Page 139 of Sins of the Hidden

"Five is enough," he choked out desperately, the words slurring together so heavily I could barely understand them, only comprehensible through the sheer desperate intensity with which he forced them out.

His hands clawed frantically at the floor as he tried to reach me, to stop me from making the call. His entire body shook with the effort, movements so uncoordinated that he barely advanced an inch despite his desperate struggle. My breath caught in my throat as I tried to process what he was saying. Five? What did that mean?

"I'll be good," he begged, a sound I never thought I'd hear from him, voice cracking in a way that had nothing to do with the drugs. "I'll stay quiet."

I slowly lowered the phone, hands shaking so badly I nearly dropped it.

"Don't leave me here," he rasped, words barely intelligible.

V's knees shot up toward his chest, the sudden movement jarring as his body tried to find some anchor against the drugs coursing through his system. Then he toppled backward, his shoulders hitting the floor with a dull thud that seemed to echo through the room. His arms sprawled wide on either side of him, palms up, fingers twitching sporadically as the sedatives fought against his iron will.

"They'll come back. They always come back when she's done."

The space between his legs opened up, freeing me from where I'd been pinned against the wall. I pushed myself up from the floor, my back scraping against the brick as I rose on unsteady legs. My movements were clumsy and desperate as I stepped over his sprawled form, careful not to touch him as I made my way across the room. Once clear of his reach, I stumbled toward the couch, my own legs betraying me with their weakness.

From his sprawled position on the floor, V's head rolled to the side, tracking my movement with glazed eyes that kept losing focus. His neck strained as he tried to lift his head, but it kept falling back against the hardwood with soft impacts that made me wince.

"Oakley," he gasped, but his eyes weren't seeing me—they were seeing through me, to some horror from long ago. "Don't let them take me again. Don't let her?—"

His words cut off as his body convulsed slightly, the drugs pulling him deeper under. Still, he fought it, one hand weakly grasping at air, fingers curling and uncurling as he tried to reach for me even though I was now several feet away on the couch.

I collapsed onto the cushions, my legs finally giving out completely. From here, I could see him sprawled across the floor like something broken, his massive frame somehow diminished by the vulnerability the sedatives had forced upon him. Terror and confusion warred in my chest as I watched him fight a losing battle against the drugs, his eyes losing focus before snapping back to find me again.

"I… I can't leave you alone." The words were almost unintelligible, his speech completely compromised by the drugs. Through the crushing weight of the drugs, his eyes fixed on me with desperate intensity. "I don't..." he struggled visibly to form each word, "...want them...to get you...too."

His body convulsed again as he fought against the sedatives, but it was a losing battle. His eyes kept unfocusing, head lolling forward before he'd jerk it back up, only for it to fall again. "But I won't stay in bed with you," he slurred, the words almost completely unintelligible through the heavy sedation, his head lolling to one side before he managed a weak attempt to straighten it.

I sat on the couch, shaking like a leaf, watching as he fought the drugs with everything he had. Despite his completely compromised state sprawled on the floor, he still struggled to keep his eyes on the entrance, like a wounded animal determined to guard its territory until its last breath.

"Goodnight..." His head fell forward, chin hitting his chest before he jerked it back up one final time, eyes still fixed on the entrance through heavy lids. "Oakley."

Not "wife." Just my name.

I could still see him sprawled on the floor by the wall, but the distance felt like miles. My fingers trembled, still feeling the phantom weight of the knife that lay abandoned across the room, the moment I'd almost crossed a line I couldn't uncross.

V began to mutter, his voice so low and slurred I could barely make out individual words. He wasn't talking to me—wasn't talking to anyone real. His head turned slightly, eyes closed, lips moving behind the mask as unintelligible sounds spilled out. Fragments of words, half-formed pleas, broken syllables that meant nothing and everything.

I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to stop the shaking, but it wouldn't stop. My whole body trembled with aftershocks of terror and confusion. V had drugged himself as twisted penance, and I had refused to take what he offered. But in that refusal, had I somehow accepted something else? Some warped version of his devotion that I couldn't quite name?

The sounds coming from him grew more agitated—not words, just broken noise. Sometimes his voice would crack high, childlike, before dropping to a growl. He was fighting battles I couldn't see. His hands moved restlessly against the floor, grasping at nothing.

I couldn't stop wondering what was buried beneath all that darkness. What had happened to him? Who was the woman that made him pretty? What did five mean?

What had turned a human being into something that thought love and possession were the same thing?

His muttering continued, a constant stream of broken sounds that filled the apartment with ghosts.

Even unconscious, he couldn't find peace.

The ruins of Sweet Summer's surrounded us—walls half-finished, copper veins exposed like arteries torn from flesh. Dust coated everything in gray ash, the remnants of dreams we were building from bone and blood. Paint cans sat in corners like monuments to what hadn't been destroyed yet.

She moved through the skeleton of her bakery like a ghost haunting her own future. Every gesture was recorded in the obsessive inventory I kept of her existence—the way her fingers traced unfinished surfaces, how her shoulders tensed when I shifted position, the precise angle of her chin when she was trying not to look at me.

I stood near the back wall, bat resting against exposed brick. The weight of it used to comfort me—solid, familiar, the promise of ruin when words failed. Now it felt foreign. Wrong. Like carrying a part of myself I was ready to amputate.

Three feet of space stretched between us. The distance she'd carved from my need, measured in flinches and held breath.

Three feet might as well have been three miles. Or three inches. The numbers didn't matter when every cell in my bodyknew exactly how to close that gap. Pin her against the counter. Force her to see what she'd become to me—the only thing standing between me and the kind of carnage that would make headlines for weeks.

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