Chapter 6

Ethan carried me himself. He didn't carry me with care, but like a sack of garbage he was taking out. He threw me onto a dusty mattress in the corner of the damp, windowless basement.

He stood over me, his face a mask of cold fury. He tore a strip of cloth from an old sheet and began to clean the blood from my face, his movements rough and impatient.

"You will stay here," he said, his voice a low, menacing growl. "You will stay here until you learn your place. You are mine, Elaine. Forever."

I trembled, not from the cold, but from the terrifying finality in his voice. This was it. This was my tomb.

A doctor, another one on Ethan' s payroll, was summoned. He looked at me, lying broken on the mattress, and his face went pale.

"Mr. Mcclure, her injuries are catastrophic," he stammered. "Her throat is crushed, she can barely breathe. And her leg... the bone is shattered. It's a compound fracture. Without immediate, extensive surgery... she will need an amputation."

I tried to speak, to beg, to plead. But all that came out was a wet, gurgling sound.

For a moment, just a moment, I saw a flicker of something in Ethan's eyes. A ghost of the man I thought I had married.

But it was gone as quickly as it appeared.

"Fix her throat," he commanded the doctor. "And her other injuries. But leave the leg. I want her to remember what happens when she tries to run away."

Leo, who had followed them down, clapped his hands in delight. "Good! Now the bad woman can't run away anymore!"

Geneva smiled, a look of pure, unadulterated triumph on her face. Her eyes met mine, and she mouthed the words, "I win."

She then walked over to me, a small vial in her hand. I recognized it. It was a highly concentrated acid she used for her "gardening projects."

"Ethan, darling," she said, her voice syrupy sweet. "She looks like she's in so much pain. Maybe this will help."

She uncapped the vial, the acrid smell filling the small room.

"Geneva, no," Ethan said, but his voice was weak, without conviction. He was looking at my face, at the ghost of the woman he once pretended to love. Geneva saw it too.

Jealousy, vicious and swift, contorted her features.

"You still care about her, don't you?" she hissed.

Before he could answer, she tipped the vial.

The acid splashed onto my shattered leg.

The pain was beyond anything I had ever imagined. It was a living, all-consuming fire, eating through my skin, my muscle, my nerves. I thrashed on the mattress, a silent scream trapped in my ruined throat.

The smell of burning flesh filled the air.

Geneva laughed, a high, manic sound. "Do you remember the gardenias, Elaine? Your favorite flowers? I killed them all. With this. Just like I'm killing you, bit by bit."

My body convulsed, tears of pure agony streaming down my face. I could see the white of my own bone through the sizzling, melting flesh.

The torture didn't stop. For weeks, I was kept in that basement, a prisoner in a world of darkness and pain. Every day, Ethan would come down and take my marrow, his face a cold, impassive mask. He never spoke a word.

The pain was constant. My leg was a mass of raw, rotting flesh. Cold sweat soaked my clothes, my hair. They took my phone, my books, everything. I was completely cut off from the world.

My only thought, the one thing that kept me sane, was the divorce. The papers I had tricked him into signing. There was a thirty-day cooling-off period. After that, it would be final.

I just had to survive for thirty days.

But I was terrified. What if he found out? What if he stopped the proceedings? What if I was trapped with him, like this, forever? The thought was more terrifying than death itself.