บททั้งหมดของ HE WAITED 1,095 DAYS TO CLAIM ME: บทที่ 1 - บทที่ 10

The moment the plane touched down in Denver, something tight settled in my chest. It was not loud, nor was it sudden.It was just there, heavy against my chest like a weight that prevented me from breathing properly. I sat still even after the plane started moving, my eyes on the runway outside, but I wasn’t really seeing it. My mind kept going back to the same words.He’s gone. Your father is dead.I swallowed, my fingers curling slightly against my lap. He had died from a heart attack. That’s what Ronald said. But it didn’t sit right with me.My father wasn’t the kind of man who just died like that. He wouldn't die quietly and it would take time before he would die naturally. He had too many enemies, not to mention the fact that he lived in a world where death always meant something.There was always a reason. So no, I didn’t believe it. Because men like him didn’t just die. They were either taken, betrayed, set up or they saw it coming.My jaw tightened as another thought pushed

Cold.That was the first thing I felt.It was not the kind that brushed against your skin and faded. This one sank deeper, settling into my bones like it had been waiting for me.My eyes fluttered open slowly, my vision struggling to adjust to the darkness around me. The air was damp, thick, carrying the faint smell of metal and something older, something abandoned.It was a cellar.My head throbbed as the memory came back in pieces. The drink, the drug and Magnus. My stomach twisted.I tried to move, but the sharp pull around my wrists stopped me. My hands were bound tightly behind the chair, the ropes digging into my skin just enough to remind me that whoever tied them knew what they were doing.Of course they did. This wasn’t random. This was planned. A voice cut through the silence. It was low and filled with frustration. I stilled immediately.“…you weren’t supposed to move this fast,” Marcus said, pacing somewhere to my right. His tone wasn’t the one I knew. It was sharper and

Raze put Marcus in the east room.Not a cell, exactly. The compound didn't have those, not official ones. But there were rooms that locked from the outside and had no windows and smelled like they'd held other people before, and this was one of them. Two of Raze's men took Marcus by the arms without being asked, and Marcus went without fighting, which told me he was still calculating, still running some version of a play in his head that ended with him walking out of here.For his sake I hoped that he was right.Raze shut the door. Turned the key. Pocketed it.Soon we were the only two in the corridor, and the stillness between the two of us was too much."Silas," I said."In the morning.""Now."He looked at me. Not the way he'd looked at Marcus, that flat assessment. This was different. This was the look I remembered from before I left, the one that said he was reading something in me I hadn't decided to show yet."Silas is handling the compound tonight," he said. "You walk in there

I decided that I would give myself an hour.I spent a lot of it standing at the window in the room that they put me in, looking at the compound go through its morning routine below. Two men walking together across the yard. A vehicle is backing up heading eastward at the east gate. Two women I didn't recognize were carrying crates towards the supply building. It was a whole body that learned to walk without its head, and I don't yet know if that was Raze's or my father's or just what happens when a structure is constructed well enough that it outlasts the man that made it.In that hour I reflected a great deal on my father.At Silas' request, I went.It was a debrief room, and its scent was of old paper and burnt coffee.Silas was already there. I could see from his sitting that he was not fresh-tired, but the tired that has been sitting with him for hours. His jacket was off. His sleeves were rolled up. On the table were three folders and a fourth one at the far end, as if he had rea

Marcus looked smaller in daylight.I saw that first. The east room had one overhead light and no windows, and in the hours since Raze had locked him in here the particular confidence that had always been the most consistent thing about him had settled into something quieter. He was sitting when I came in. When he saw me, he stood. Old reflex — Marcus had always had good manners.I shut the door after me."No Raze," he said."No Raze."He read that. Filed it somewhere. "And Silas?""Just us," I said.I took the chair out of the corner and placed it in front of him and sat down. He remained standing for a while, after which he sat on the end of the cot. The room was smoky and stale, and it was peculiar that it smelled of the same cologne that he had been wearing for two years, the worst thing to notice and the most difficult to forget.I let the silence run.Marcus never liked to be silent. One of the first things I'd learned about him was that he filled it; he couldn't help it. It was