Page 101 of Reckless Seduction
The touch is light. Careful. Her fingers brush against my temple as she tucks a damp strand of hair behind my ear, the motion so gentle it almost doesn’t feel real.
I close my eyes.
The tears come again, quieter this time, slipping free without the force of panic behind them.
No one comments.
No one tells me to stop.
They simply remain where they are, their presence steady and grounding in a way I can’t quite explain.
And somewhere between one breath and the next, with the echo of the nightmare finally fading into the background, I drift back to sleep.
FORTY-ONE
I stand beneath the showerhead,letting the warm water cascade down the length of my body. It beats against my skin hard enough to sting, but I welcome it. It’s the only thing here that feels clean. The only thing that doesn’t belong to them.
It’s been nearly two weeks since I was shoved into hell. Two weeks of learning how far a body can be pushed before it breaks. Two weeks of learning that hunger makes you quiet, pain makes you obedient, and fear… fear rewires you into something you barely recognize.
Tears roll down my cheeks, mixing with the spray as I hug myself, fingers digging into my own arms like I can hold myself together through sheer force. I take my time. I drag it out. Because once I step out of this shower, I know exactly what waits for me.
I hate myself for crying. For being weak. Even if no one is around to see it.
Lina warned me this day would come. Her voice echoes in my head like a curse I can’t shake. But I cling to the small sliver of hope that they will come rescue me.
Every turn of the lock has my heart racing. Every footstep outside the door has me holding my breath.
This is it. They’re here. I’m going home. They will come. They have to.
I had been so utterly naïve.
This is my fate now.
A whore.
A dead one if Lina gets her way.
“Bailey?” Yelena calls from beyond the partition. The thin curtain shifts slightly with the draft, her shadow barely visible through the plastic. The shower room is gym style—rows of heads, no doors, no privacy. Just bodies and shame and the illusion of modesty that the girls try to maintain.
“There is no privacy in hell,” one of them whispered my first night. I hadn’t understood then. I do now.
“Are you—are you ready?”
Her voice trembles. She’s trying to be brave for me, but she’s scared. I hear it. I feel it.
My heart breaks for her. Barely eighteen. Still soft in places the rest of us have hardened over. She was the first to befriend me. The first to slip me food when Giuseppe followed Lina’s orders to starve me. The first to sit beside me in the dark and talk like we were just girls again, not property.
“I’ll be right there.”
My voice cracks anyway. I can’t stop it.
I close my eyes, tilting my head back into the spray.
Kiernan’s hands ghost across my memory—rough and careful all at once. The way he and his brother took their time with me, washing me like I mattered. Like I was something worth touching gently.
The betrayal still stings like a bitch.
I am stalling.
