I didn’t die, though God knows I wanted to.
As the current dragged me under, heavy and cold as a winding sheet, I thought about letting go. It would be peaceful. No more pain. No more Dante.
But rage, it turns out, is a powerful buoyancy aid.
I found a piece of driftwood bobbing in the gray swell. I kicked until my muscles screamed, until the salt burned my throat raw. I washed up on a rocky strip of beach miles down the coast, vomiting seawater and bile into the sand.
I walked for hours, a ghost haunting the coastline, until I found a road. A trucker gave me a ride back to the city. Delirium must have taken the wheel then, because I didn't ask for a hospital. My traitorous tongue gave the only address that mattered.
I collapsed at the service entrance of the estate.
Naturally, the guards found me before death could.
When I woke up, I wasn't in a hospital. I was back in the interrogation room.
Dante was there. He looked wrecked. His tie was undone, his shirt rumpled as if he hadn't slept.
When he saw my eyes open, he didn't cry with relief. He slammed his fist onto the metal table, the sound echoing like a gunshot.
"You tried to kill her again," he growled.
I stared at the ceiling. A laugh bubbled up in my throat. It was a broken, jagged sound, like glass grinding together.
"I almost drowned, Dante."
"Because you attacked her! She told me everything. You tried to throw her overboard, and you slipped." He paced the room like a caged tiger, vibrating with lethal energy. "I cannot have a murderer for a wife. I cannot have a traitor."
He turned to the mirror. I knew Dr. Ricci was behind it, watching like a vulture.
"Prepare the machine," Dante ordered. "Increase the dosage. We need to reset her completely."
"Dante, no," Dr. Ricci's voice came over the intercom, crackling with static and fear. "She has suffered severe hypoxia. Her brain is swelling. If we use the serum now, it could lobotomize her. Or kill her."
Dante froze. He looked at me. For a second, I saw a flicker of the man who used to hold me when I had nightmares—a ghost of the husband I once loved.
"She is dangerous," Dante said, his voice shaking. "I have to fix her."
"You can't fix what you've already destroyed," I whispered.
He ignored me, steeling himself against the truth. "Do a lower dose. Just enough to sedate her aggression."
They strapped me down again. The leather cuffs felt familiar now. Cold. Final.
This time, my body couldn't fight. The drug entered my system, mixing with the saltwater and the trauma.
The world didn't just fade; it shattered.
I convulsed. My back arched so hard I thought my spine would snap. Foam gathered at my lips as electricity seemed to arc through my veins.
"Stop it! You're killing her!" The doctor shouted.
Then, the darkness swallowed me whole.
*
When I woke up, the room was white. Soft. Sterile.
A man was sitting in the chair. Dark hair. Sharp jaw. Predatory eyes.
I blinked. My mind was a blank slate. A white fog where a history should have been.
"Who are you?" I asked, my voice a rusty scrape.
The man flinched. "Elena. It's me. Dante."
I frowned. The name meant nothing. No, that wasn't true. It meant... pain. A sharp, phantom ache in my chest.
"Are you the client?" I asked, shrinking back against the headboard, instinctively covering myself. "I'll be good. Just don't hit me."
Dante’s face went white. He looked like he had been shot in the chest.
"I'm your husband," he whispered.
"Husband?" I tested the word. It tasted like ash. "I don't have a husband. I work at the... the house. The Madame said I have to work off my debt."
The false memories from the first session had taken root, filling the void left by the trauma. They were my reality now. I was the whore Sofia claimed I was.
Dante stood up, knocking the chair over with a deafening clatter. He stormed out of the room.
I heard him shouting in the hallway. Then I heard a woman's voice. High, shrill.
The door opened. Sofia walked in.
She looked at me, lying broken in the bed. She smiled—a cold, victorious curving of lips.
"You really don't remember?" she asked.
"Remember what?"
She walked over and slapped me. Hard.
My head snapped to the side. I didn't fight back. I was trained not to fight back. I just whimpered, curling inward.
Dante rushed back in. He saw Sofia standing over me. He saw the red mark blooming on my cheek.
"Sofia!" he warned.
"She looked at me with that look," Sofia sobbed, burying her face in her hands immediately. "The look she gave me when she sold me."
Dante sighed, the fight draining out of him. He walked past me. He wrapped his arms around Sofia.
"It's okay," he soothed her. "She can't hurt you anymore. She doesn't even know who she is."
He looked at me over Sofia's shoulder. His eyes were full of pity. And disgust.
I pulled the sheets up to my chin, terrified of the strange man and the crying woman. I just wanted to go home, but looking at their faces, I realized with a sinking heart: I didn't know where home was anymore.
