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“Not so fast.”

Lena’s eyes shift to whoever is standing behind me. I raise my hands up and slowly turn to see Abby standing at the end of the hallway. Her violet eyes are narrowed, staring straight down her arm to her hand. Her fingers are clenched around the handle of a gun.

It’s in this moment that I realize this is worse than the night I almost lost my life at the hands of Julian. This time I might lose Lena too.

Twenty-Eight

Lena

When I was a child, I feared my father. His rigid posture matched his rigid personality. He wore his narcissism like a badge of honor, for all the world to see.

After I left Julian, sometimes I would lay awake at night wondering if I stayed with Julian because he was similar to my father. Other times I wondered if there was a piece of my soul that was broken, unable to weed out the decent men from the psychotic ones.

Most of my childhood was spent striving to be the opposite of the woman my father wanted me to be. Maybe in some way, my choice to stay with Julian was my twisted way of appeasing my father, making up for the disappointment I had become to him over the years.

It wasn’t until I’d met Logan that my life changed. He sparked a fire in me I didn’t even know existed. I began to see how my relationship was never mine and Julian’s. It had always been Julian’s.

But when I wake up and a sharp pain jolts the side of my head, I remember the words Logan had said to me the moment he woke up in the hospital after nearly dying by Julian’s hands.

He cracked open his eyes and held my hand in his. His left eye was still swollen. Blue, purple, and yellow stained his once flawless skin. Numerous cuts were scattered across his face. Some were small and intricate; others were held together by a few small pieces of thread. I cried, tears streaming down my face. If it hadn’t been for me, Logan wouldn’t have been where he was, in the hospital clinging to life. I apologized twenty times over, the guilt overwhelming me. I wished I was the person lying in the hospital bed instead of Logan. My weakness of allowing Julian to manipulate every aspect of my life was deserving of the pain Logan had endured.

As if he could read the guilt on my face, he lifted his hand and swiped his thumb across the top of my cheek, gathering the tears that continued to spill. “Ten years from now,” he whispered. “Make sure you can say you chose your life and that you didn’t settle for it.”

Gripping my head, he pulled me down and pressed his lips to my forehead. “I think it’s finally time you take back what was always yours.”

I stared at him, confused by what he meant. A ghost of a smile appeared across his mouth, spreading the cut on the top of his lip. “Your life.”

Pain shoots from the side of my head, shooting across my entire skull, as I try to turn my head. The musty, moldy smell from earlier overwhelms me, reminding me where I am.

I suck a sharp breath in between my teeth and blink several times, attempting to open my eyes. My hair is fanned across my cheek, the strands sticking to my face. I pick my head up, the stinging sensation getting worse the more I move. It feels like a knife has been stabbed into the side of my skull.

Liquid seeps from the same side of my head as the pain, dripping down my jaw and onto my shoulder. It smells metallic, the scent growing stronger the more it drips onto my skin. It mixes with the mold and dirt lingering in the air and I fight back the urge to vomit. I try to lift my hand to touch the wound on my head but my arm jerks from behind me. My arms are tied behind my back. When I tug on them to gauge how tightly I’m bound, my skin is pulled against rough strands of thick rope, tightening with every attempt to free myself.

Realizing my arms are useless, I finally gather enough strength to lift my head. My tongue is dry, and the corners of my mouth are sore. There’s fabric tied around my mouth, keeping me from being able to fully breathe. I try not to panic, thinking of any possible scenario where I might make it out of this.

My hair is still fanned across my face as I search the room. Slowly, everything pulls into focus.

I’m still in Abby’s office building. Or what I thought was her new office. The last thing I remember before my life faded to black was the old donut sitting on the desk and Abby’s face. After that, everything is a blur.

I scan the room, searching for any hint that Abby’s still here. My breath is caught in my throat when I see Natalie. She’s tied to a chair, much in the same way I am. Her hair is curtained around her face, her head resting against her shoulder. If it wasn’t for the chef jacket she’s wearing, I wouldn’t have known it was her. Blood seeps out from the side of her head and I can only imagine that’s how I look as well.

Natalie’s name is stitched into the corner of her chef jacket, near her left shoulder. White thread stitched into the thick fabric to form the letters of her name. Natalie Weston.

Tears line my eyes and my vision blurs. I wasn’t sure how Natalie fit into all of this but if she was tied to a chair like me, I knew it wasn’t good. Even from across the room, I can tell how young Natalie looks. My heart cracks, remembering how Logan said Natalie had always dreamed of becoming a world-renowned chef. I wasn’t entirely certain where Natalie fit into this mess with Abby, but my stomach sinks knowing in some way I’m at fault.

“Natalie?” I whisper her name, trying to stay as quiet as I possibly can. There’s still no sign of Abby but to be on the safe side, I keep my voice down.

Natalie doesn’t answer me. Aside from the subtle rise and fall of her shoulders , I’d think she was dead.

“Natalie,” I whisper again. “Wake up.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

I dart my head to the left and hold my breath. It gets lodged in my throat and I fight the urge to cough. Abby steps out from the end of the hallway into the open space where Natalie and I are, a gun in her hand. My eyes move across her black painted fingernails to the tan skin of her arms. Her silver hair is hanging loose around her shoulders, waving at the ends. She has all the components of my best friend, the features I recognize as Abby’s. But the expression on her face makes me realize Abby is gone. The woman I’m staring at is a stranger. Darkness clouds her once violet eyes. The corner of her mouth curls and it’s a motion I’ve never seen on her until now.

Abby slowly walks across the space, turning the gun over in her hands. She’s pretending to inspect it, pulling the magazine out, counting the number of bullets before shoving it back in.

She frowns then lifts her gaze. She stops five feet from where she’s left me tied to this chair. My chest rises and falls, significantly faster than Natalie’s at the moment.

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