Chapter 14 Chapter Thirteen
ARA
Pain detonated behind my eyes like someone had poured molten glass straight into my skull.
I tried to open them, and I instantly regretted it.
The light wasn’t just bright; it was vicious, stabbing, white-hot and stripping the skin from my brain.
It felt like someone had taken sandpaper to the inside of my eyelids and left the grains behind to grind with every blink.
I forced them open anyway. The world swam into focus in cruel, jagged pieces.
Hospital lights greeted my eyes.
Cold. Sterile. Humming like angry bees above me.
Four men in black suits stood at the door, their arms folded, faces carved from stone.
These weren't Thayne’s usual escorts.
These were older. Meaner too.
The kind of men who would smile while they broke your fingers.
My mouth tasted like rust and death. I tried to move my hand to my face.
Nothing happened. Not a twitch.
Not even a finger moved the slightest but.
Terror flooded me, cold and instant, drowning every other thought.
I looked down at my body under the thin sheet. No casts. There was no blood. There were no bruises I could see.
But I couldn’t feel my legs. I couldn't feel my arms. I couldn't feel anything below my neck.
A shadow moved by the window.
My heart leapt, stupid, desperate hope flaring bright.
“Thayne?”
The word scraped out of my throat like broken glass, barely louder than a breath.
The figure turned.
Oh. It was not Thayne. Mr. Slade Senior.
His grey suit was sharp enough to cut, and his face was empty of anything human.
And his eyes? They were like winter graves.
He walked toward the bed, slow, each step deliberate and noiseless on the tile.
Every instinct in me screamed to run, to thrash, to fight.
But my body was a prison. I was trapped inside my own skin.
Mr Slade Senior stopped beside me and looked down like I was a bug under glass.
“You’re a stubborn little thing, Miss Irvington,” he said, his voice smooth as oil, cold as a coffin lid.
He twisted one of his rings, the same knuckles that had left red rings around his own son’s throat.
“Tell me. What exactly did Thayne promise you to make you cling so hard?”
I wanted to spit in his face. I wanted to scream.
But my tongue lay heavy, useless.
He smiled, a thin and terrible thing on his face.
“Look up, darling.”
He pointed.
A drip bag hung from the pole, a yellow fluid was inside, and it looked thick and wrong.
The line ran straight into the cannula taped to the crook of my elbow.
I stared at it, dread pooling cold and heavy in my stomach.
It looked like urine. He leaned closer, close enough that I smelled his cologne, expensive, suffocating.
“That,” he whispered, savouring every word, “is a paralytic. Custom compound. Slow. Painless. You feel everything that’s happening to you, but you can’t move a single muscle to stop it.”
He chuckled, low, delighted. I bet he was enjoying my misery.
“Madison’s idea, actually. We starved you for forty-eight hours first. Then weakened your body. Made sure you have nothing left to fight with. You’ve been here two full days, unconscious. Defenceless.”
Forty-eight hours. Two days. No food. No water.
My chest started to burn, like my lungs were forgetting how to pull in air.
Madison stepped into the room like she’d been waiting in the wings for her cue.
She was wearing a white dress, completely see-through, nipples dark against the fabric.
Skinny as a blade-thin, she was all angles and cruelty.
She smiled at me like a child who’d just found a new toy to break.
Mr. Slade Senior straightened, adjusting his cuffs.
“We’re feeling generous today,” he said, conversational, like we were discussing the weather.
“You have two choices.”
Madison held up one finger, painted blood-red and sharp.
“Option one,” she sang, her voice high and sweet. “You make a very public post ending your relationship with Thayne. You tell the world you used him. That you lied. And that you’re sorry. Only then will we stop the drip. You crawl out of here alive.”
She held up a second finger.
“Option two. You refuse. We open the flow all the way. You die in this bed before the bag runs dry. Quiet. Clean. Overdose. Tragic, really.”
She leaned over me, her blonde hair brushing my cheek, breath minty and toxic.
“Tick tock, Ara.”
My vision blurred, not from tears, but from the drug crawling deeper into my veins.
My heartbeat slowed, and each breath felt smaller, weaker.
Madison started counting on her fingers, bouncing on her heels like a cheerleader.
“One… two… three…”
I tried to swallow.
My throat was on fire.
“I’ll…” The word came out a broken wheeze. “I’ll… make… the post.”
Madison clapped, delighted.
Mr. Slade Senior turned to his men, eyebrows raised.
“Did anyone hear that?”
They shook their heads, their faces blank.
Madison cupped her ear, theatrical.
“Sorry, sweetie. You’ll have to speak up the volume if you want to live.”
Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes, hot and useless.
I sucked in the tiny bit of air I could.
“I’ll make the post,” I rasped, my voice tearing like paper.
The words burned my throat raw.
Madison’s smile could have cut diamonds.
She produced a phone, already open to my Instagram.
My fingers were dead weight.
It took everything, every last scrap of strength I had left, to make them move.
The screen swam. I typed with numb thumbs.
‘I’m sorry. I lied about everything. I never loved Thayne Slade. I used him. Please forgive me.’
I hit the post icon.
The likes rolled in instantly.
Thousands. Tens of thousands.
Madison watched the numbers climb, her eyes shining.
She snatched the phone.
The nurse came in and disconnected the drip like she was pulling a plug on a lamp.
Sensation rushed back into my limbs in burning needles. But the damage was done.
Madison leaned over me one last time, lips brushing my ear.
“Just so you know,” she whispered, “your sisters aren’t safe anymore. Neil’s old debts? Two very impatient men collected them this morning. As collateral.”
She straightened, tossed her hair.
“Good luck finding them, slumgirl.”
Then she walked out, her heels clic
king, leaving me gasping, half-paralysed, drowning in the ruins of my life.
The monitors beeped slow and steady.
My heart kept beating.
But inside, something had already died.