Page 182 of Somno Slave

“Shut your mouth.”

“She wants a wound she can show someone.”

“Enough.” Peter slams his hand onto the table. The crack of it makes me flinch.

Deogal doesn’t move. His gaze drops for half a second to my hands, to the file crushed between my fingers, then lifts again.

“You don’t need me to say what happened,” he says quietly. “You need permission to believe it.”

My throat closes.

For a moment, I can’t breathe around it.

Peter’s voice is low now, dangerous.

“This ends Friday. No more stories. No more games. You killed three people. You fucking butchered them, and you are not going to sit here and dress it up until she feels sorry for you.”

Peter’s face changes. “Clear the room.”

The command makes my palms sweat. It’s violent, too sudden.

The guards move immediately. The door unlocks with a sharp mechanical click that sounds too loud in the space, like something being broken open rather than released.

I don’t move.

For a second, just a second, I stay exactly where I am, my body refusing the instruction in a way I don’t understand. It clings to me, thick and disorienting, like I’m being pulled in two directions at once. Everything I know—training, instinct, logic—is pushing me toward the door, toward distance, toward safety.

But the rest of me is still standing in front of him, waiting for a word he refuses to give me.

That’s all I needed.

One word. One useful, official word.

He could have given it to me but he chose not to.

And somehow that hurts worse than the confession.

“Rheda.” Peter’s voice is sharper now.

That breaks it. I step back. Once then again.

Each movement feels slightly delayed, like my body is catching up to a decision my mind has already made. The room doesn’t shift the way it should when I move away from him.

I don’t look back.

I can’t.

Because I know, with a certainty that settles cold and heavy in my chest, that if I do...I’ll ask again.

I’ll give him another chance to refuse me.

Chapter Fifty

Rheda

I lean over the CCTV footage like it’s my God.

It begins with a static frame. The interrogation room as it always is, contained, controlled, scrubbed of anything that might interfere with observation.