Chapter 8 8

The basement was silent except for their harsh breathing.

Isaiah's hand was wrapped around Karen's left wrist, pinning it to the wall above her head. His fingers were digging into the leather of her glove.

Something was wrong.

His mind registered the sequence in slow motion. The curve of her wrist bones beneath his grip. The flat plane of her palm pressed against the cold concrete. But then, his thumb, applying pressure where the base of her smallest finger should be, met no resistance. The leather simply... collapsed.

It was soft. Empty. An unnatural void where solid bone and flesh should be.

Isaiah froze. The anger in his eyes flickered, replaced by a deep, unsettling confusion. He squeezed again, his thumb exploring the hollow space, trying to make sense of the tactile lie the glove was telling him.

Nothing. Just air inside leather.

Karen realized what he was doing. Her eyes went wide with a primal terror. It wasn't the fear of him, of his strength, but the terror of being seen. Of having her deepest, most guarded wound exposed.

"Don't," she whimpered, the sound barely a breath.

She tried to yank her hand away, a sudden, desperate bucking of her body.

"What is this?" Isaiah asked. His voice dropped, losing its rage and taking on a sharp, suspicious edge.

"Let go!"

"Are you hiding something?" Isaiah's suspicion flared. Drugs? A weapon? "Open your hand."

"No!"

"Show me!"

He shifted his grip, his fingers fumbling for the edge of the glove.

"Isaiah, please!" Karen begged. It was the first time she had pleaded with him for anything since the day she signed the papers. Her voice cracked with a desperation that went beyond their fight. "Don't look! Please don't look!"

Her reaction was too extreme. It was visceral. It only confirmed his suspicion that she was hiding something dangerous.

"Hoke was living with this?" Isaiah growled, his mind racing to the worst possible conclusions. "What do you have in there?"

He didn't wait. He grabbed the cuff of the black leather glove.

Karen screamed. It was a raw, tearing sound from the depths of her soul. "NO!"

Isaiah pulled.

The glove was tight, damp with sweat. It slid off with a sickening resistance, peeling away from her skin like a second layer.

It came free.

Isaiah looked.

The breath left his body in a single, silent rush.

The light in the basement was dim, a single bare bulb casting long shadows, but it was more than enough.

Karen's hand was pale, trembling against the dark, damp wall. The thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers were there, slender and stained with charcoal.

But the pinky...

It was gone.

It wasn't a clean, surgical amputation. The stump was jagged, a mangled knot of scar tissue that had healed in a twisted, shiny pucker. It looked like it had been hacked off. Or crushed.

It looked like torture.

Isaiah stared at it. His brain stuttered, unable to process the visual information. He blinked, a stupid, reflexive action, expecting the finger to reappear. It didn't.

He released her wrist as if it had burned him. Her hand dropped to her side, limp and exposed.

Karen didn't move. She didn't try to cover it. She just slumped against the wall, tears finally streaming down her face, her chest heaving with silent, violent sobs. She looked utterly, irrevocably broken.

Isaiah took a staggering step back. He felt like he had been punched in the gut, the air forced from his lungs.

"Karen..." he whispered, her name a foreign sound on his tongue. "What happened?"

He reached out, his own hand trembling, with an insane urge to touch the scar, to verify it was real.

Karen flinched away from his touch as if he were a hot iron.

"Don't touch it," she hissed through her tears.

"Who did this?" Isaiah asked. His voice was rising, a chaotic mix of horror and a sudden, confusing rage that had no target. "Did you do this to yourself?"

Karen looked up. Her eyes were red, swollen, and filled with a hatred so pure and bottomless it scorched him.

"You did," she said.