Page 17 of Freed By Wrath

How long he spent quietly carving away pieces of me and handing me back the smaller versions like it was an improvement…

Eight fucking years.

Eight years of adjusting hemlines and opinions and the volume of my own laugh. Eight years of swallowing the instinct to say, ‘actually, I disagree’ in rooms where Daniel needed to be the smartest person present. Eight years of Halloween costumes that hid more than they revealed, of playlists I let die, of sketchbooks I stopped filling because the look on his face when he saw them made me feel like a child playing pretend.

I’d loved him through all of it.

That’s the worst part. Not that he’d done it, but that I’d let him. That I’d reframed every act of quiet erosion as evidence of how much he cared. That I’d mistaken being managed for being cherished and spent nearly a decade feeling indebted for it.

My chest tightens so violently I almost forget the considerably more urgent problem.

I’m still kidnapped.

Focus, Valerie. Panic later. Escape first.

I dig through the memories of every true crime documentary I’ve ever binge-watched, hoping one of them left me with a survival instinct instead of random serial killer trivia.

But I come up with nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing.

How am I going to escape? There are three of them and just… One of me.

And I can’t see a damn thing.

I should’ve taken those self-defense classes my brother Atlas kept begging me to join.

But no. I listened to Daniel.

“Baby, why would you need to learn how to fight? You’ll always have me to protect you.”

A humorless laugh escapes me, and I feel the man behind me tense up.

Well, Daniel… I sincerely hope you go fuck a cactus. Preferably sideways.

I force out a slow breath.

“Calmer?” My current kidnapper asks, but I do not dignify him with an answer.

The air catches inside the T-shirt covering my head, warm against my face before slipping through the fabric.

Calm down, Val.

Breathe In. Breathe out.

Now again.

When I stop fighting the panic, the rest of my senses begin catching up.

The elevator has music. Something orchestral and deeply unsettling, strings climbing in minor keys over a bass that seemed designed specifically to make your nervous system question its choices. Then, I notice the cotton scratching against my cheeks and the fact that it smells like clean laundry, cedar, and a trace of cologne lingering beneath both. Warm. Masculine. Comforting. Manly. Just like its owner, which feels deeply offensive considering it’s currently being used to blind me.

Great.

My kidnapper smells unfairly good.

The elevator vibrates beneath my feet, and the hands around my wrists don’t loosen, but they shift—a small adjustment, fingers repositioning, and I register for the first time that they’re rough. Calloused in the specific way that comes from physical work, from hands that have gripped and lifted and held things repeatedly over years.

I stop pulling against his grip.

Not because I’ve decided to cooperate. Not because I’ve forgiven any part of this evening or the people responsible for it. But because my nervous system has apparently decided, without consulting me, that this specific combination of calloused hands and warm cedar and dark vanilla means safe, and I hate it, and I can’t make it stop.