Shame looked back at me, his eyes mirroring the terror I felt, a stark contrast to my phantom’s detached indifference. “Diana, look at me. I’m real. Sinclair is real. We’re here to get you out.”
Sinclair, sensing my internal conflict, spoke softly. “My dear, the longer we stay, the greater the risk. We know who has been visiting you. We saw the visitor log. They won’t hurt you ever again. I give you my word.”
My gaze drifted to the armrest once more, the worn grooves a familiar comfort in the face of this overwhelming reality. Shame’s hand tightened, his thumb tracing the faint scar on my knuckle, a relic of a long-forgotten game. This simple gesture, so mundane, so profoundly human, began to unravel the threads of my manufactured reality.
My phantom’s whispered words:Go with him. Baby, run, receded like a tide pulled by an unseen moon.
Perhaps, just perhaps, this was not another cruel illusion.
Perhaps this was the dawn, however dim, of the freedom I had clung to in the deepest chambers of my quietude.
“Enough of this,” Sinclair stated as he gathered me up in his arms, cradling me like a small child that needed protection. His arms were a shield against the oppressive silence, a stark contrast to my phantom’s ethereal embrace. The journey from my rocking chair to his hold felt like crossing a vast, uncharted ocean. Each step was tentative, my feet unaccustomed to the solid ground that was no longer a concept but a reality. The marble floor, once a symbol of my sterile confinement, now felt like a treacherous path beneath Sinclair’s determined stride. Shame’s hand remained a warm anchor, his presence asilent reassurance against the swirling chaos in my mind. My phantom’s whispers, once potent, were now slowly becoming distant echoes, fading with each step away from the familiar, mournful creak of my chair.
The air outside the confines of my cell was a shock, a symphony of sounds I hadn’t truly registered in years. The distant hum of life, the rustle of leaves, the murmur of voices. Each sound felt like a jolt, a reminder of a world I had only dared to imagine. Sinclair navigated the corridors with practiced efficiency, his movements purposeful, devoid of the hesitation that still held me captive. Shame walked beside us, his gaze sweeping the shadows, a protective sentinel. I clung to the phantom warmth of Shame’s hand, my eyes, still unaccustomed to the dim light of the hallway, darting nervously, searching for any sign of the forces that had kept me prisoner for so long.
As we neared what felt like an exit, a door that promised a return to the world I once knew, a surge of raw, unadulterated fear coursed through me. My phantom’s promises, the imagined meadows, and the laughter of my children—they all felt like a fragile bubble about to burst.
What if this was the ultimate deception?
What if freedom was merely a more elaborate form of capture?
My breath hitched, a silent scream caught in my throat. Shame squeezed my hand tighter, his touch grounding me, pulling me back from the precipice of my recurring nightmares as he reached for his phone, putting it to his ear.
“We’ve got her. Make the trade,” he said as the door swung open, and a blinding light, a harsh and unforgiving light of the outside world, flooded the hallway, threatening to consume the last vestiges of my carefully constructed reality.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Bane
Three days.
Three eternities.
The silence was a suffocating blanket that pressed down on me and stole the very air from my lungs.
Lying in the hospital bed, I watched the minutes tick by as I waited to hear from Shame. He’d been gone for three motherfucking days now, and the not knowing was eating me alive. I needed to know that Diana was safe. That he got her out of that fucking insane asylum.
I wouldn’t be able to rest until I knew.
The sterile white walls of my confinement amplified the thumping in my chest. Each tick of the clock, every drip of the IV stand, felt like a hammer blow that chipped away at my resolve.
Shame was my last vestige of hope, the only one who’d ever dared to go toe-to-toe with that fucking bastard who destroyed my happiness and walked away unscathed. He’d promised to find my wife wherever she was, and get her to safety until Montana and I could do what needed to be done. Only it didn’t work out that way, and while Shame never stopped looking, Montana and I had a hell of a time gathering the evidence needed to oust George.
In the end, that motherfucker up and retired, thinking he’d gotten away with murder. However, Montana and I were leery. With George no longer walking the halls of the clubhouse, he had free rein to do whatever his perverted mind came up with.Which is why I reluctantly asked Shame to split his focus and monitor George and the rest of the Rejects.
I stupidly thought when George died, that would be the end of my misery, but it wasn’t. I knew then that this shit would never end. Especially when Shame woke from the lifesaving surgery I performed to tell me that Dakota fucking Stone was working with Meredith Doherty, the same fucking cunt who drugged and raped me, allowing George Stone to blackmail and force me into the Soulless Sinners.
Knowing what we knew now about Dakota, I should have seen it before. I should have known that party all those years ago was nothing more than a setup to get me in the same place as her.
As for why, I figured it was something I would never know. Maybe I wasn’t meant to. Who knows? All I knew now was that finally after twenty fucking years, Shame had located my wife, and I just prayed that when she saw me again, she forgave me.
My gaze drifted to the window, the gray sky a mirror of my mood. I imagined Shame out there somewhere as he navigated labyrinthine corridors, dodging guards, his usual cool a thin veneer over a simmering rage.
Had he found her?
Was she safe? The thought clawed at my throat.
I knew Shame. He wouldn’t quit, not for Diana.