he brushed past me, his arm grazing my skin, sending an electric shock through my body. I gasped for breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding. Shivering, my shoulders relaxed as if his gaze had been a palpable weight on me.
What the fuck was that?
I surveyed the room, seeing if the encounter held their focus. Every pair of eyes were on me. They were slack-jawed and silent. Assessing and curious. But also angry, as if me getting his attention affronted them somehow.
Feeling the impact of their wonder, I swiveled around, ignoring my pain, which had returned with a vengeance, and hobbled out of the room as fast as I could.
Not far from the laundry room, I heard a soft voice, “What did I say?” Lynx stepped out of the shadows, and I jolted with her appearance.
“Fuck, Lynx.” I cringed, everything in me revolting at the sudden movement. “Warn a girl.”
“Why?” Her black eyes didn’t blink. “I want to disappear into the shadows. Not be seen until it’s too late.”
“Good job then.”
“I warned you. Danger and violence like you,” she said softly, melancholy weaving through her words like a song. “I fear there is no going back now.”
“What are you talking about?” I resumed walking, the laundry facility in sight. “Don’t tell me you’re clairvoyant or something. Do those powers still work in here?”
“No. Nothing like that.” She matched my slow steps. “It’s not hard to see you just invited the worst sort of trouble in. His attention on you is not good for you.”
Warwick.
“I didn’t really have a choice. He was kind of there. In my way.”
“He’s never done that. No one has ever drawn any bit of his notice. Not even the ones he kills.”
Her statement wrapped around my throat like a noose. “Again, not something I could control.” I brushed it off with a shrug.
“True or not, you have opened the door for trouble. Good or bad, he put a bullseye on your back without saying a word, and you can’t die,” she said nonchalantly, strolling into the room and to her workstation.
Confused by her last statement, I rubbed my forehead. She was right about one thing. By looking at me, Warwick had marked me. Many would try to figure out what had captured his interest in me, even as brief as it was.
This kind of attention was not a good thing. The others would want to find out what had caused the notorious Warwick Farkas to pause.
And then they would try to destroy it.
Over the next week, fellow inmates circled me like sharks trying to figure out the piece of meat in the water. I felt eyes on me from every angle.
Except his.
Warwick had gone back to acting as if I didn’t exist, which I thought would ebb the curiosity. It didn’t.
The first full week of my incarceration had been hell. By day I pretended I wasn’t terrified, homesick, and utterly hopeless. By night I curled up in a ball, crying silently on the cold hard ground.
Daily assaults tore at my psyche: the smell of the relieving hole only steps from where I laid my head, sleeping on packed earth like some animal, and being left in the same bloody, grimy clothes. I knew I smelled bad, but mine was a drop in the sea of stench.
Torture and terror stripped away at my sense of self. I felt primal. My mind slipped from reality and what I used to understand as normal. I had lost weight from stress and the lack of food. Even in sleep, my body never fully let go of the tension, and constant screams and guttural sobs woke me throughout the night, as well as my own nightmares.
I looked forward to sleep, though, because it brought dreams of Caden—feeling warm and restful. Though it hurt like a bitch when I woke up realizing where I was and that I would never see him again. Most likely, he thought I was dead. The “what ifs” of our story were punishment enough, but everything here was set to break you, even your own mind.
There were times death sounded like a dream. One you were glad to not wake from.
“Level 13!” A deep female voice boomed right as the door to my cell slid open, jolting my head up. “Shower day.”
Movement stirred on my level as sleepy prisoners in all colors of uniforms strolled by. Pushing myself up, I joined the zombie train, stumbling toward the washroom.
I’d accepted my lack of privacy to some degree,