Chapter 53

Eyes fluttering open, Brielle was immediately swallowed by an abyss of darkness. Uncertainty and paranoia followed after that. In a short while, she thought, Vincent would come looming to her, sneering, leering, brandishing his whip. The early morning discipline, as he sometimes called it, wasn't often done. But when it was, the cause was as petty as not getting his way at work, and Brielle took the full blunt of his annoyance the next day.

Fear gripped her chest. It squeezed tighter,...