I’m fine with that.

Selix snapped his lips together. “I’ll be around the block if you need me.”

Doing up my blazer button, I nodded. “You’ll know if I do.” Dismissing him, I strolled toward the front door of the large white mansion.

White.

I sneered.

The biggest lie of all.

It gave a visitor the impression of innocence and purity. But the opposite was true. White was the colour with multiple faces. It lied about its identity, hiding its pigment while smothering others. The final blank thought before death.

My new host believed I was what I said I was. If he’d researched me as I’d researched him, he would know nothing true about me. Only the carefully laid crumbs of worthless knowledge.

He wouldn’t know my background.

He wouldn’t know my skills.

And he wouldn’t know my end agenda.

But soon, he would.

And then, my task in Hell would be complete.

TONIGHT WAS DIFFERENT.

I didn’t like different.

My stomach hurt from where he’d kicked me. My head swam from his punch. My ear stung from his teeth. And that was him being gentle.

My mother’s lessons on how to read bullies had become a full-time occupation. I knew now what made men like my master tick. I stole pieces of him every moment he looked my way or touched me.

I was the sponge to his evilness, soaking everything I could for my benefit. However, no matter the small victories I enjoyed, the tragedies far outweighed my triumphs.

Tonight wouldn’t be a triumph.

I could sense it.

What’s going to happen?

I shivered as awful answers unspooled, each one worse than the last. The house felt dangerous and strange, poised for something I couldn’t prepare for.

Leaving my doorless bedroom, I made my way downstairs. My bare feet couldn’t camouflage the black and blue shadows from him breaking my bones, nor hide the malnourished pigment of my skin. But the white skirt, as it fluttered around my legs, covered my nakedness and scars for the first time since I’d arrived in Crete.

If that was even where I was.

The colourless polo neck gripped my throat with cotton fingers, making me fidget and pull at the obstruction.

Lately, he’d had a tendency to use collars and ropes, keeping me bound in awful positions. Normally, that position ended up strangling me as he finished. It terrified me while it was happening, but it’d also stained the times when he wasn’t. Whenever he touched my neck now, tears instantly brimmed. No matter how strong I was, he’d turned that part of my body into a trigger for terror.

And now, he’d dressed me in clothes that suffocated me on his behalf.

Gulping my rising panic, I stopped midway down the steps.

I can’t do this.

Turning around, I bolted back up.

You don’t have a choice.

I paused on the landing with my face in my hands, sobs threatening to undo every rib. I hated my sudden fear. Unknowns did this—they rattled my fragile strength—ready to unleash the detonation building inside me.

Over the past two years, I’d developed a security system that ensured I breathed another day even when some days I wanted to die. Others, I wanted to scream. Most, I wanted to slaughter him.

It was thoughts of slaughtering him that kept me going.

And I evolved.

Before, he’d force me to kneel, and I would stand to disobey. He’d crunch my face into the floor, and I’d spring up in defiance. For my troubles, I was hurt over and over.

Now, I bowed because it made him believe I respected him, all while my heart sharpened the daggers I wanted to plunge. I kneeled because it gave him power, and when he had power, he didn’t assert it as often.

He was a coward with a vicious, sadistic drive. But I played him the best I could. I got into his head. I couldn’t avoid his daily ferocity, but I could avoid utter excruciation by being smart.

However, being smart and subservient came with a price. My actions of survival made me live and breathe the existence of a slave, and occasionally, just occasionally, my constant fear and unhappiness won.

As it was winning now.

The sobs swelled until my skin begged for relief from the tight clothing. I wanted to strip and disappear.

You’re running out of time.

Move.

If I didn’t go willingly, he’d come for me. He’d hurt me. I’d been hurt enough today.

I’m strong enough to obey.

That sentence had become a war cry, a lullaby, a prayer. I reminded myself constantly that it was true. It didn’t matter if some days it was a lie…I was still here. In a strange way, I’d won.

Sucking back tears, I did my best to straighten a spine that’d long since bowed beneath domination and pain and trudged down the steps.

Slowly.

So slowly.

But not slowly enough.

My toes reached the bottom floor before I’d had time to wipe away the droplet on my cheek. My throat constricted as I inched around the corridor to the lounge. The polo latching on my neck clung tight, turning my fear into something thick and cloying.

I was two seconds from tearing off the offending items when I saw Master A’s guest for the first time.

My first thought was…run.

His eyes matched those of the men surrounding him.

The eyes of a killer, pain-deliverer, and user.

But my second thought was…run to him.

He didn’t know me.

Master A didn’t rule him. He could finally be the one to set me free.

Or kill me.