Page 1 of Jax
1
Stella
Pain woke me first.Then the blood. Then the chair. And finally, the awful realization that I wasn’t meant to die.
I was meant to be useful—bruised into obedience, and painted in panic.
Everything hurt. Not in the sharp, clean way that comes from a single injury, but in the deep, spreading ache of something dragged too far for too long. My head pulsed with a mean, concussive rhythm behind my eyes. My jaw throbbed. Zip-ties bound my arms, which were little more than tingling masses of aching dead weight, to the back of the chair. My shoulders screamed from the unnatural angle. My legs were bound just as tightly to the chair’s legs. I tried shifting my weight, but the ties only cut in deeper, and I bit down on a hiss.
My mouth tasted like old pennies. I was bleeding. Split lip. Probably a bitten cheek. Maybe more. There was no telling what else they’d done while I was passed out. The blindfold was scratchy and too tight, pressing into my temples like a vice. A small sliver of dim light leaked in under the bottom edge of the rough cloth, but not enough to see anything useful. Every breath came through my nose, slow and cautious.
The air reeked of wet concrete, mildew, and rust. Old building. A basement, maybe? Somewhere meant to rot quietly beneath the world.
I tested the restraints again—wrists first, then ankles. There was absolutely no give. My fingers were already going numb. My bare feet grazed the cement floor—slick, cold, and pitted. I shifted my toes, felt the drag of grime and moisture. My heart dropped in my chest when I realized that whoever these people were, they didn’t even care about putting down a tarp to make cleanup easier. Were they that confident, or that ruthless?.
Calm down, Stella. You can’t afford to panic. If I was going to be raped and killed, I already would have been. So whoever these fuckers are, they must want something. But what the fuck could they want from a starving artist, barely able to afford the rent on my studio?
A low mechanical buzz hummed overhead as my thoughts spiraled through question after question. A flickering light maybe, or ancient wiring. Water dripped somewhere, steady and rhythmic, a metronome counting down to something I couldn’t see. My pulse was too loud, my thoughts too slow. Everything in me saidmove,escape,run, but my body was a cage, and panic was a mere breath away.
Somewhere nearby, footsteps. Not rushed. Not heavy. Just… deliberate. Confident.
I froze.
Two men, speaking just out of earshot. One voice calm, measured, the kind you only heard from people who never had to repeat themselves. The other answered in short, clipped responses. A subordinate, maybe. Someone who didn’t need details, just orders.
I tilted my head carefully, desperate to gleananyinformation. The movement was just enough to shift the edge of the blindfold. That sliver of light grew just a bit, the colorsblurry, trembling. Through the sting, I caught a glimpse of one of the men: black leather shoes, shined so perfectly I could see the flicker of the overhead bulb reflected in the curve of the toe. Slacks, neatly pressed. Structured. Clean.
Police? Maybe. The shape was right. The stance too. Not wide-legged like a soldier, not slouched like a thug. Just... still. Upright. Professional. I wanted to believe it was a hallucination, that the pounding in my head had conjured it, but deep down, I knew better. Police, or someone wearing the role well enough to be dangerous.
They weren’t hiding, and that was the part that scared me the most. Whoever they were, they stood with the kind of boldness that belonged to people who weren’t afraid of getting caught.
Voices drifted in again. “...continued expansion...” “...fully operational...” “...shipments...”
One word I couldn’t catch. A name, maybe. Alex, maybe? Alexei? A detail too small to matter, or it could have been everything. I froze anyway, because fear always finishes the sentence for you.
Then, silence. Heels turning. One set of footsteps retreated.
And one came closer.
Slower now. Measured. The hair on my arms lifted. My body knew before my brain did; someone was watching me.
I stayed still. Breath shallow. Playing dead.
A chair creaked beside me, wood against concrete, and a shadow shifted. Someone crouched. Then there were fingers in my hair. Gloved. Cold. They slid from my scalp to the nape of my neck, threading through sweat-damp strands with a touch that wasn’t cruel or kind. Just... exacting. Like a butcher evaluating a cut of meat.
“You’re awake,” the man murmured, his breath too close to my ear. Calm. Almost warm. “Good. Now we can finally have a little chat. Listen close, I’m only going to say this once.”
I swallowed hard, tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Blood had dried there like glue. I nodded blindly, not trusting myself to speak.
“You own a property at 2901 Lorene Street, in the industrial district. Some sort of art studio, if I am not mistaken. Correct?” His voice carried a quiet certainty that told me that whoever this was, he probably had more information about my studio than he was letting on.
I nodded timidly again.
“My employer has decided to acquire your property, and we aren’t interested in long, drawn-out negotiations. So, this is how it’s going to work,” he said. “You’re going to go over to the Recorder of Deeds office in Independence, and transfer the property to the name we give you. You’ll find everything you need waiting for you back home.”
His tone never shifted. No threat. No emphasis. Like it was just one more errand. “If you refuse, you won’t survive our next meeting. And my employer will acquire your property anyhow. I recommend you accept our generous offer.”
He didn’t ask whether I understood.
