“You don’t get to apologize for things he made you do forever.”
Henry looked at her.
“You suffered because of me.”
“I suffered because of him.”
“I should have stopped him.”
“How?”
Henry had no answer.
Neither did she.
That was the terrible genius of Stone’s system.
He made love itself feel guilty.
Recovery meant separating those things again.
Stone’s choices.
Henry’s choices.
Samantha’s choices.
What was forced.
What was freely given.
What belonged to the victims.
What belonged forever to the man who hurt them.
Years later, Samantha could finally speak about one memory she had avoided for a long time.
The night she escaped.
She remembered crawling through the ventilation shaft.
Metal tearing her skin.
Stone shouting somewhere behind her.
Her father screaming from another chamber.
She reached the forest.
Then stopped.
Every instinct told her to go back.
Not because Stone’s “pack” conditioning had succeeded.
