Page 51 of Lacey's Fight

“Diana is gone. I went out for a run and a workout at the gym, and when I got back to our room she wasn’t there. I found this.” He pulled the bracelet from his pocket and held it up. “On the ground outside. She never takes this off, it’s sentimental. Where is she?”

“I … I don’t … know,” Amelia stammered, true terror in her eyes. She might think she was all-powerful, playing God with innocent people’s lives, but when she didn’t have her armed goon squad around to back her up she wasn’t so tough.

“Then you better help me find her and you better pray that when we do not a hair on her head is harmed because if anything happens to her, I am holding you personally responsible.”

Her and himself.

If Lacey was hurt, or worse, dead, he would never forgive himself for failing her.

CHAPTER TWELVE

August 7th

3:41 A.M.

Exhaustion.

A heavy blanket of it weighed her down.

Lacey barely felt the burning pain in her back, or at least what she knew from experience should be burning pain. She was to the point where she could barely even summon enough energy to feel humiliated and angry at her own body for betraying her and making her feel things she didn’t want to feel.

It was just too much.

Eventually, a brain had to reach overload, and it seemed hers had reached its limit.

Usually, she had no trouble keeping an approximate read on time even when there were no cues, her mind could kind of tick over seconds just like a watch.

But not today.

Today it felt like she had been trapped in this room with The Master for hours, days even, although she knew logically it couldn’t be that long.

How much longer she’d be stuck here she had no idea.

At some point, Ben would return to their room and find she was no longer there. He might not care, might just go straight to sleep assuming she had gone off to alleviate her own extra energy, but sooner or later he would realize something was wrong.

She had no doubt he would do whatever it took to find her even if he didn’t really care about her, would likely even realize it was a possibility The Master was the one who was responsible for her disappearance. But when would that be?

And how much longer could she last down here?

It felt like all the progress she’d made these last six years had been undone in a matter of hours. The strong, confident woman who had conquered her fear of intimacy and her body’s reaction to The Master’s ministrations by taking control of her body and its pleasure was fading fast.

Soon she might disappear altogether.

No.

Don’t give up.

Her inner voice screamed at her, insisting that she fight. Giving up meant letting The Master win. It meant that the last six years were basically a waste if she was just going to melt into a puddle of nothingness.

Saving lives, that gave her own life meaning. A purpose. A reason to get up and face the sunrise each morning. A reason not to give up each night when the sun slowly set.

Giving up now meant she wasn’t the woman she thought she was.

Lacey Smith fought. It was what she did and who she was. She’d been fighting since the moment her father carried her tiny body out of their burning home, and her little lungs almost succumbed to smoke inhalation.

She’d fought through years of abuse at The Master’s hand. She’d fought through the ordeal of learning about the world outside her Alaskan prison, and harnessing the skills she’d learned for good and not the evil The Master intended.

You got this.

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