The price of a soul

ELARA

  Immediately after the call ended, Jason didn’t hesitate—he used the taser on me.

 The prongs jabbed into my side, and a white-hot jolt surged through me. My muscles locked in searing pain. I convulsed, a cry catching in my throat, limbs jerking uncontrollably against the seat.

  The taser didn’t knock me out completely. It just turned my body into a cage of vibrating, white-hot agony. I couldn't move my limbs, but I could feel every bump in the road as the van swerved off the pavement and onto gravel.

 Dust. I smelled dust and rot.

 The van skidded to a halt. The side door slid open with a violent clang, letting in the stifling, humid air of the impending storm.

 "Get her out," Jason ordered.

  Rough hands grabbed my ankles—my expensive, pearl-studded heels scraping against the metal floor—and dragged me out like a sack of refuse. I hit the ground hard, the gravel biting into my bare shoulders. I gasped, the air rushing back into my paralyzed lungs, but before I could scream, a heavy boot slammed into my ribs.

 "Quiet," the driver grunted. He was a large man, faceless in the shadows, smelling of stale tobacco.

  I looked up. We were at the skeletal remains of an abandoned textile factory. The windows were jagged teeth of broken glass, and the roof had half-collapsed. It was a place where things went to be forgotten.

 "Please," I whispered, my voice a broken croak. "Jason. You don't have to do this. I can give you money. I have—"

 Jason laughed, a sound that echoed off the hollow concrete walls. He dragged me up by my hair, ignoring my cry of pain as the veil tore away, taking strands of my hair with it.

 "I know you have money, Elara. That’s the point." He shoved me through the rotting doorway into the gloom of the warehouse. "But Mark and I don't just want your money. We want you broken. We want to make sure that if you ever crawl back to civilization, you’ll be too ashamed to show your face."

  He threw me onto the dirty concrete floor. I scrambled backward, trying to cover myself, my wedding dress now ripped and gray with filth.

 "Mark..." I sobbed, the name tasting like ash. "Mark wouldn't..."

 "Mark paid for the gas," Jason sneered, loosening his tie. He looked at the driver. "You want to go first? Or should I?"

 The driver shrugged, his eyes dark and hungry. "Doesn't matter to me."

 Realization crashed over me, colder and more terrifying than death. They weren't just going to beat me. They were going to destroy me.

 "No!" I screamed, finding strength in the sheer terror. "No! Get away from me!"

 I tried to stand, to run, but Jason was faster. He backhanded me across the face, the force of it spinning me around. I tasted blood.

 "Don't make this hard, Princess," Jason hissed, pinning me down.

 I fought. I fought with every ounce of strength I had left. I scratched. I bit. I kicked. But I was one woman in a wedding dress against two men who had planned this for weeks.

 When the darkness came, I didn't pass out. I just… went away.

  I stared at a crack in the ceiling high above. I counted the water stains. One. Two. Three. I separated my soul from my body. I floated up to the rafters, leaving the weeping, broken thing on the floor behind. I told myself it wasn't happening. I told myself I was already dead.

 God, I prayed, for the first time in years. If you are there, let me die. Just let me die.

 But God wasn't in this warehouse. Only devils.

 Time lost its meaning. It could have been minutes or hours later when the world snapped back into sharp, agonizing focus.

 I was lying curled in a ball on the cold concrete. My dress was in tatters, barely hanging off my frame. My body felt like it had been shattered, piece by piece, and glued back together wrong. Every inch of skin burned. Every breath was a knife in my chest.

 "Stop crying," a voice barked.

 Jason kicked my leg. He was standing over me, adjusting his suit, looking unbothered. He looked… bored.

 "We aren't done, Elara. We have a transaction to complete."

 He crouched down and grabbed my hair, yanking my head up. He shoved a phone in my face. It was the banking app for the offshore trust my father had left me—the money I had saved to start a family with Mark.

 "Login," Jason commanded.

 My hands were shaking so badly I couldn't see them. My fingers were swollen.

 "I... I can't," I wept, my voice barely a whisper. "Please... just let me go."

 "Wrong answer."

 Jason grabbed my left hand—the hand that was supposed to wear a wedding ring today. He took my pinky finger and bent it backward.

