Harry Styles, a secret service agent working for British intelligence is tasked with finding the killer after a series of brutal but calculated murders across Europe. His mind is sharp, he's smart, arrogant and works with a precision that leaves no...
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Winter
Every part of my body throbbed with agony when sensation finally began to return, the pain surfaced slowly as though I had been dragged upwards from the bottom of deep water. My mind struggled to separate itself from whatever dark, half-conscious dream I had been trapped inside.
For a moment I couldn't feel the shape of my own body at all, only the dull feeling that something inside me hurt so badly it didn't feel like I could survive it. Then reality came back in slowly, in fragments, as I realised I could not move either.
I was tied to a chair. My ankles were secured tightly to the legs, my wrists bound out at either side instead of behind my back, because they knew better than to restrain my hands together, they knew I could twist free if they gave me even the smallest chance. A rag had been forced into my mouth and tied behind my head, stopping me from speaking or screaming or making any sound at all except the shallow breaths forcing their way through my nose.
And I knew this place.
I knew the smell of damp wood and smoke that lived in the walls. I knew this kind of silence and how it hung in the air like an unbearable kind of stillness that seemed like it may be endless. The kind of silence that only existed somewhere completely cut off from the world, somewhere miles from roads or towns or people. There was no life here. No distant traffic. No voices. Nothing except emptiness.
But that was impossible.
Harry's agents had stormed this place. They had cleared it out. They knew where this place was. There was no reason for us to be back here.
Panic began to creep slowly beneath the pain.
I took the smallest breath I could manage and immediately understood how small the room was from the way the air was so stale and claustrophobic. Like they had thrown me right back into one of those prisons where they'd lock me away for days.
The ringing in my ears started to fade little by little, and beneath it I heard something else.
Breathing. And it wasn't mine.
A voice murmuring somewhere nearby as though someone had been speaking to me for a long time while I drifted in and out of consciousness, waiting for me to wake up properly.
The more aware I became, the worse the pain grew. My memory returned in flashes that made my stomach feel rotten. The cabin. The glass slicing through my hand and another piece burying itself deep into my calf. Smoke choking the air. Fire crawling up the walls. Harry.
Harry.
My eyes shot open.
The room was exactly where I had feared I might be.
I recognised it instantly, not because I could see my surroundings clearly, but because this place could never leave me, it was buried so deep in my memory. Those dark stone walls with damp creeping through the cracks, something that smelt so metallic and rotten like death itself lingered in the air. It was Roman's estate. The room was dim despite the lamps burning along the walls, their weak amber glow did nothing to warm the suffocating chill pressing against my skin.
