Page 17 of Judgment Day

Something in my gut told me him being hospitalized wasn’t a coincidence. Grey wanted me back. He wantedusback.

“Are you mine, Sadie. Is this still mine?”

There were brief moments when we were together that he made me believe we could go back to that time and place, that we could pick up where we left off. There were even moments when I thought that was what I wanted. We could be powerful together. But once he found out the secrets I’d kept from him, he wouldn’t look at me the same way he did now. Then I would be alone.

Or worse.

What if another monster claimed me?

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t think anyone else was awake.” Anniston’s voice dragged me from my thoughts. She looked nothing like her father. With long dark hair and fair skin, she truly looked like a princess, the kind with big doe eyes and a perfect smile. The looks of a princess with the confidence of a queen, even in her plaid pajamas.

“It’s okay. Not many people sit around drinking tea at two in the morning.” I forced a tight smile.

She crossed the room, her own cup of tea in one hand, and sat down across from me at the table. “Nightmares?”

“Something like that.” Most nightmares were made of things people feared. Mine were made of memories.

Anniston set her cup on the table. “My father is sick, Sadie.” It sounded as though it pained her to say the words out loud. “Maybe now he can get the help he needs.” She placed her hand on top of mine. “I know that doesn’t justify his actions or take back the pain he’s caused all those girls—” She swallowed. “The pain he’s causedyou. But maybe now, the knowledge that it will be over soon can chase away whatever your nightmares are made of.”

I barked a laugh. “How can you be so sure it will ever be over?”

She knew nothing about my nightmares or what I’d done to survive them. Anniston had been attacked, and it was horrific and vile, but what she went through didn’t even scratch the surface of my pain. It wasn’t the kind of pain you brushed away with hope. It was the kind of pain that changed you, consumed you, until every time you looked in the mirror you no longer recognized the woman staring back.

“Because Chandler and his friends won’t stop until it is.” Anniston sat up straight, placing her hands in her lap. “And I have faith in them. Leo is all over the dark web. Grey knows there’s another house with more girls. It’s only a matter of time before he finds it.”

My heart raced with fear. Panic whirred inside me, twisting my stomach in knots.

It wasn’t a house.

It was a stable.

The nightmares sprang to life.

I knew I was in the breakfast room, surrounded by light blue walls, paintings of landscapes, and windows with long, canary-colored curtains. I knew I was safe. Nothing would hurt me here. But all I saw—all I felt—was that place. I felt the leather against my skin. I smelled the cypress and dirt. It all rushed in like flood waters, the silence and the screams, the sound of bare flesh being beaten, the scent of sweat and blood. I squeezed my hands together to keep them from shaking.

I was there, on the leather bench, all over again. A rectangle cutout in a wooden door separated the top half of my body from the bottom, exposing me from the waist down, leaving me vulnerable. Helpless. I felt the heavy polyester burning my wrist as the straps dug into my skin. I heard their voices. The laughing. The vulgar words. I couldn’t see them, and they couldn’t see me. The memories of them danced around me in circles, taunting me like little demons.

I couldn’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

I had no idea what was coming. Or who. I could only grit my teeth and bear it as they took what they wanted, when they wanted, however they wanted. I was nothing but a half-exposed body lying on a padded bench on the outside of a wooden door while they came in me, on me. They pissed on me. They fucked me with objects.

I stopped trying to imagine what the objects were when I realized the reality was far worse than anything I could dream up.

I felt it…there… as if it was happening right now. It burned. God, it burned.

Fear and panic controlled my body. Every cell was overcome by it, lost in it, until I hadn’t noticed the chair legs scraping across the tile floor as Anniston pushed away from the table. I never saw her kneel in front of me or felt her take both of my hands. The sound of her voice was distant, like echoes beneath water.

And then, she squeezed my hands. Her gentle voice was loud and forceful when she called my name.

I sucked in a deep breath, like someone who’d been drowning, and I supposed I was. I was drowning, and my lifeline was locked up in a mental institution.

Anniston’s round eyes were full of concern as she looked up at me. “Are you okay?”

I swallowed the bile creeping up my throat. I knew what it was like to be bruised from the inside out, to be ripped apart and scarred in hidden places. Sometimes, I’d dehydrate myself to keep from having to pee because it hurt too much. No. I was not okay. I would never beokay. I would always be broken.

I swallowed hard and forced a smile, giving the illusion of composure, even though inside I was crumbling. “I’m fine. Just thinking about those girls and what they must have gone through.”

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