Chapter 1

"Do not worry, son. Charlotte had been a criminal attorney for ten years and she had never lost a case. She would put those animals behind bars for the rest of their lives."

Mom stared at me on the hospital bed, at the barely recognizable shape of what remained of my body. Tears rolled down her face in heavy drops.

Dad's eyes were bloodshot. His fists clenched so hard his knuckles cracked. "Find them. Turn over every stone if you have to. I will grind their bones to dust."

"I cannot take this case." Charlotte Clayborne, my girlfriend of ten years and a practicing attorney, finally spoke.

Mom's head snapped up. "Charlotte? What did you just say? Carrick is your fiancé. Look at what they did to him."

"That was exactly why I had to recuse myself.

"Besides, the litigation would require Carrick to relive and recount every detail of what happened to him over and over. For him, that would be like ripping the wounds open again and again. It would not help his recovery."

My parents exchanged a glance, then nodded through their tears.

"Charlotte is right. We were not thinking straight. We will hold off on pressing charges for now. We will find another way to make them pay."

Charlotte turned to look at my exhausted parents. "You two should go home and rest. I will stay with Carrick tonight."

My parents nodded, red-eyed, and took one last look at me before leaning on each other as they left.

Charlotte turned back and walked to the bedside. "Carrick, I know you are in a lot of pain right now. My work is complicated, and many times my hands are tied. As my boyfriend, you need to understand and support me.

"Besides, you only just reunited with the Selwyns. If this blows up, the ones who will be humiliated most are your parents. Let it go. Holding on to it will not do anyone any good."

She dropped a few white pills into a glass of water and stirred until they dissolved, then lifted my head.

"Carrick, be good. Take your medicine and sleep for a few days. When you wake up, it will all be over."

My chest felt like a block of red-hot iron pressed down on it. Every breath pulled at the raw, rotting flesh beneath.

She was the woman I had loved for ten years, the woman who had once sworn she would protect me with her life.

Yet now she spoke the cruelest words in the gentlest voice.

"Do not press charges."

Three words, weightless and easy, and just like that they erased six hours of suffering so brutal I had wished for death.

The drugs my captors had injected me with stretched the pain out endlessly. Even now, I could still feel every moment of it with perfect clarity.

I could still feel the searing burn of fireworks detonating at point-blank range, my skin charring and curling back in an instant. I could still feel my body flung by the blast wave, slamming into concrete until the bones inside me shattered.

Did she know any of this?

Did she know how terrified I had been when the fuses were lit?

Did she know how much it hurt when the burning hide melted into my wounds and ripped away?

Did she know whose name I had screamed over and over in my head as I crawled through the dark, dragging a trail of blood behind me?

She knew. She knew. Yet she hid behind "recusal" and dressed it up as concern for my wellbeing.

She wanted me to endure it, to forget it, to swallow a blood debt so deep it would never wash clean, all for the Selwyns' reputation and her own career.

Why should I?

The hatred was overwhelming. Every scar on my body felt like it was on fire.

I turned my head away. I did not want to look at her anymore.

My fingertips brushed against the phone by my pillow.