Page 96 of Thorne
I stay at the table.
The footsteps come from the hallway.
I know the weight of that tread before I see him: left foot landing fractionally heavier than right. I've been tracking him since the first day, mapping him the way I map rooms.
He stops beside the table. Doesn't speak.
I feel him looking at me. At my hands motionless on the wood, at the cold cup of coffee I haven't touched in hours, at the collar of my shirt hiding the marks he left last night.
His hand reaches out. Not to my arm this time. To my shoulder. The touch is firm but not brutal. A claim, not a punishment.
"You may be done with the names." His voice is low. Dangerous. "But we're not done."
I close my eyes. "I know."
I stand. My legs hold, barely. The soreness from last night hasn't faded. It's been layered over by hours of sitting, and now everything aches at once.
He doesn't grip my arm. He walks beside me down the corridor, his hand moving to the small of my back. Guiding, not dragging. The difference registers somewhere deep.
The safe room door. He keys the lock. Holds it open.
I step inside. He follows. The door closes with that pressurized click I've come to know like a heartbeat.
He's not interested in making my suffering less. He never has been. The taking is the point. The way he uses my body to quiet whatever is screaming in his head.
He doesn't reach for my clothes. He reaches into his tactical vest and pulls out a folded stack of papers.
He throws them onto the cot. The header on the first page reads:Mitigation and Cooperation Record: Julianna Stratton. Prepared by Cassie Brennan.
"Cassie pulled me aside." His voice is a low, dangerous rasp, but it's not vibrating with arousal. It's vibrating with a shock that he's trying to turn into anger. "She told me what you said in the kitchen yesterday. About the six months before you ended up in that Ghostwater cage."
I look at the file, then back at him. My chest tightens. This wasn't supposed to be part of the transaction between us. "It's just context for her file."
"Context." He steps closer, closing the distance until the heat of his body acts as a physical barrier. "You attempted to burn the funding streams. You attempted to cut the arterial flow to the clinics before …"
"I tried." I don't look away.
"And Phoenix caught you."
"Yes."
"They locked you in a cage because you attempted to stop the very thing I've been punishing you for."
The silence in the room is sudden and absolute. The electronic hum of the lights seems to amplify. Thorne is staring at me, his eyes tracking every micro-expression on my face.
"Why didn't you tell me?" His voice drops into a register he hasn't used before. It's stripped of the venom. "When I put a gun to your chest at the dam. When I hit you with that belt … Why didn't you say you fought to stop it?"
"Because I'm still responsible for all of it." The words feel like glass in my throat. "I fought to stop it, but I failed. The money went through. Intent doesn't change the outcome. I still owe the debt."
He stares at me, something massive fracturing behind his eyes. The architecture of his hatred, the framework he's used to justify every brutal thing he's done to me, cracks straight down the middle.
"You let me torture you," he breathes, the realization hitting him like a physical blow. "You let me treat you like a monster, because you think you deserve it."
"I deserve all of it."
"No." He shakes his head, stepping back as if I've burned him. He looks at his own hands, the hands that left the bruises covering my body. "Jesus Christ, Stratton. You're not the monster. I am."
He doesn't touch me. He can't. He turns and hits the door release, the pressurized click sounding like a gunshot. He walks out, leaving the door wide open behind him, taking the last of his justifications with him.
