Page 9 of Until You Break
He’d hear me coming. Good. Let him learn the sound of his owner before he’d see my face.
CHAPTER 3
EMILIO
I came to with a jolt, gasping, cheek glued to freezing marble.
My stomach lurched. Silence buzzed under my skin, the kind that follows being drugged and dumped. Vision doubled, breath dragging slow. Heart racing too fast, veins pounding with something foreign. Nausea coiled low. Every attempt to move felt like climbing through glue.
My last memory was running, feet pounding pavement, lungs tearing open, Dino’s face in the streetlight, saying it was safe. Lying. Selling me out with a smile.
Then a flash. A fist. A needle. Fire behind my eyes.
Then blackness.
Now I was cold, filthy, caged, shaking.
The marble sucked heat from my body. My lips were cracked. My tongue tasted of metal.
Clove, sharp and sweet, hung in the air thick enough to gag.
A strip of light buzzed overhead, throwing shadows across stone walls. No windows.
In the corner, a narrow metal bed bolted to the floor, sheets crumpled and stained. Beside it, a wall-mounted showerhead above a drain.
Everything reeked of containment. Of punishment.
Dark patches stained the floor near the drain. Dried blood, maybe. Or rust.
At some point, someone had unshackled me. My wrists throbbed raw where the cuffs had bitten deep.
Whatever they’d injected still pulsed in me. My limbs didn’t want to move. But I forced them to.
I staggered upright. My head spun, stomach pitched. My hands shook as I scanned the cell.
Somewhere beyond the walls, metal groaned. A hinge, a pipe, or just the building settling wrong. The sound scraped down my spine.
“Hello?” My voice broke. Even speaking hurt.
Then came whistling.
A jagged tune, off on purpose. Each note snapped short, paced with the thud of footsteps.
The air thickened. Skin prickled. Steps too calm, too measured—violence walking in clean shoes.
“H-hello?” Smaller now. My body locked.
Someone was on the other side of that door. They were about to come in.
I couldn’t run. Could barely think. Instinct dropped me back to the marble.
I wanted to vanish. My nails scraped the floor; the marble answered with burn and grit. These hands had once held brushes. Now they shook like they’d forgotten art entirely.
The panic climbed. My breath stuttered. I pressed my forehead to the wall. The scream stayed locked behind my teeth.
And still, I looked up when the door opened.
A man filled the frame. Tall. Dark clothes built to move, not to show off. Black hair slicked back, careless. Lashes thick, eyes storm-dark with a glint that burned instead of softened. He couldn’t have been more than his late twenties, but power sat on him like a birthright.
