Just hold on Mi Amado. I’m coming for you.
OLIVIA
Two, maybe three days. That was how long I thought I had been in the new Darkness. It had definitely been two days, judging by the two equally spaced beatings I had endured, but I had no idea how long I had been down there unconscious before that.
The day before, I had once again been able to make the monster so aggravated with me that he had left Hailey alone. I’d paid for riling him up and now had agonisingly bruised ribs down both sides, a badly sprained or possibly even fractured ankle and a ton of cuts and bruises. He had tossed me around the room like a rag doll, laying fists and boots into me with every curse I threw at him. I was sure I had a concussion, my head spinning with dizziness every time I tried to stand, but it had all been worth it, because he hadn’t once turned on Hailey.
She still wasn’t saying a word and she was beyond terrified, crying in my arms every time I held her, but she was allowing me to hold and comfort her, which was something.
My concern was standing up to The Shadow when he returned for his fun today, baiting him and taunting him to lay into me again was going to be hard, since I couldn’t stand properly and every breath I took caused burning agony to my entire torso. I knew I couldn’t keep on as I had been. He’d kill me before long if I took much more abuse from him, and then who would keep Hailey safe?
I knew I had to get us out of there. It would be tough in the state I was in, but it would only get harder if he continued to beat me every day, or worse, began his torture sessions like before.
I was sure my guys and the cops were coming for me, but Hailey and I were running out of time. I couldn’t just sit there, risking Hailey, and wait for them to find us. I needed to take action.
Hailey was asleep, curled up in the driest corner of the damp hell we were in. Her breathing was ragged and I knew the damp and cold were affecting her lungs, just as it had me for the first few years I had spent in The Darkness. Just another reason I had to get us out of there, before she got any sicker.
Luckily, The Shadow didn’t seem to have cameras down here like he had in my own hell. The tell tale red lights were nowhere to be seen around the ceiling, so I felt safe he didn’t know what I was doing.
Just as well, since I was hobbling around the perimeter of the room, running my hands over the rough, damp, filthy walls, trying to get a feel for the space around me and looking for anything I could use as a weapon.
The room was smaller than the one I had been in previously, around ten feet by ten feet. The walls were all solid, hard stone, and no matter how hard I tried to feel around, there were no parts loose enough for me to pull away and use as a weapon.
Scanning over the floor was harder, since bending of any kind was its own form of torture. Instead I had walked the room in lines, hoping like hell I was moving reasonably straight, feeling with my boots for any loose parts of the concrete, or anything laying around I could use.
I knew I needed to hurry. Footsteps upstairs alerted me to the fact that The Shadow had come into the building and would, any minute, be heading down there again, just as he had done every day he held me before, and as he had done again for the last two days. Apparently having me back had inspired him to resume his old routine.
Just as I was beginning to lose all hope, and starting to despair I stumbled on an uneven area of the floor. I slammed my foot down where I had tripped and felt something moving beneath my boot. The ground felt like it had crumbled.
Knowing there wasn’t time to be steady, I dropped to my knees, fighting to hold in my cry of agony as pain fired through my torso, and my head spun so hard I actually retched.
One deep breath was all I allowed for composure, then I leant forward and felt my way across the ground.
Tears of triumph and desperation slid down my cheeks as I found I had been right, There was a small area of concrete that was damaged and crumbling. There wasn’t a part I could prise up big enough to hold in my hand as a weapon, but I thought fast, knowing anything I could come up with would be better than me just using my weak fists on the huge monster.
I sat down on my butt as an idea struck me, and hurried to pull off my left boot. I was wearing the thick wool socks Ky had insisted I needed for winter, and I was sure they would withstand what I had planned. I peeled off the sock and pushed my bare foot back into my boot, zipping it up as fast as my beaten, shaky body would allow.
I filled the sock with every loose scrap of concrete I could scrape up with my hands. By the time I was done, it was pretty heavy
