Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Nina’s POV

I didn’t know how long I sat on the floor, back pressed to the door, staring at nothing.

Minutes. Hours. Time didn’t feel real in that room.

My stomach was the first thing to remind me I was still alive.

It growled. Loud.

“Shut up,” I muttered, pressing a hand over it.

It growled again, louder, like it was offended.

I pushed myself up with a groan. The room was dim, the only light coming from a small lamp on the nightstand. The bed looked soft and warm, like it belonged in some hotel ad. The ocean outside whispered against the shore.

It all felt wrong.

I started pacing.

Back and forth across the rug. From the bed to the window. From the window to the door. My thoughts kept jumping: the cemetery, the gunshots, my mother’s coffin, my father’s hard face, those three men and their tattoos, that stupid slap on my ass that my body apparently liked more than my brain did.

I hated myself for thinking about that.

I wrapped my arms around my middle and tried to focus on the one thing I hadn’t really allowed myself to feel all day: grief.

My mother.

My throat tightened. I forced myself to walk to the bed and sat on the edge, staring down at my bare feet.

She should have been here. She should have been the one telling my father to calm down, to stop shouting, to stop making decisions like a king ordering soldiers. She should have been the one smoothing my hair and pressing a warm plate into my hands.

Instead, she was in the ground, and I was in a mansion full of strangers who smelled like smoke and danger.

A sob ripped out of my chest before I could swallow it down.

I bent forward, elbows on my knees, and covered my face with my hands. The tears finally came, hot and relentless. Images flashed behind my eyes: her laugh in the kitchen, the way she’d send me voice notes praying for my exams, the soft slap of her slippers on the tiles early in the morning.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I should have been there. I should have… I don’t know. Done something.”

My shoulders shook. The sound that came out of me was ugly, raw. There was no one here to see, so I didn’t bother trying to look strong.

I cried until my eyes burned and my head pounded.

When I finally ran out of tears, I felt wrung out, empty, like someone had taken my insides and twisted them.

I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a while. The room hummed softly with distant sounds and maybe the sea, maybe distant footsteps. It was hard to tell.

Eventually, the emptiness shifted into something else.

Restlessness.

I turned to my side. Then on my back. Then on my other side.

My stomach growled again, louder this time, protesting the fact that the last thing I’d eaten was a small piece of yam at the wake that morning.

“Seriously?” I mumbled. “People are trying to kill us and you’re asking for food?”

It responded with another angry rumble.

I sighed and rolled off the bed. My head spun for a second, then steadied.

I padded over to the mirror above the dresser and stared at myself.

I looked… insane.

My hair was sticking out in wild waves, a tangled mess around my face. My eyes were swollen, red, and shiny from crying. My lips were puffy. The oversized T shirt hung off one shoulder, showing the strap of my bra and a thin line of collarbone.

“I look like a ghost,” I whispered.

A very tired, very hungry ghost.

My stomach complained again, and I groaned.

“Fine. I get it. You win.”

I glanced at the nightstand and squinted at the small digital clock.

11:34 p.m.

It's almost midnight.

“I’ve been sulking for that long?” I muttered.

The room suddenly felt even smaller. I crossed to the mini-fridge in the corner and yanked it open, hope sparking in my chest.

It went out immediately.

Water. Just water. Neat little bottles, stacked like soldiers.

“No snacks? No juice? No chocolate?” I stared at the empty shelves. “What kind of monsters are you?”

Those men knew exactly what they were doing. Hungry people were tired people. Tired people were easier to control.

I slammed the fridge shut a little too hard and winced at the sound.

My eyes flicked to the door.

He hadn’t locked it when he left.

He’d told me to be a good girl. That was cute.

I walked to the door and wrapped my fingers around the handle, heart picking up speed.

“You’re just going to the kitchen,” I told myself. “Not running away. Not yet.”

I turned the handle slowly.

It clicked.

The door swung open a crack.

I froze, half expecting an alarm to go off, or a dozen men with guns to jump out from the shadows.

Nothing happened.

The hallway outside was dark except for a few small lights near the floor, casting a soft glow along the walls. The big lights were off, making everything feel softer and more intimate. Quieter.

I stepped out, closing the door gently behind me.

Bare feet. Quiet breathing. Heart pounding.

I tried to remember the way from earlier. Down the hall. Stairs. Somewhere on the lower floor, there had to be a kitchen. No way that huge dining table didn’t have a food source attached.

I moved lightly, my toes silent on the rug runner. Every little sound felt loud. The faint hum of the AC. The distant whoosh of the ocean.

A man’s voice somewhere down below, low and brief, then silence again.

