Patience.

I couldn’t rush this, no matter how much I wanted to. “Don’t move,” I warned, pressing on her shoulders to make my point. I rummaged through the room, found a pen and paper, and slammed them on the table in front of her. “Write down what I say, word for word.”

“Why?”

“Quit asking so many fucking questions.” I forced the pen into her fingers, and she clutched it tight, hand hovering above the paper. The fury in her eyes wavered, replaced by confusion. She wasn’t scared of me yet, and I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

“Rafe, what are you do—”

“Write ‘I need some time. Don’t worry or try to find me.’”

Short and to the point. The less written, the less the authorities could dissect. I expected them to look at me as a person of interest in her disappearance, but I was prepared for that inevitability. Besides, they’d need probable cause and a warrant to search the island, and they wouldn’t have either.

Lower lip tucked between her teeth, she wrote out the words and paid careful attention to each letter, her hand trembling every so often. Once finished, she set the pen down, angled her head, and met my eyes. She didn’t have to voice her alarm. Her expression was unmasked. Naively, she let me see everything.

“What happened to you?” she whispered.

She must have sensed the darkness in me, but what she failed to understand was how it had always lurked, entrapped by a code I no longer lived by. She’d blown the padlock on that cage when she’d uttered three little words that ruined me.

He raped me.

The accusation rang through my mind, as loud as the clank of the prison cell doors when they slammed shut. I grabbed the syringe from my pocket.

“What are you doing?” she cried, wide eyes locking onto the syringe. She jumped into motion and reached the foyer before I caught up to her. I wound an arm around her shoulders and pinned her against me. She bucked, kicked, and clawed, all the while letting loose a scream that made me so fucking hard I almost lost it. I uncapped the needle with my teeth and stabbed it into the side of her neck. An instant later, she went limp in my arms.

3. BREAK ME - ALEX

Consciousness washed over me in dream-like phases, the first a stifling darkness that pressed from every direction. I trembled as an inescapable chill crawled over my skin like icy tendrils, licking with relish. Hard, rough concrete chafed my body. My naked body. Acid rose in my throat, and I thought I was about to lose my last meal, but the observation only caused more panic to set in. I couldn’t recall what I’d eaten.

For a few horror-stricken moments, I couldn’t recall anything at all. Then I remembered.

Rafe’s face burned in my head, his older, scruffier face. His unforgiving face. The rest of my memories flooded back, and I jerked to total awareness. He’d jabbed a needle into my neck.