving, waiting for something to happen.

Nothing.

He didn't follow. Didn't call. Didn't move.

For the first time since I'd known him, V let me leave without his shadow stretched across my path.

D aphne was at the dining room table pouring our tea as usual, amber liquid steaming as it arced from pot to cup. She looked over at me and smiled, teeth perfectly straight and white against her burgundy lipstick. Looking immaculate as she always did, not a hair out of place, clothes pressed crisp enough to cut. "There's my favorite girl." She must've seen how dejected I was as she put the teapot down, the porcelain making a delicate clink against the saucer. "What's wrong?"

Shoulders slumped, gravity suddenly stronger than it had been moments before. I moved to the table, placing the platter of cookies down, the scent of vanilla and butter rising from beneath the plastic wrap, sickeningly sweet. She moved tea across to my usual seat, and I dropped down. My body felt heavy, full of pain. Daphne's tea sat untouched, a mocking reminder that trust was another casualty of my marriage. The steam curled like ghostly fingers, beckoning me toward a poison I couldn't prove.

"That's a gorgeous ring," Daphne said, her eyes catching the diamond as it sent prisms dancing across the tablecloth, beautiful and cold as the man who gave it to me. "When did you get engaged?"

The truth was on the tip of my tongue, bitter as unripe fruit, but the consequences that came with the truth overruled it, swallowing the words back down where they burned in my chest. “Married.”

"You’re married!"

"We eloped."

"Is this your… friend you told me about?" Her eyes seemed to haze over, like in the cartoons when a love potion is sprayed, and they get big love eyes, pupils dilating with romantic fantasy. She placed her elbows on the table, her chin rested on her hands as she swooned at me. "What's the lucky guy's name?"

"V."

Daphne's face scrunched, fine lines appearing between her perfectly groomed brows. "Odd name."

I knew it was a moniker for the club, but I had no idea what his legal name actually was. "Yeah I know, but it suits him." She swayed again as she took a long breath in through her nose, shaking her head, the shake rolled down her entire body like a wave.

"Tell me about him."

"He's..." my mouth started before my brain had decided the answer, tongue moving independently of thought. "Different."

A smile twinged her lips, glossy and perfect. "What made you fall for him?" She took a sip of her tea, waiting, the porcelain cup clinking softly against her teeth.

Fall for him? I didn't fall. I slipped and was dragged, my heels carving desperate trenches in the earth. "He was..." I paused, searching for the lie, tongue heavy in my mouth. "Persistent."

"He sounds so loyal," Daphne sighed, a dreamy quality to her voice that grated against my nerves like nails on a chalkboard.

My stomach twisted. Loyal was just another pretty word for possessive. V's loyalty was a steel snare around my throat, tightening with every breath I dared take without him.

She looked high on drugs as the words left me, cheeks flushed and eyes bright with borrowed romance. "He's a man after my own heart." She swooned just like I did at the time; now it was a painful memory, a mockery of the girl I used to be. "I want to meet him."

"I'll talk to him about it." That was the smoothest lie I ever told, rolling off my tongue without a hitch. I looked at the clock, seeing it was past six o’clock. "Where's Chet?"

Daphne shrugged, fabric rustling softly with the movement. "I think he had a date."

I froze. "D-Date?"

She laughed sheepishly, "Did I forget to mention we had an open relationship?"

Yes, she had. "You're okay with him being with other women?"

She shrugged. "It works for us. I sleep around too." She took a sip of her drink, giving me a wink. "We've got rules, of course. Nobody at home. No close friends. Don't ask, don't tell. Just get tested regularly."

It wasn't jealousy or judgment I felt, just bitter envy for a freedom I'd never be allowed. She spoke of it so casually, unaware of the cage around my finger and the walls closing in tighter every day. “You don’t get… jealous?”

"Chet and I aren't dating to marry, we're dating to fill the lonely gaps." She shook her head. "Sometimes that's all a person needs."

I remembered the time before the Souls came into our lives. It was just Nyla and I in our apartment, Joslyn coming over occasionally for girls’ night. Weekly dinners at my parent’s house. I loved my best friends, but they had their own lives away from home. My life revolved around baking at home and online classes, except for once a week.

I was alone, the feeling suffocating me more when they met Mitchell and Sarge.

"You and your hubby ever thought about opening up the marriage?"

Not if she wanted everyone to die. I shook my head standing up, chair legs scraping against hardwood with a sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. "He's not the sharing type."

She chuckled as we walked over to the door, her heels clicking a staccato rhythm against the floor before walking out the door. “I’ll see you next week, honey.”

