My lips part. My tongue extends uselessly into the void. The bench might as well be on another continent.
I collapse back against the table, panting. The pin in my shoulder throbs with each pulse of my heart. Sweat stings my eyes. The timer mocks me with its steady tick-tick-tick.
Ninety-four minutes.
“Fuck. Fuck.”
I test my hands again. My fingers curl now, weak but responsive. I could grip something if I could just reach the buckle, but the positioning is surgical. Perfect. He’s thought of everything.
Except…
A desperate idea crystallizes with horrible clarity. My breath catches as I stare at the pins in my flesh. What if instead of holding me down, I used them as leverage?
The shoulder pin is maybe three or four inches long. If I could lift my body weight, create enough force, it would push through the rest of the way. The pain would be unspeakable. The damage, potentially catastrophic. But I’d be free of that anchor point.
I turn my head toward the bench again, recalculating. If I had more mobility in my shoulder, even just a few more inches of range... The pins in the case gleam.
It’ll tear your pretty wings beyond repair.
Good. Let them tear. Let him return to find his perfect specimen ruined, bloodied, destroyed. Let him see I’d rather rip myself apart than stay preserved in his collection.
My muscles tense. I take a deep breath as I test the resistance. The pin shifts in the wound, and fresh pain blooms, bright and nauseating.
I can do this. I can pull myself up and through and damn the consequences. The visualization sharpens: my shoulder tearing free, blood running hot down my side, my hand finally reaching the bench, fingers closing around cold metal—
Wait.
The thought stops me cold. “Fuck.” My eyes dart around the ceiling, the corners in the walls. I can’t place them, but I know they’re there. Cameras.
Men like him don’t create their sick art and leave it unobserved. He must have hidden cameras here, and he’s watching, noting every breath, every twitch, every calculation flickering across my face, jerking off to my desperation.
If I do this—if I destroy his careful work—he won’t just be angry. He’ll flip. He’ll come back right now, mid-attempt, and stop me. And then he’ll punish me. The straps will become chains. The pins will multiply. He’ll take away the heater. He’ll reduce me to something that can never be free, can’t do anything but exist exactly as he wants me to.
I bang the back of my head against the table. My muscles slump. The tension drains out of my body in a rush that leaves me shaking.
“Okay.” I exhale.Not yet.I’ve hit a plot hole;I save that for later when I fix it.
Yeah, Birdie. Save the desperate measure for when there’s nothing left to lose, when the cold has seeped so deep that hypothermia becomes a real threat, when he’s taken everything else and only pain remains.
My eyes squeeze shut to push those images away. I can’t think like this. I need to focus. For now, I still have warmth. I still have time. Eighty-two minutes on the clock.
I force a restart on my brain. If I can’t move, and he’s watching, I’d better use that to my benefit. Butterfly Man likes his games and his tests. This is no different. That’s why he left; he’s testing me.
If I am his good little butterfly and stay still, I’ll be rewarded. If I tear my wings, he’ll punish me.
Perhaps he’s been right all this time. If I surrender and earn his trust, I’ll find my freedom. All I have to do is lie there and wait. My body will show him what he wants to see, but my brain… It’ll do what it does best, where there are no cameras to spoil the plot twist.
First things first. What kind of book are we writing here? Is it a story of twisted love or revenge?
I thought I didn’t really have a stalker with a sick obsession with me because Blake proved to be Butterfly Man. But Tristan has always believed Butterfly Man isn’t one person. Blake might have started Butterfly Man, but someone else continues to play his game. That person is behind the mask now. He’s the one who took me and put me here.
Why?
Has there been an obsessive psycho stalker from the start? A twisted love arc. Did Blake have an accomplice all along? A revenge plot. Or is he something else entirely? A vulture that saw an opportunity and swooped in? A greedy lowlife who followed the case, had access to information, and decided to play the game to cash in? A blackmail B movie, not even a story worth writing.
Sixty-nine minutes.
No. This place, the setting, his words, all of it is personal, too personal to be a hoax. He calls me the exact names he used when he was in my bedroom: his queen, darling, little butterfly. Those aren’t in any Butterfly Man case files or news. Neither is Shane. Adriana and Tristan promised to keep that part from the police during the investigation, and they’ve kept their word.