CHAPTER 35
Ethan’s POV
The darkness was starting to feel alive.
It shifted and breathed around me, heavy and suffocating, pressing against my skin. The blindfold was so tight that even the tiniest flicker of light couldn’t seep through. I’d tried to rub it against my shoulder, to loosen it, but the fabric only dug deeper into my temples, leaving a throbbing ache behind my eyes.
At first, the darkness had been terrifying. Now, after what I guessed were days, it was maddening. It ate away at me, hollowing me out, until my thoughts started looping back on themselves in strange, broken patterns.
I didn’t know how long I’d been here. Hours? Days? My body ached all over, my throat was dry and raw, and the ropes had rubbed my skin until it burned. They untied me only when necessary, brief, clinical moments when I was fed or forced to drink water.
Otherwise, I stayed bound. Alone. Blind. And listened. Because listening was all I had left.
If Dominic didn’t play by their rules, I would pay the price.
It became my obsession to learn everything I could. If I couldn’t see, I would listen. If I couldn’t fight, I would think.
The more they talked, the more details I gathered. There were three of them, maybe four. Two men were constants, the deep-voiced leader and the sharp, impatient one. The third was quieter, methodical. I thought of him as “the ghost,” because he moved silently and rarely spoke.
And then… there was the fourth voice.
The one that haunted me. I heard her.
At first, I thought my brain had finally cracked under the strain. The voice was muffled, distant, like it came from another room. But as the words filtered through, my breath caught.
Smooth. Measured. Feminine.
Familiar.
So painfully familiar.
“…careful,” she was saying, her voice low but steady. “If he suspects, we lose everything.”
My whole body went rigid.
No. No, it can’t be her.
I strained to listen, hardly daring to breathe.
Another voice responded, the distorted growl of the leader. Too garbled to make out clearly.
Then the woman again.
“Dominic won’t fight back if he believes he has no choice. Trust me. I know how to handle him.”
A sound escaped me before I could stop it, a muffled, broken noise through the gag. The ropes bit into my wrists as I tried to move, tried to get closer, to see, but there was nothing. Just darkness and the echo of that voice.
The conversation ended abruptly. Footsteps retreated. The door slammed shut.
Silence.
My heart pounded so violently I thought it would tear through my ribs.
It couldn’t be Clara.
It couldn’t.
But the voice… it had her cadence, her rhythm. The way she enunciated certain words. I knew that voice.
I’d heard it in laughter, in anger, in the whisper of promises she never kept.
I shook my head violently, as if I could dislodge the thought.
Maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe it was just someone who sounded like her. My mind was desperate, my senses unreliable.
But deep down, a cold certainty settled in my gut.
It was her.
And if she was here, if she was part of this, that meant everything I’d believed about her had been too kind.
The next time they came in, I forced myself to stay quiet. I didn’t thrash or fight or make noise. I just listened.
The men didn’t speak much when they were close to me, but I picked up fragments. mentions of Dominic, of deadlines, of pressure.
And then, once again, the woman’s voice drifted through the door. Clearer this time.
“Dominic needs to believe he’s in control,” she said. “Let him think he’s making choices. The more he believes that, the less likely he is to fight.”
The leader grunted in agreement.
“And Ethan?” the second man asked. His voice was lighter, faster.
A pause. Then, coldly “He’s a means to an end. Nothing more.”
My stomach twisted, bile rising in my throat.
Clara.
It had to be Clara. How involved in this was she?
I couldn’t let them use me to hurt Dominic.
That thought became my anchor, the one thing that kept me from unraveling completely. No matter what they did to me, no matter what Clara whispered in his ear, I had to resist.
I had to find a way to warn him.
They would try to manipulate me, I was sure of it now. Break me down, make me doubt him, maybe even make me hate him.
I couldn’t let that happen.
So I began preparing, mentally, emotionally. I replayed every good memory of Dominic, every moment that proved his love for me was real and unshakable.
The way he held me when nightmares woke me.
The quiet pride in his voice when he introduced me to his friends.
The soft, teasing smile that always made me laugh even when I didn’t want to.
That’s real, I told myself fiercely. That’s truth.
No matter what Clara said, no matter what lies they spun, Dominic was my constant. My reason to fight.
When they untied me later to feed me, I forced myself to observe rather than react.
The food was tasteless, barely edible, but I ate it, needing the strength. While I chewed, I felt around the tray with my fingertips. It was plastic, light, with a rough edge where it had cracked.
An idea formed.
When they shoved me back into my corner, I let my hand fall open. A tiny fragment of the tray slipped from my palm, landing in the dirt with the softest click.
Small. Almost invisible. Maybe someone w out of see it.
That night, as I lay bound and blindfolded in the dark, I repeated Dominic’s name like a mantra. Not aloud, only in my mind.
I imagined him searching for me, refusing to give up.
I imagined his determination, his stubbornness, his love.
And I imagined Clara, her voice dripping poison, trying to convince him to turn away.
“No,” I whispered against the gag. “You won’t win.”