The road stretched ahead as I drove away from Daphne’s, empty and endless, heat waves rising from the asphalt, making it shimmer like a mirage.

I fully expected V to be home like he always was when I got done with class or baking deliveries. Opening the door to our apartment the lights were off, shadows pooling in corners where he usually stood.

The keys clattered into the bowl by the door, the clock on the wall ticking too loudly. The silence wasn't peaceful. Grinding my teeth, I dug my nails into my palms until they stung, small crescent moons of pain to ground me.

Why couldn't I let villains stay villains?

He hurt me.

He betrayed me .

I didn't owe him anything.

So why did I feel so guilty?

Because you're a people pleaser, Oakley. You'd rather bleed out with a smile than admit someone is hurting you.

The faint tapping sound began and my heart stuttered, a missed beat that left me lightheaded. I forced myself to ignore it, instead grabbing my unfinished book, letting the words pull me under, the fictional world swallowing me whole.

That was how people died in horror movies–but my life was one.

Everything was fine–

Until the power cut off.

My body jerked back instinctively, heart slamming against my ribs hard enough to bruise.

I hated the dark. Not just fear—madness-level terror. Furniture warped into threats, shadows bloated into things with teeth.

A soft rustle from the living room sliced through the quiet. Then another against furniture. The unmistakable creak of weight on floorboards, aged wood protesting beneath deliberate, measured steps that paused.

A moment of deathly quiet.

Then breathing that wasn’t mine.

My stomach plunged into freefall before my brain fully registered the danger. Approaching footsteps slithered through the apartment. My hand reached blindly for the wall, fingers spread wide and desperate, gasping at air. My legs turned to water beneath me, seemingly dissolved by terror, leaving only trembling muscles unable to support my weight. Panic surged. Clumsy fingers scrambled for my phone, throat tightening like it might blow, every heartbeat a hammer strike. I strained to listen past the thunderous drumming in my ears.

On shaking legs, I crept toward the bathroom, the only room with a lock and no windows. Each step felt like walking through quicksand, my muscles tight with the effort to remain silent, floorboards threatening to betray me with every shift of weight. I locked the door behind me—a frail barrier between my body and whatever waited outside. Rushing to the tub, pressing my back to the cold tile trying to control my frantic breathing.

My fingers found V's contact before my brain caught up, muscle memory betraying conscious thought like a body turning toward its abuser for comfort. The screen illuminates my face. I should call the cops, my father, 911.

But my fingers didn’t dial any of them.

The phone connected halfway through the first ring. "Oakley?"

"S-Someone broke in." I couldn't mask the terror that fractured my voice.

A door slammed, then rushing wind. "Stay on the phone."

"O-Okay." My hands shook so badly that the phone kept sliding against my face, slick with tears.

"Where are you?"

"I-I..." I wedged myself deeper into the bathtub, shower curtain pulled closed. My knees pressed into my chest. "Bathroom. Tub."

"Anyone see you go in?"

"I don't—I don't know." My vision blurred with tears as I scanned the dark bathroom, shadows seeming to move and shift at the corners of my vision, making me doubt my own senses.

"Weapons?"

"N-No." A low growl came through the phone, raising the fine hairs on the back of my neck.

"Find something."

I scrambled through the shower caddy, the plastic bottles clattering too loudly in the enclosed space, the sound magnified by fear and adrenaline. A shampoo bottle toppled over the edge, hitting the tile floor with a thunderous crack that seemed to echo forever, the plastic splitting and spilling its contents across the floor in a slick puddle that smelled artificially of coconut. I froze, heart in my throat, breath caught painfully in my chest.

Suddenly, silence from outside. The footsteps stopped.

The first crack hit the bathroom door. Then another. Splintering wood. The sound reverberated through my body, each impact sending a jolt of terror through my system, adrenaline spiking my blood.

"Oakley?" V's voice was laced with urgency.

The wood cracked again, louder, vibrating through my bones. Oh my God. They’re breaking down the door.

The call flickered, his voice cutting in and out like a bad radio signal. "V-V? Can you hear?—"

The line went dead.

No, no, no.

The door exploded inward, air whooshing past as wood splinters sprayed across the bathroom floor like shrapnel. Through the gap in the shower curtain, I saw only a tall, masked silhouette.

They stood impossibly still, head tilted, listening. Waiting. As if savoring my fear. The way they just stood there made my skin crawl, goosebumps rising on my arms as sweat trickled cold between my shoulder blades.

