Page 19 of Peak Cruelty

This was supposed to be the part where she breaks.

Instead, something else just did.

10

Marlowe

The door slammed shut like punctuation.

I don’t think about how long it will be before he comes back.Counting is how it starts—the slow math of survival, then bargaining, then breaking.

And I’m not breaking.

Not for him.

The restraints are still tight.Not painful.Not kind.Just…engineered.Like everything else in this room.

There’s no clock, but the time bleeds out slow.The way it does in hospitals.Or funerals.Or marriages you know are ending but no one says it yet.

I shift slightly.The leather bites back.

It could be worse.I could be dead.

He thinks fear is the thing that’ll break me.

That’s the part that scares me.

We could be here a long time.

I lie still and let the room settle.It’s too clean.The kind of clean that means either bleach or guilt.Possibly both.

It makes you wonder what happened before.

He said I had until tomorrow.

That’s generous.

It’s also a trap.

I know better than to believe in deadlines.

This isn’t about time.

It’s bait.

And I’ve chewed through worse.

My shoulders ache from holding still too long.There’s a line of sweat crawling down my back, slow as doubt.I ignore it.Let the discomfort sharpen the edges.

The room is made for unraveling.There’s nothing to occupy your thoughts.No clocks.No mirrors.Just the sound of your own breath getting slower as your thoughts start circling the drain.

He’s not the first man who thought silence would do the trick.

He won’t be the last.

They always think stillness means surrender.

That if you’re quiet, you’re cornered.

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