Three years ago, my wife was kidnapped. The ransom demand was everything I had.
I liquidated every asset to my name and went to get her back. But the kidnappers changed their minds. They wanted us both dead.
In the end, Linda Fox escaped under my cover. I wasn't so lucky.
I fell into a hell with no bottom.
To punish me for the rescue attempt, they locked me in a flooded cell every night, submerged up to my chest. During the day, they dragged me out and left me baking under the sun. Over time, my skin became a patchwork of swollen cysts and deep, bleeding cracks. There wasn't an inch of me left untouched.
When I was on the edge of starving to death, they'd shove a mouthful of rancid rice between my teeth. When my throat was so dry I couldn't swallow, they'd pour slop water down it.
Every single day, I teetered between living and dying.
The only thing that kept me alive was one thought: that someday I'd escape. That I'd see her again.
I endured three years of this before my body finally gave out. I tried to bite through my own tongue and end it, but they found me in time and rushed me to a hospital.
Through the fog, I caught voices outside the hospital room door.
"Ms. Fox, I'm so sorry. I should have been watching him more carefully."
"You did perfectly." Linda Fox's voice was smooth, unhurried. "This just proves our little performance was a success. And that his lesson has been thorough enough."
Kerry Gilbert's expression faltered with something that almost looked like guilt. "Don't you think we went a little far? All he did was slap me twice."
Linda gazed at Kerry, her eyes soft with affection.
"I will never let anyone lay a hand on you. Not even him. Whatever he did to you, I'll pay it back a hundred times over. A thousand."
Tears leaked from the corners of my closed eyes. So that was it. Three years of unimaginable suffering, and it was all just a show she'd put on to avenge her precious protege.
Every moment of agony flashed through my mind like a slideshow. The flooded cell. The sun. The rot. The rancid food.
If they loved performing so much, then fine. I'd play along.
——
After my fifth brush with death, the doctor scraped away the decaying flesh from my body. Even after the wounds were cleaned, yellow pus still seeped from them.
Kerry Gilbert put on his best look of concern, his voice dripping with exaggerated sympathy. "Oh, the poor thing. He looks so pitiful..."
"You're just too kindhearted," Linda cooed. She reached over and covered Kerry's eyes with her palm, pulling him close.
"When he raised his hand against you, I thought you looked pretty pitiful too." Her lips curled. "I told you, I will never let anyone hurt you. Now come on. This place is disgusting. No need to dirty our eyes with it."
Every word reached me. Crystal clear.
I had gambled everything I owned to storm that hideout alone. When the kidnappers turned on us, my only thought had been to get her out first.
And the woman I'd nearly died protecting turned out to be the one who'd written the script.
Linda Fox hadn't just exploited my love for her. She'd stripped me of everything I had and left me broken beyond recognition.
The will to live drained out of me like water through a cracked vessel. On the monitor beside my bed, the peaks on the heart-rate display grew shallower, slower, flattening toward a single unbroken line.
"Ms. Fox, please wait!"
The attending physician's face was grim as he stared at the cardiac monitor. "The patient needs emergency resuscitation. Immediately. This will be the sixth time. I need your signature on the critical condition notice."
Linda's voice was sharp with irritation. "He bit his tongue. That's it. How does that require resuscitation after resuscitation?"
"Is this hospital even competent?"
The doctor leveled a cold look at her, his voice steady and unyielding.
"Whatever this man has been through over the past few years, I can't begin to imagine. What I do know is that he's severely malnourished, and his body has absolutely no capacity to fight off the damage covering every inch of him."