Their head turned slowly, scanning the bathroom. Eyes lingering on cabinets, corners. The silence stretched, broken only by my shuddering breath behind the curtain, loud as thunder to my own ears.

My phone clattered against the bottom of the tub, drawing their attention to me.

"V!" I screamed his name knowing he wouldn't reach me.

The shower curtain tore away from its rings as they ripped it aside, plastic hooks scattering across the bathroom floor. I pressed against the back wall of the tub, nowhere left to retreat, cold porcelain against my spine.

A fist twisted in the front of my shirt, hauling me forward before slamming me back against the tub wall. My skull cracked against tile, stars exploding behind my eyelids. Their other hand found my throat, fingers digging into my skin. Fire filled my lungs, each breath a desperate, impossible gasp.

I clawed at their wrist, but their grip only tightened. Spots bloomed across my vision as my jaw clenched, teeth grinding together with an audible scrape that vibrated through my skull. My legs began to twitch, small spasms working their way up from my calves to my thighs—my body fighting even as my mind began to dim.

The torn curtain wrapped around my flailing arms like a shroud, wet plastic clinging to my skin. I couldn't get leverage in the slick tub, feet sliding uselessly against the porcelain as I tried to push myself up.

My thoughts scattered like birds, impossible to catch, fragments of memory and fear and desperate prayer colliding without coherence. Colors flickered at the edges of my vision—green, purple, black—and then nothing. My ears roared, a waterfall that drowned thought. For a split second, I forgot where I was, forgot who I was.

The need for oxygen overwhelmed everything else, a desperate instinct that reduced me to pure animalistic survival.

They leaned over the edge of the tub, using their weight to press down on my throat. I bucked against them, my shoulder slamming into the faucet. Water burst on, shocking cold against my neck and chest. The sudden spray made them flinch back just enough for me to gulp a breath.

My hand shot out, fingers scrambling along the shower caddy until something sharp bit into my palm.

A razor.

I swung blindly upward. The blade caught them across the forearm as they reached for me again, slicing through fabric and flesh. They jerked back with a hiss, dark stains spreading across their sleeve.

But they didn't retreat. They lunged forward, both hands wrapping around my throat now, using the edge of the tub for leverage as they pressed down. Water sprayed everywhere, soaking us both, making everything slippery and desperate.

I drove the razor up again, this time catching them in the shoulder. The blade sank deep, and they finally made a sound— a low, animal grunt. Blood dripped down onto my face, mixing with the shower water running into my eyes.

They didn't let go. If anything, their grip tightened, fingers crushing my windpipe until I couldn't even wheeze. My vision tunneled to a pinpoint of light.

For a moment, I thought I heard my name whispered from somewhere far away, a voice I recognized cutting through the fog. Hallucinations from a brain starving for oxygen, I told myself, even as hope flared painfully in my chest.

My legs went limp, body sliding down the angled back of the tub until water pooled around my ears. They followed me down, one knee braced against the tub's edge, never releasing their stranglehold. Water flooded my nose and mouth, but I couldn't turn my head to escape it, neck muscles refusing to obey.

One of their hands left my throat to grab my left wrist, squeezing until the wedding band cut deep, metal biting into swollen flesh.

"GIVE IT!" The scream pierced through my fading consciousness, words barely making sense through the static in my ears.

With my free hand, I found the hard edge of the faucet and swung my elbow back. The impact vibrated through my arm. They grunted, their weight shifting as they lost balance on the wet tile.

Something hard—their elbow—caught me in the temple. Pain exploded white-hot through my skull. My teeth sank into my tongue, mouth filling with copper.

Through the haze, I heard it—The front door hitting the wall. Heavy footsteps pounding down the hallway outside. A roar that made the walls shake.

My attacker's head snapped toward the sound, their grip on my wrist loosening for just a moment. They didn't waste time. Clutching their wounded shoulder, they scrambled over the tub's edge and bolted for the bedroom. I heard the latch snap, glass sliding up, then the thud of feet hitting the ground outside the thin walls.

Gone.

I slumped sideways in the tub, consciousness flickering like a dying bulb. The water kept running over me, but I couldn't feel it anymore, body numb and disconnected from shock. My limbs splayed at awkward angles against the curved basin, heavy with the weight of injury.

Breath rasped like a broken machine. Thought frayed until only instinct remained.

My chest burned with each shallow gasp. My head throbbed in sync with the pressure building behind my eyes.

My ring finger pulsed with agony, each heartbeat driving the diamond-studded band deeper.

Paramoní.

A laugh choked up my throat. Of course I stayed.

That was the only thing I knew how to do right.