Chapter 8 Mine
Aiyana's P.O.V
“Get up.” Jerome Black orders, as soon as he enters my room with two other women at his back.
I hated the barking of orders and also didn't even realise that there was another woman here besides the elderly cook who had been caring for me from time to time.
Seeing that I made no move to obey his order, he walked up to me and jacked me up his shoulders before I could even register what was happening.
Even after he picked me up, I didn't fight, I didn't complain, I didn't cry. I felt numb.
Someone just died because of me yesterday and everyone was acting like nothing happened. I knew that to them it was probably nothing but I was shaken up, badly.
Is this really my life now?
Would I just be here forever, not knowing why exactly he's not killing me or releasing me?
Did I really dare to ask why I was here?
All these thoughts and more ran through my head at a speed that almost had me clutching my head in pain from the headache it brought.
I never thought it was possible to feel empty and overwhelmingly full of fear at the same time. A contradiction of existence, breathing but hollow, alive but crumbling.
I was really the perfect victim.
A helpless woman who had no one. Absolutely no one, not even friends that cared enough to notice my absence.
At this point, I couldn't help but let the tears that had burned my eyes since the first day that I got here, fall free.
Even ghosts had someone who missed them. Someone who called out, prayed, begged, cried.
I had no one.
No name whispered into the universe, no search parties, no frantic reports to the police.
The reality gnawed at me like teeth.
I was alone, entirely alone.
No family. No friends. No one cared enough to even wonder where I disappeared to.
As we settled into the new room, it felt colder like ice spreading through veins.
My eyes stung and my chest tightened until it hurt to breathe.
My trembling hands were still bound in cuffs and clattered with every slight movement as if to remind of just what I was reduced to.
Was this what I was worth?
Nothing?
I tried to swallow the meager existence of myself, tried to become smaller on the mattress, like shrinking could protect me from the emptiness clawing at my insides. My head fell against my knees, arms wrapped tight around myself, and for the first time since I woke here weeks ago…
I cried, and it was quiet. Pitiful.
Barely a sound escaped, but I felt it like a dam cracking open inside me.
I cried for the girl who had no one.
I cried for the girl chained to a monster.
I cried because I didn’t know if there was even a version of me left to save.
I didn't care that he was watching me curl into myself after just dropping me on the mattress, I didn't care that at that moment I looked so weak. I just let it all out and was somewhat grateful that he let me do so, even though I didn't appreciate the staring.
As he stood above me, he stretched out his hand that held a key.
I blinked, not sure my mind was piecing it right.
He didn’t speak at first. Just crossed to me, slow and deliberate. The chains rattled against the bedframe with every tiny movement I made, reminding both of us just how powerless I was, and then, he knelt.
It was a little weird seeing him up close, and although he was ruthless, he was terrifyingly handsome.
The sound of metal shifting filled the room as he unlocked the first cuff. Cold air hit my skin where steel had sat for too long.
As the chains fell off, it felt so good that I could not help but heave a deep sigh of relief
“Get up.” He said again in his usual deep baritone voice that carried no emotions.
“Where…are you taking me?” I asked as my throat tightened from fear of the possibility of him finally being ready to be done with me.
I know I had said it severally earlier that he should just run what he wanted, but I didn't want to die.
I was too young to die.
He didn’t even look at me when he replied.
“You’ll see.”
No explanation.
No reassurance, not that I can expected one.
No threat either, but that somehow made it worse.
I tried to stand, legs shaky from days of stillness. He watched but did nothing to help, offering neither hand nor mercy, but when I finally found my balance, he grabbed my wrist, not harshly, not gently and led me out of the room.
The hallway was unfamiliar. Dark polished floors, walls of stone and shadow, everything expensive but cold. I had never been out here, not once. The air smelled different from my room, less sterile, and more alive but most especially the fresh air.
How I missed it.
Every step echoed.
Every breath trembled.
Every beat of my heart felt like it could be my last.
We walked until a door opened ahead, double doors, tall enough to swallow the sky.
As Jerome Black pushed them, light spilled in like a flood.
It was an open field.
Huge and barren but vast like a private universe. Grass stretched long and wild beneath a pale sky, but that wasn’t what stole the breath from my throat.
It was the men. There were dozens.
Actually hundreds, and all clothed in black, standing like soldiers, waiting for their commander to just say the word.
My feet rooted to the ground, terror flooding fast. If I wasn’t scared before, I was now. My pulse thrashed violently like a trapped bird frantic against cage bone. They were everywhere. Eyes like weapons, and bodies still as statues.
And then I saw it.
A corpse.
Dragged forward by two men and thrown into the dirt like discarded trash.
My breath immediately hitched, with my stomach churning.
I knew that corpse.
The guard. The one who tried to touch me, the one I nearly strangled, but seeing him here dead, and lifeless made the memory feel too real.
Jerome stepped forward, voice cutting through the silence like a blade.
“This man.” He announced, deep and lethal “Touched what belongs to me.”
My heart stopped.
‘Belongs to me.’ I repeated to myself, just to let it sink in that I was done for.
The words seared like fire against skin. Not saved. Not protected.
Owned.
His eyes swept across the men with a cold, sovereign, and murderous look.
So intense that I almost shivered from the fear and atmosphere.
“Aiyana is mine, and anyone who touches what is mine dies.”