 "Login."

 "I can't!"

 Snap.

  The sound was loud in the empty building. The pain was blinding, a white nauseating wave that made me dry heave.

 "Login!" Jason roared, slapping the phone into my other hand. "Or the next one is your thumb!"

 I looked at the screen through a blur of tears and blood. I thought about refusing. I thought about letting them kill me. But a tiny, hateful spark flared to life in my chest.

 If I die, they win.

 If I die, Mark gets everything and lives happily ever after.

 I have to live.

 With trembling, broken fingers, I tapped in the passcode.

 7-2-9-4.

 The app opened. The balance flashed on the screen: $84,000,000.

 Jason whistled low. "Mark really hit the jackpot with you."

 "Transfer it," he ordered. "All of it. To the account ending in 883."

 I hesitated. That money was my life. It was my father's legacy. It was my freedom.

 "Do it!" The driver shouted, stepping forward and raising his boot.

 I sobbed, a guttural sound of defeat, and pressed Transfer.

 Confirm Transaction?

 Yes.

 Transaction Complete.

 New Balance: $0.00.

 Jason snatched the phone back. He checked the confirmation, a greedy grin spreading across his face.

 "Pleasure doing business with you, Elara." He stood up, pocketing the phone.

 "You... you said..." I gasped, clutching my broken hand to my chest. "You said you'd let me go."

 Jason looked down at me. The look in his eyes wasn't mercy. It was amusement.

 "I lied."

 He nodded to the driver.

  The driver picked up a heavy piece of rusted rebar from the debris pile.

 "No..." I tried to crawl away. My legs wouldn't work. "No, please! You got the money!"

 "Mark was very specific," Jason said, taking a step back toward the exit. "No loose ends. He said he didn't want an open casket... but ashes? Ashes are fine."

 The driver swung the metal bar.

 It connected with my ribs first. I felt the bone crack. I screamed, but the sound was cut short as he swung again, hitting my shoulder, then my leg.

 Pain. It was the only thing left in the universe.

 "This is for making us wait in the car," the driver grunted, swinging the bar down toward my head.

 I threw my arms up to protect my face. The metal struck my forearm with a sickening crunch.

 "Enough!" Jason called from the doorway. "Don't beat her to death. Let’s make sure she never crawls out."

 I heard the splash of liquid. The stinging, chemical smell of gasoline filled the air, choking me. They were dousing the rotting wood, the trash, the very exit I needed.

 "Have fun in hell, Princess," Jason laughed.

 He struck a match and tossed it.

 Whoosh.

 The world exploded into orange and red. The heat was instantaneous, a physical blow that sucked the oxygen right out of the room.

 Jason and the driver slammed the heavy metal door shut. I heard the lock click.

 "No!" I shrieked, coughing as black smoke rolled over me. "NO!"

 I was trapped. Broken. Alone.

 The flames licked up the walls, hungry and fast. The heat began to blister my skin. My wedding dress, already tattered, started to smoke.

 I am going to die.

 No.

 The rage returned, stronger than the fire.

  I dragged my body across the floor. The concrete seared my skin. My broken leg dragged behind me, a dead weight. I screamed as a falling beam crashed inches from my head, sparks showering my hair.

 I saw a gap in the rotting wall—a jagged hole where the bricks had crumbled away, leading to the ravine outside. It was surrounded by fire.

 I didn't think. I couldn't. I crawled through the flames.

  The fire caught my sleeve. I felt the skin on my arm sear and bubble, a horrific, melting pain that made my vision go white. I batted at it, sobbing, rolling through the debris until I reached the hole.

 I pushed my head through the cool night air. The rain hit my face.

 With one final, agonizing heave, I threw my body out of the burning warehouse.

 I tumbled into the wet grass, smoking and burned. But I didn't stop rolling. The ground beneath me gave way. It was the edge of the ravine.

 I fell.

 Branches whipped at my face. Thorns tore at my burned skin. I tumbled down, down, down into the dark, hitting rocks and roots, the darkness swallowing me whole.

 I slammed into the mud at the bottom.

 The last thing I saw was the orange glow of the warehouse burning high above me, like a funeral pyre and then, everything went black.