He’s going to hate me for giving up. He’s going to think I went without a fight and just handed myself over, but he’ll never know what it feels like to see the person you love with a gun trained at their head and a psychopath hovering over them. I had a choice to make and I know he won’t understand it, but I made the right decision. I’d do anything to make sure he was safe, even if it means living my life out in the worst kind of hell.

I hate it here. I hate what this place stands for. I hate Maria. I hate Lucien. I hate this house.

This place is a representation of everything bad in my life, every tragic decision that was made for me, every life-changing moment that crushed me. The only positive thing about this place are the memories I shared with Blake as we grew up.

Without even needing to walk in there, I know his bedroom is going to be the only comfort I’ll find here, but it won’t last long. My eighteenth birthday is twelve days away and I know exactly what’s going to happen when that time comes.

I’ve never been less excited about a birthday in my life. My seventeenth was hard as I knew that officially put a countdown on my freedom, but I still had a whole year. Now, that year is up.

“Get moving,” Lucien growls, giving me a hard shove and making my feet pick up their pace. I stumble around, not yet ready to be up and walking after being knocked out. My head spins and I do my best to keep moving.

Lucien isn’t going to put up with my incompetence for long. He’s already starting to get frustrated with me, especially after evading him for so long. He’s going to punish me. He’s going to blame me for the acts he committed against Blake, he’s going to fault me for him ramming me and Slade off the bridge, and he’s going to tell me that had he shot Slade this morning that it would have been on me too.

Lucien is going to punish me for every single sin I didn’t commit.

He’s a monster through and through. There is no way he’ll ever see that this is all on him. To Lucien, the sun shines out of his own ass. He’s a God, unstoppable and all-powerful. No one can touch him which is why he takes whatever the hell he wants, consequences be damned.

Don’t even get me started on the fact that he just evaded his arrest warrant and is somehow walking freely around his home. He should be in hiding. Cops should see that he’s here and should be storming the property, but then, most of them are on his payroll. I’ll probably be punished for that too, but when I consider the options of either me being punished or Daniella, I’d choose me. She’s already been through so much and is only just coming out of the darkness. I still have so much more to endure, and in hindsight, what’s a little more? It wouldn’t be fair bringing her back down into it.

We reach the closed bedroom door that holds so many horrors on the other side and my hands tear free of Lucien’s tight grip and fly up, bracing myself against the frame. My heart rate kicks up a notch. I can’t go in there. This room…fuck.

I fear what’s on the other side of this door more than I fear for my life.

Lucien steps into my back and I feel him pressing into my ass as his dirty breath hits my skin. “I dare you,” he challenges, his tone low and full of promise. “I dare you to find out what happens if you don’t get your sweet ass through that door in the next two seconds.”

My resolve breaks and a traitorous tear rolls down my cheek as Lucien’s hand slips around my waist and grabs the door handle. He twists it and pushes the door open with a hard swing, allowing it to bounce off the wall. He gives me a devastating push, releasing me and watching with a smirk as I tumble down to my hands and knees.

Lucien kicks the door closed behind him and strides over to me. Fear rattles me as I try my best to get my feet under me but he grabs my hair and with an impressive show of strength, hauls me clear across the room.

I crash into the side of the bed, slamming my back against the hardwood and crumbling to the ground in pain. I cry out as my back aches but the sound is drowned out by his deep rumbling laugh. “You didn’t like that, did you?” he grins, making me feel sick as I reach for the bed and try to pull myself up. “But guess what? The fun is only just beginning.”

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