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If I spent my childhood feelin' like a coveted possession, he spent his feelin'… discarded. I was the star of the show, he was the backstage help.

I never gave him the code. Instead, I looked for what he wanted and gave it to him.

The bottom line is… no one is comin'.

For the simple reason that… no one can.

They can't even open the elevator door, let alone make it move.

"Lovey-dove," Marcus purrs. He's calm still. Which is a good sign, I guess. "Did you hear me?"

I heard you, ya piece of shit.

But I don't say that, obviously.

Play the game, Savannah.

You're not naked. Yet.

You're not tied up. Yet.

Play the game. Play the fucking game.

My chin tilts up as I cross my legs. My arms cross, but not high over my chest in a protective manner. Lower. Casual.

I am not his victim. I will never allow him that satisfaction again. I would rather die than be violated by this psychopath.

And yes, it hurts to have to make this choice. Legion's baby is in my belly. We are so close to some kind of normal, I can taste it. So close to our happily ever after, I could touch it.

But there are things worse than death. And being raped by Marcus White Jr. while pregnant is one of them.

"Darling?" Marcus asks, almost curious, when the seconds tick off in silence. "Did you hear me? I gave you⁠—"

"I heard you, Marcus," I say, cutting him off. "But I will not be taking off my clothes. I'm sorry if that interrupts your delusional, psychotic episode, but my answer is no, and that is final."

One corner of his mouth ticks up in a lopsided smile. He looks like the Joker. Supervillain era, unlocked.

No one is comin' to save me. Even if there was a way to break into this bunker, it's not gonna happen in the next five minutes.

And that's all the time I've got to finish this.

Marcus takes a step forward. Head tiltin', eyes narrowed and locked on me. "I'm sorry?"

“No, Marcus, you're not sorry. You're not sorry for any of this. You already explained. I'm your property."

Another step forward. We are, maybe, six feet apart. He's standing, I'm sitting, and you don't have to be an expert to read this room.

"That's right," he says, brightening at the thought. "You are my property. My family bought you at birth."

"See? There it is."

"There's what?" he snarls.

"Your crazy is showing, Marcus. You cannot buy people."

He laughs. Loud and theatrical, the kind of laugh that belongs on a stage, not in a stone room thirty feet underground, and it bounces off the walls and comes back to me wrong, distorted, like an echo that's lost all its original shape.

I think about acoustics—how the silo carried whispers but swallowed screams—and I think about how this room was built to hold things in, and I wonder, briefly and with extraordinary precision, whether that was always the plan.