Page 9 of Beyond Hate

Otto had come in wordlessly earlier and taken my face in his hands—I’d frozen under the touch, but he’d just dabbed antiseptic on the cut on my head, and gently pressed a bandage to my skin. It took me longer than it should have to realize I’d relaxed in his hold, that my body was falling into the sensation of someone taking care of it for the first time in… a long time.

He didn’t say anything, but his eyes lingered on the cuts and bruises. A myriad of emotions spilled through his catlike gaze, so fast I could barely follow them, too deep for me to understand. I was still silently staring at him when his finger brushed against my split lip, and he searched my face for a moment before he stood and left again, ignoring the soft sound of the wordpleasecoming from my throat.

It was like he couldn’t hear me at all.

Or maybe it was just the fact that he didn’tcare. I had to shove down the feeling that tried to overwhelm me—the odd sense ofpeace at having someone take care of me—and remind myself that he’d kidnapped me. He’d taken me off the street.

He wanted tohurtme.

After that, the only way I could tell something close to a day had passed was because they flipped the lights in the room off at night and left me alone with the sound of the chained man rattling metal against the walls in the darkness. The other one on the bed was silent, watchful. I tried to talk to him, but the dark look he shot me shut me up.

His angry demeanor didn’t stop him from whimpering when he dreamed, though. The sound of my soft crying added to the noise like some fucked-up duet that made it impossible to sleep.

By the time the lights flicked back on, I felt hollow. I’d kept expecting to wake up, to realize that this wasimpossible, and maybe Hudson was right. I was delusional. I wasn’timportantenough for someone to watch, let alone kidnap.

I never thought I’d repeat his abuse like a mantra of comfort, but it didn’t matter anyway. I was still chained up when two women came in with trays. One had a syringe, and she injected the man on the wall with it. Initially, nothing happened… then he gasped, his eyes flying wide and his body convulsing. I didn’t know much, but I had a feeling whatever they’d given him wasn’t actually supposed to help. He looked morealive,but the low sound of him begging them not to give him another shot told me maybe he didn’t want that at all.

Maybe dead was better.

The other tray had food, and she placed it in front of the man on the bed without a word as she walked away.

Neither of them looked at me.

At some point, I’d managed to pull myself up onto the bed that was obviously meant for me, hiding behind the paper-thin sheet they’d provided.

I wanted to be home beneath my weighted blanket, wrapped up in some mindless video or a book. I wanted to feelsafe…but the thought of Hudson’s burning eyes and the way he’d hit me reminded me I probably wouldn’t have had that even if I wasn’t here.

He probably wasn’t going to report memissing, and I had no one else who would bother. Til would think I’d quit, and my coworkers would probably just assume I’d finally done what they’d been telling me to do all along and left Hudson for a better life.

No one would care that I was gone.

No one would care that I washere.

No onecared.

The door slid open as I thought it, and those pale green eyes instantly skipped over the other two men in the room to land on me. I froze, caught in his expression, wondering… if I stayed still enough… if I stayed quiet enough…

Would he stay away?

Yes, I’m going to hurt you.

He’d sounded so…

Excited about it.

“Breathe, London.” Otto’s voice came out smooth, and it took me a second to realize he had a tray in his hand. “It’s not your turn to bleed today.”

He moved until he was in front of me, sitting the tray he held on the edge of my bed. It was hard to tear my gaze away from him long enough to see what was on it, and I was half afraid to look—if it was full of needles and blades, or other things meant for torture, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep a brave face.

The only reason I glanced away was because Otto was looking at me expectantly, and his gaze held more weight than I could handle. My eyes dropped.

It wasn’t torture instruments. It wasn’t needles.

It was food.

More than I’d had to eat in a while, if I was being honest with myself. Hudson hadn’t kept much in the apartment, and if he noticed me eating fast food, he always gave me shit.

I eyed it as though he’d laid out a trap in front of me, refusing to move. Refusing to speak. Refusing to…

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