Page 116 of Buried in Blood
I should have known. I should’ve tried to figure out who it was. But I didn’t. I’m not loyal.
Now I’m here.
Again.
Back in the place where names are erased and value is measured in silence. My identity fading behind the bars Damien crafted from obsession and grief.
I trace a crack in the floor with my finger. It looks like a vein. Like something pulsing under the stone. Like the building is alive and hungry.
I whisper, “Are you okay, Brooke?”
My voice doesn’t echo.
The silence swallows it whole.
If Damien finds her—and hewill—she’ll never make it out alive. Not unless Lucien can out think him.
Not unless I do something.
But I’m caged. Bare. Unarmed.
Just the clothes on my back.
And my mind?
It’s the only thing I have left.
SoI turn it against him.
I start cataloging his routines. His weaknesses. The cracks in his kingdom he never saw coming.
Because maybe this time, the monster gets out of the cage.
And maybe this time… she burns it all down.
* * *
I hear the lock before the door groans open.
That sound—click, grind, creak—has become its own language. Each time it echoes through the walls, I hold my breath, bracing for fists, commands, lies.
This time, it’s different.
The footsteps are quieter. More measured. Less like a storm, more like a reckoning.
It’s Reese.
He pauses just inside the threshold like he doesn’t belong here. Like the air might burn him if he steps further. His eyes adjust to the dim, flickering light, and when they find me—huddled in the corner, knees drawn to my chest, sleeves stained from where I wiped the tears I wasn’t supposed to cry—his jaw clenches.
He doesn’t speak.
Neither do I.
The silence isn’t comfortable. It’s never been. But between us, it’s always meant more than words.
Reese exhales slowly, then slides down to sit against the far wall, just outside the marked perimeter that Damien marked with tape in the cells. No one’s allowed inside it. Not even Reese. It’s a stupid rule, but one that keeps me safe in ways I don’t fully understand.
“I shouldn’t have come,” he says finally.
