Page 108 of Servitude to Serpents

He holds my collar, bagged like evidence at a crime scene, but I suppose that makes sense. All of this a fucking disaster, my body the crime scene, made that way long before Warrick saved me. For the first time, I’m shown my own unraveling, the frayed tendrils of my mind. He raises it, showing the beautiful, broken thing to me. “You can hold it if you give me your name.”

“Renee,” I gasp, the only name that will come to mind. “My name is Renee Stinson.” My mother's maiden name. It’s stupid, but my brain isn’t working, and I need thatback.

He shakes his head, pulling out his phone, dragging through something on the screen.

“Give it to me, please!”

“We’re off to a poor start, Chloe.”

My eyes struggle to focus on the phone screen when he all but shoves it in my face. It’s a video, the volume blaring suddenly. “…Twenty-one-year-old dental assistant Chloe Tyson was last seen inside of this bar with a group of friends on her birthday, November 17thof last year. Her friends say she went outside alone to get some air and never returned. Unfortunately, the surveillance cameras around the bar weren’t in operation that night, a detail some say is suspicious.”

I watch as the female reporter gestures to my driver’s license picture on the screen, detailing my physical appearance. I watch what must be an old recording of the broadcast with the same silent reverence you’d use when you watch a car crash. The Sour Grape looks the same as it did that night, down to the icy rain dripping off the purple awning.

“…Her father, heir to the well-known Instrument manufacturing powerhouse, prefers to remain out of the public eye but has issued a statement urging for his daughter's safe return, as well as offering a one hundred thousand dollar reward to anyone with information that could lead to her return.”

One hundred thousand. My master paid far more than that for me.

“You already knew who I was so,why? Why do all of this?” I whisper, the sound guttural and broken.

“I wanted to know if Chloe Tyson was a liar,” he comments casually before gesturing for someone else to enter. My eyes spill over with tears as he hands another man the bag holding my collar. “I want that logged and printed.”

I’m gutted, my only free hand clamped around my stomach, like it will stop the bleeding.

The world was looking.

They knew.

My dadcared.

Did Warrick know?

My bottom lip wobbles. He was watching them.Of coursehe knew.

He’d known about the reward, about the appeals and searches.

“Now, care to explain how a dental assistant from Chicago drops off the face of the Earth outside a shitty bar on her birthday and ends up across the world and arrested during an FBI raid of one of the world's most wanted man?” I stare at him, my chest heaving. The silence between us drags on for ages before he sighs, checking his watch. “Look at that. It’s officially five past midnight.Happy Birthday.”

I decide then that this is all some kind of fucked comeuppance. The whiplash I’ve experienced in the past year has forever changed me into someone unrecognizable. It's some kind of divine punishment dealt out by the world, just like my mom always said it would be. Punishment for letting her drown that night, punishment for going on with my life, for trying to live while she rotted. It’s my penance, and it's finally coming to its exquisite, violent end.

And I don’t mind.

I sit back, my body slumping against my skewed pillows on the hospital bed. My now nearly waist-long blonde hair is knotted in waves around my face. He stares back at me, and I recognize something in his eyes, a coldness I’ve become accustomed to. A brutality, awarning,but that look doesn’t scare me, not when I’ve bedded with monsters. Still, I sit, letting the lack of weight around my neck, the beeping from the machine, choke me, slithering through my veins like a snake. He opens his mouth, but before he has time to put substance to any of the vilethings weighing him down, the door to the room flies open, our heads snapping toward the woman who bursts through.

“Hello, my name is Naomi Durian. I’m with social services.” She gives me a reassuring nod before turning a hard look at Agent Benigno. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, tormenting a victim?”

I don’t know what it is about that word that makes me feel faint, like all the heat rushes to my head, and my stomach cramps and curdles.

“You have no authority—"

“Actually, I have every authority, granted by the federal government to act in the best interests of—”

“You will not impede this investigation!” He snaps, making me flinch.

She doesn’t bat an eye. "Surely, we can have this conversation elsewhere."

He glares at me, before relenting, stalking out of the door before her.

The woman’s fiery red hair swishes, framing her round, heart-shaped face. “I’ll be right back, Chloe. Everything is going to be alright. I’ll get you back home, okay?”

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