I reached the stairs and went down slowly, one hand on the rail, trying not to think about cameras watching me from every angle. If they saw me, they’d stop me, right? They’d send Leather Jackets back to scoop me up and drop me on the bed like a naughty child.

The thought made goosebumps rise on my arms.

“Focus on food,” I whispered.

When I reached the next floor, I hesitated. Where would the kitchen be? Near the dining room, probably. I remembered seeing the long table through the open space earlier, near those big glass doors.

I peered around the corner.

Most of the area was dark, shapes of couches and tables just silhouettes. A faint glow came from somewhere deeper inside the house. Beyond the dining area, maybe.

My stomach growled again, urging me forward.

I tiptoed. Past the living room. Past the edge of the dining table. The faint glow became a little stronger, spilling from a doorway down the hall.

That’s when I heard it.

At first I thought it was the TV turned low. Or someone listening to music. A soft, broken sound, rising and falling.

Then it sharpened.

A woman’s voice.

A moan.

I stopped dead.

I held my breath, ears straining.

The sound came again, clearer this time. A drawn-out, breathless cry that climbed higher at the end. Wet, desperate, full of something I hadn’t heard outside of movies and dorm gossip.

“That’s… odd,” I whispered.

I knew what sex sounded like. I wasn’t twelve. But I’d never heard it so… live. So close.

Part of me knew I should turn around. Go back upstairs. Or at least go a different way.

Another part of me, the stupid curious part, took a slow step toward the sound.

Then another.

The light grew stronger as I approached the partially open door at the end of the hallway. A warm, golden light, not harsh. It spilled in a thin line across the floor.

The noises were clearer now. Not just one voice. Several.

A woman, gasping and moaning like she was losing her mind. And deeper sounds too …low male groans, quiet curses, the kind of rough, pleasure-laced sounds that made your skin prickle if you listened too long.

I reached the doorway.

I should have walked past. I should have turned around.

Instead, I paused, holding my breath, and glanced inside through the slim gap.

My heart stopped.

At first all I saw were shadows. Shapes moving. The curve of a bare shoulder. The outline of a man’s back, muscles shifting under skin. Then my eyes adjusted.

Three men.

One woman.

They were all tangled together on a wide couch, lit by the warm glow of a lamp. The woman was in the center of them, head tipped back, eyes closed, lips parted on another helpless, broken moan. Her hair spilled over the cushions like dark silk.

“Mmm…yes daddy. Give it to me…yessss!”

One man was pressed behind her, his mouth at her neck, his hands on her waist, guiding her.

Another knelt in front of her, his head bent too low for me to see everything, thank God but his shoulders moved in a way that made my face heat.

The third lounged along the side, one hand holding her thigh open, the other stroking slow circles over her skin.

Their bodies were hard, all lines and shadows. Tattoos glinted on arms and chests. Their faces were focused, hungry, like they were devouring her with more than their hands.

I had never seen anything like it in my life.

Not in p**n, not in the flashes of sex scenes in movies, never in real life. I’d kissed. I’d touched. I’d had a boyfriend who begged and pushed and sulked.

But this?

This was… something else.

My throat went dry. My pulse raced so fast it made my fingertips tingle.

I swallowed carefully, afraid that even that sound would give me away.

The woman cried out again, louder, a sound torn from somewhere deep. One of the men cursed softly, praising her in a rough whisper I couldn’t quite catch.

Heat rolled through my body like a wave, starting low and spreading up. My skin felt tight, too sensitive. My thighs pressed together without my permission.

“Nope,” I mouthed silently. “Nope, nope, nope.”

I dragged my gaze away, heart slamming against my ribs.

They hadn’t seen me.

Thank God, I thought. The woman’s moans were so loud, so constant, that I was sure any tiny noise I’d made in the hallway had been swallowed.

I tiptoed backward, step by careful step, until the doorway was out of sight and the light was just a faint line again.

Then I turned and hurried back the way I’d come, my breath shallow, my body buzzing with something sharp and wicked and confusing.

I didn’t even remember climbing the stairs. One second I was halfway down the hall, the next I was closing my bedroom door with shaking hands.

I leaned against it, heart banging, cheeks burning. My body felt too hot and too shaky at the same time. There was a slick, restless feeling low in my belly that I did not want to think about.

“Get it together,” I whispered, pressing my palms over my face. “You did not just spy on four strangers… doing that.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to erase the images. Hard shoulders. Inked hands.

A woman’s face twisted in pleasure. Three deep voices mixing with her sounds like a dangerous song.

My thighs pressed together again.

“Stop,” I muttered at myself.

I took a slow breath. Then another. I was just starting to calm down, to convince myself that I would never have to see any of them again in that context, when I heard it.

A knock on the door.