Page 109 of Mason

My pulse is wild, my body raw and weak, but I thrash—I thrash anyway.

Because I know what’s coming.

I know.

And I still can’t stop it.

His knee slams into my spine, pinning me down, and I hear his breath—slow, controlled.

The same way he spoke.

Calm.

Unfeeling.

I squeeze my eyes shut, focusing on the bracelet.

The tracker.

If I can get to it, if I can set off the alert?—

A sharp crack fills the air as my head is yanked back, my vision swimming.

“No one’s coming, baby.”

He laughs—soft, breathy, dark.

Then he starts to break me.

Gravel bites into my skin through the thin fabric of my clothes as my knees scrape against the ground. I don’t cry out.

I refuse to break. I refuse to give him that satisfaction.

Surviving a man like David Eddy didn’t just toughen me—it forged me. It turned pain into armor, fear into fuel. And I’ll be damned if I let this bastard undo what I bled to become.

His grip is iron in my hair, yanking me forward until my face nearly presses into the filth-streaked ground. My wrists burn from the ropes, my shoulders screaming in protest as I struggle, but it doesn’t matter.

He’s stronger.

And he’s already decided how this ends.

I try to retreat into my mind. To somewhere else. Anywhere else.

But I can’t.

Because his voice is there, in my ear, his breath warm, slow, deliberate.

“You’re on your own now, sweet cakes. No-one is coming for you.”

It’s a lie.

And I think he knows it.

Because no matter what he does, no matter how hard he tries to take this from me, Mason will still come.

Mason will still kill him for this.

But that doesn’t help me now.

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