Chapter Four: Pain Therapy
The door seals behind us with a sound that crawls straight up my spine.
Metal. Final. Familiar.
The underground room is too clean, too symmetrical. Concrete walls. A single hanging light. The same measurements burned into my nervous system from a childhood I spent years convincing myself was only nightmares.
My lungs lock.
“No,” I whisper before I can stop myself. “Killian, no—”
“This is exposure,” he says, voice low, steady, like he’s repeating something memorized. “Controlled. You’re not alone this time.”
He stands between me and the door, not blocking my exit—never that obvious—but existing like gravity. The room smells like disinfectant and dust, exactly like it used to. My vision tunnels.
“You don’t get to do this to me,” I choke. “You’re not my doctor.”
His jaw tightens. “Neither was he.”
The light flickers, and the past slams into me full force. Chains that weren’t chains but felt like them. Counting seconds by my heartbeat. The sound of another child crying somewhere I couldn’t reach.
I slide down the wall, nails scraping concrete. “You said you wouldn’t hurt me.”
“I won’t,” he says immediately. He drops to his knees in front of me, hands hovering, never touching without permission. “Scarlett, look at me. Tell me what you feel.”
Anger ignites through the fear. Hot. Sharp. Familiar.
“You’re dissociating,” I snap. “This isn’t exposure. This is reenactment. And you’re hiding behind therapy language because you don’t want to admit you’re terrified of remembering.”
His breath stutters.
“Ground with me,” I continue, forcing my voice into the calm cadence I use with patients on the brink. “Name five things you can see.”
His eyes search the room like it might attack him. “The light. The floor. Your hands. The scar on my wrist. Your hair.”
“Good,” I whisper. “Four things you can feel.”
“The cold,” he says. “My knees on the ground. My pulse. You breathing.”
The room steadies, just a fraction.
“Now tell me,” I say softly, dangerously, “what you did to survive.”
His eyes fill. Not tears yet. Something older.
“I volunteered,” he says. “When he needed someone to go first. I told him I was stronger. I said you were sick, that you couldn’t take it.” His voice cracks. “He believed me.”
The air leaves my chest in a sob I didn’t know I was holding.
“They hurt you more,” I whisper.
Killian nods once. “But he stopped touching you.”
We’re crying before either of us realizes it. Messy. Undignified. Two broken adults wrapped around the ghosts of children who never got out.
I cling to him like the floor might give way. For one suspended moment, there’s no power, no threat. Just grief.
Then slow clapping echoes from the shadows.
“Remarkable,” a voice says. “Truly remarkable.”
Dr. Alistair steps into the light like a nightmare that learned how to walk.
He’s thinner. Pallid. His skin hangs loose, eyes sharp with the same clinical hunger. An oxygen tank trails behind him like an accessory.
“Terminal cancer,” he says cheerfully at my horror. “But the mind—ah, the mind—still functions beautifully. I couldn’t resist observing the final phase.”
“You ruined us,” I spit, shaking. “You tortured children.”
“I studied them,” he corrects. “And look what you became. A healer. A king. Proof of resilience.”
I lunge, but Killian pulls me back just as the door slams open.
Police flood the room.
And Isabella steps in front of them.
Her gun is already raised.
For a heartbeat, relief surges through me. Then I see her eyes.
Empty. Resolved.
She shoots Dr. Alistair without hesitation.
Blood splatters the wall like abstract art.
“I won’t let anyone else tell the story,” she says calmly. “Not him. Not you. Not her.”
My stomach drops. “Isabella—”
“You were never my sister,” she snaps, tears streaking her face. “I was his insurance policy. His daughter. I watched you get saved while he watched me learn to lie.”
Her gun swings toward me.
Killian moves faster than thought.
The shot is deafening.
Pain blooms red across his chest as he shields me, his body absorbing the impact with a grunt that tears something vital out of my soul.
He collapses into my arms.
“No—no, no, no,” I sob, pressing my hands against the blood pouring through my fingers. “Stay with me. You don’t get to leave.”
He smiles faintly, teeth stained red. “This time,” he whispers, “I did it right.”
Sirens scream above us. Isabella drops the gun, screaming, laughing, breaking apart.
I hold Killian on the cold concrete, the light flickering above us, and for the first time in my life, the cage isn’t around me.
It’s breaking.